Best of the Week

From an experimental house designed by Kengo Kuma in the north of Japan, to a building that serves as a manifesto for urban rehabilitation in downtown Lisbon, here are this week's best stories.

This week, we visit the Meme Meadows Experimental House in Hokkaido, northern Japan, one of Kengo Kuma's most radical proposals: an experimental house intimately connected to contemporary technological advances, while putting into practice the knowledge of ancient practices. In Lisbon, architecture studio Artéria has put forward a manifesto for urban rehabilitation in Lisbon's historical neighbourhoods, which takes the shape of a community centre in the Mouraria. In São Paulo, we visit the Maracanã house, whose complexity exceeds horizontal and vertical routes, leading to a new spacial experience that elucidates singularities of the neighbourhood's geography.

Our Op-Ed this week reflects on the challenges and possibilities put forward by ICSplat's New Concordia Island competition and its winning projects. Luca Silenzi advocates that a deliberately paradoxical theme such as the Costa Concordia disaster was a perfect catalyst for further design reflections, and a sure approach not necessarily restricted to the Giglio Island context. Finally, the new installment of the SuperNormal series explores Little Printer, the result of over five years of applied research and development at London-based firm BERG: a product that exemplifies how physical and digital have merged to become one.

Meme Meadows Experimental House
An architecture report from Hokkaido by Rafael A. Balboa, Ilze Paklone
One year ago in the town of Taiki-cho, north of the Japanese archipelago, a remarkable story to experiment with such ideas materialized through the construction of a prototype house designed by Japanese architect Kengo Kuma. The village, located in Hokkaido, hosts the Meme Meadows Centre for Research of Environmental Technologies, which used to be a facility to breed race-horses before. Founded by LIXIL JS Foundation, the aim is to contribute improving people's comfort and lifestyles within long span projects of radical ecological concepts. Kuma's experimental house is the first in the Meme Meadows series of innovative residential design solutions for extreme climate conditions. The house belongs to a series of interventions by the Japanese architect in a few existing facilities, including the renovation of a restaurant, a lodge and multipurpose space.
[ Read the full article ]
On top: Kengo Kuma, Meme Meadows Experimental House, Taikicho, Hirogun, Hokkaido, Japan 2011. Above: Artéria, Edifício Manifesto ["Manifesto Building"], Lisbon, Portugal 2012. The building before the intervention. Photo by Camilla Watson
On top: Kengo Kuma, Meme Meadows Experimental House, Taikicho, Hirogun, Hokkaido, Japan 2011. Above: Artéria, Edifício Manifesto ["Manifesto Building"], Lisbon, Portugal 2012. The building before the intervention. Photo by Camilla Watson
A manifesto for urban rehabilitation
An architecture report from Lisbon by Inês Revés
Located precisely in the Mouraria neighbourhood, the Manifesto Building proposes a model for urban rehabilitation. The project was developed by Lisbon-based architecture studio Artéria together with non-governmental association Renovar a Mouraria ["Renew Mouraria"]. Recently completed, the renovated building now harbours the Community House of Mouraria, embodying a new cultural and social hub for the neighbourhood. The story of the Manifesto Building blends itself with the story of Artéria, as it marks their first project as a collective. Conceptually developed by the studio's two partners, architects Ana Jara and Lucinda Correia, it started as a reflection on urban rehabilitation in historical neighbourhoods. The duo's interest in this subject made them develop a manifesto that would reveal itself in the shape of a building, questioning the common assumptions and preconceived notions on rehabilitation — such as it being often considered economically unsustainable.
[ Read the full article ]
Terra e Tuma Arquitetos Associados (Danilo Terra, Pedro Tuma, Juliana Assali), <i>Maracanã House</i>, São Paulo
Terra e Tuma Arquitetos Associados (Danilo Terra, Pedro Tuma, Juliana Assali), Maracanã House, São Paulo
A living infrastructure
An architecture report from São Paulo by Daniel Corsi
In the city of São Paulo, where contemporaneity is able to perform the most extraordinary urban contrasts, living can reveal an encouraging condition. In search of a place where this could be experienced, the idea of an elementary residence acquires the character of a happening. Such is the case with Terra e Tuma Arquitetos Associados' Maracanã House, a residence that decided to silently place itself in the western metropolitan meanders, in Maracanã street. The surfaces that define the volume's geometry — opaque in grayish materiality, clear in glass surfaces or vibrant on the access mural — show their presence like a new event in the bucolic surroundings, where curious people wonder about this new construction.
[ Read the full article ]
Little Printer and its packaging, which consists of: Ethernet Bridge; power supplier; printer; instructions; a set of accessories and paper. Photos by Delfino Sisto Legnani
Little Printer and its packaging, which consists of: Ethernet Bridge; power supplier; printer; instructions; a set of accessories and paper. Photos by Delfino Sisto Legnani
Design Projects and Metaphors
An op-ed from Giglio Island by Luca Silenzi
With what I consider great courage, Navarra and ICSplat took it upon themselves to stimulate international reflection on the Costa Concordia disaster in an attempt to understand whether such a traumatic event — combined with the fact that ship and island have been features on the same landscape for months now — might prompt critical interpretations and design ideas that offer an alternative to the validation of the single thought and the transformation of pain into spectacle. If we can go beyond the concept of "an embarrassment to be removed" and the banal option of returning to the way things were before, we might, at last, catch sight of the complex and as yet unknown design potential that could arise from seemingly devastated landscapes such as this one. Unfortunately not everyone saw it this way.
[ Read the full article ]

Little Printer: A portrait in the nude
A design report from London by Dan Hill
Little Printer is a product of now. It is a product, a tangible thing, but is also a product, in the sense of a consequence, of contemporary culture. It humbly and accessibly exemplifies how physical and digital have merged to become one, to become hybrid objects, to demonstrate how objects might become networked, and how domestic objects might behave. But Little Printer, whilst a product of now, is also the product of over five years of applied research and development, a wobbly line etched from sketchbook to workshop, from college to startup, from Hackney to Shenzhen. Domus talked to Jack Schulze, a principal at BERG, the London-based firm that produces Little Printer, in order to unpick the design process as much as the product.
[ Read the full article ]

Latest on News

Latest on Domus

Read more
China Germany India Mexico, Central America and Caribbean Sri Lanka Korea icon-camera close icon-comments icon-down-sm icon-download icon-facebook icon-heart icon-heart icon-next-sm icon-next icon-pinterest icon-play icon-plus icon-prev-sm icon-prev Search icon-twitter icon-views icon-instagram