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December 2009archive

1-3.JPG1-2.jpg It is always exciting to visit any construction site. This is an under-construction scene of "villa in karuizawa." The roof is made of steel structure; 150mm thick and 40 meter long. Beneath the roof, only the living quarter is placed surrounded by totally transparent walls towards nature. Its gentle curvature functions as a blinder against the neighbor building beyond, as well as, certainly, a shelter for making the interior with the varied ceiling height for enjoying the space itself. The realm for sleeping and bathing is on the ground level partly buried in the cliff. It will be completed in the spring 2010.

 

with ito-san lr  sss.jpg    with Ken & Ito lrr.jpg    

On December 4th, I received "Gold Prize" in the category of Environmental Design at Design For Asia Award by Hong Kong Design Center. In the ceremony, I met Arch. Toyo Ito, who came to the event as one of speakers for a symposium on December 5th. It was really an unexpected meeting for talking of recent happenings on each side. The initial encounter to Ito-san went back to my graduate student days, almost 25 years ago, when I was his teaching assistant. At that time, he had just completed his own house, "Silver-Hut," and started walking onto his grand road towards a greatest master architect. The "Silver-Hut" was a memorial place for me to meet Kenneth Frampton for the first time. When Ken visited the house as an interviewer related to the film by Michael Blackwood, Ito-san kindly invited me and made me introduced to Kenneth. We talked about his essay of "Critical Regionalism" in a tiny book, The Anti-Aesthetic, I had happened to hand at the Urban Book Center in New York in 1987. Indeed, the meeting with Ken pushed me out to GSAPP, Columbia.