Urbanism and Japanese Architecture

When Japanese architecture is first mentioned, there are a few things that initially spring to one's mind. It’s likely to conjure thoughts of wooden huts lifted slightly above the ground, with beautiful brick tiles or elegant thatched roofs. You’ll probably think of sliding translucent panels that lead to intricate living spaces, where meals are eaten from cushions on the tatami mat floors with the whole family. While this life still exists in many parts of Japan, recent years have seen a huge increase in Western and post-modern influences. As visitors to this fascinating country will know, the architecture is diverse, and in many cases, highly technological and cutting edge - especially in the larger cities.

Tokyo Midtow - image source

You don’t have to look far in Japan to see its very successful attempts at urbanisation and leading an architectural revolution. Just a few of its many gems include the Sugamo Shinkin Bank, a multicoloured building in Tokyo that houses ATMs, a café, and meeting rooms, Tokyo Midtown and its sprawling metropolis of high buildings, and The Giant Cocoon in Tokyo, which is currently the second tallest educational building in the world.

The Giant Cocoon - image source

Japan’s approach to architecture has become renowned all over the world. Famous architects including Antonin Raymond and Frank Lloyd Wright have visited Japan and are considered to be integral in the spreading of the style to the US. Though the cultures are of course very different, many designers have managed to strike the balance between the Japanese design and the Western requirement for functionality.

Inevitably, this relationship works both ways. In the last century,  specifically in the rebuilding ofter world war II, there has been pressure from Japanese bureaucrats to develop a more Westernized urban environment - utilizing contemporary materials and technological advances in building techniques to build large high density cities. 

What is your favourite example of Japanese design? Is there a particular architect that amazes you with their blending of traditional and contemporary architecture?

Traditional Japanese House - image source

This article was brought to you by Ruth Hinds on behalf of Tons of Tiles. ToT imports and supplies a wide range of quality ceramic and quartz tiles for bathrooms, kitchens, and any area of your house that you would like to improve. 

Living Buildings as a Teaching Facility

courtesy of Nigel Fenton

Urbanization, Architecutre and Social Sustainability

a guest post by Amanda Ingmire 

ʻGreenʼ building, LEED Certification and innovative living building technologies are topics constantly at the forefront of current architecture and urban planning discussions, both within the profession and among the general public. While environmentally conscious architecture is an essential aspect of sustainability, it is often overlooked that sustainability consists of three ethos; not only environmental sustainability, but also economic and social sustainability.

Social sustainability is the overarching theme in the documentary, ʻUrbanizedʼ, released to DVD February 14, 2012, by Gary Hustwit. ʻUrbanizedʼ is the third in his film series on design, following ʻHelveticaʼ and ʻObjectifiedʼ.  In his 85-minute film, Hustwit presents the viewer with a sweeping glance of numerous current issues that are addressed by architects and urban designers: rapid urbanization, social housing, alternative transportation methods, crime and participatory design, among others.

On October 31, 2011 several news sources announced that the world population had reached the 7 billion mark; that number is expected to grow to 8 billion within the next twenty years, with the majority of that population residing in urban centers. Of course, rapid population growth and urbanization is not a new issue, but we have yet to develop an urban fabric that can adequately manage a huge influx of people into our urban centers.

Mumbai is the focal point of the films segment on slums displaying landscapes of incommodious stacks of residences bursting at the seams. Edgar Pieterse, director of the African Centre for Cities, states, “The problem is that the population in urban areas will double over the next twenty-to-thirty years; at the same time, we havenʼt yet dealt with the people that are already there.” Creating basic human habitat with access to clean drinking water and sanitation becomes a central issue for designers and policy makers, especially in these makeshift settlements. How do architects, landscape architects and urban planners begin to make far-reaching changes that out-pace the rapid flow of people into the worldʼs urban centers and develop livable environments for people of all economic statures?

Throughout his film, Hustwit continuously revisits the themes of perspective and community as designers ameliorate neighborhoods and cities in many of the presented case studies. Jane Jacobs' notable reclamation of Greenwich Village through her declaration to preserve mixed-use, diverse neighborhoods with “eyes on the street” is contrasted with the perspective of designing exclusively in plan, from among the skyscrapers, looking down on the city and its people from an ivory tower, as was the case of Robert Moses in New York City and Lucio Costa in Brasilia. In the film, Amanda Burden, Director of the New York City Department of City Planning, describes Mosesʼ time as Construction Coordinator of New York City (1934-1968) as having a profound impact and a legendary insensitivity to the fabric of the city as he demolished entire neighborhoods with the development of highway systems.

The downfall of Moses came at the same time as the rise of Jacobs. Through her writing, she was able to illustrate the rich relationship that existed between the physical space that constituted neighborhoods and cities and the social fabric that existed within these spaces.

“Under the seeming disorder of the old city, wherever the old city is working successfully, is a marvelous order for maintaining the safety of the streets and the freedom of the city. It is a complex order. Its essence is intricacy of sidewalk use, bringing with it a constant succession of eyes. This order is all composed of movement and change, and although it is life, not art, we may fancifully call it the art form of the city and liken it to the dance — not to a simple-minded precision dance with everyone kicking up at the same time, twirling in unison and bowing off en masse, but to an intricate ballet in which the individual dancers and ensembles all have distinctive parts which miraculously reinforce each other and compose an orderly whole. The ballet of the good city sidewalk never repeats itself from place to place, and in any one place is always replete with new improvisations.”

In her narratives of “eyes on the street” and the movement and dance of the city, Jacobs is also reflecting on community, the second recurring theme in ʻUrbanized.ʼ Burden and Jan Gehl of Gehl Architcts in Copenhagen, Denmark both examine the importance of quality public spaces within cities. Burden describes the significance of movable chairs; this minute design detail allows a person to modify their surroundings just enough to make the space their own, the freedom to inhabit a place as they choose. Gehl uses the metaphor of the city as a party to identify its social success as the film displays congregations of people gathering in impromptu groups, “a good city is like a good party… do not look at how many people are walking in the city, but look at how many have stopped walking to stay and enjoy what is there.”

With rapid urbanization as a principal contemporary design issue, social, environmental and economical sustainability is the desired dénouement. Perspective and community are two key themes that need to ruminate through the conception of each urban plaza, building, street, neighborhood and city we design and develop. The defining obligation for architects and urban planners is to determine how to reach this supreme goal with a vastly increased population in urban centers when we presently struggle to attain this same objective with our current urban populations. As we develop innovative solutions to the design challenges present in rapid urbanization, we must be cognizant of the rich order and fabric that already exists in a place and focus on the retention of its subsisting uniqueness. As best written by Jacobs, “There is a quality even meaner than outright ugliness or disorder, and this meaner quality is the dishonest mask of pretended order, achieved by ignoring or suppressing the real order that is struggling to exist and to be served.”

The Art of Glass - Sculptures by Henry Richardson

American Master Glass sculptor, Henry Richardson, winner of the 2012 Artist of Year award by the Design Centers of Americas, creates his sculptures made of hand-chiseled plates of glass through a high-intensity light welding process. In spite of the large scale of many of his works, the sculptures feel light, their heaviness reduced by their translucency. Each work has a crystalline or ice-like quality imparting both a timelessness and impermanence which can be interpreted as reflection of our own human condition; the work is ideal for outdoor display.

While the sound of breaking glass calls to mind the image of destruction, Richardson uses fractured glass as an element of creation. Wielding traditional tools of sculptors, such as a chisel and hammer, he shapes glass and then bonds it using specially formulated transparent adhesives.

His sculptures are generally recognizable in form but the materials create a visually and metaphorically complex body for the viewer. Thus one can only imagine his sculptures start as cold commercial grade window glass and they are transformed into breathtaking sculptures that transmit light and radiance. 

Repositioning the American Institute of Architects

A letter from the North West and Pacific Region Associate Director, Joe Mayo:

Dear Associate Leaders,

Grassroots was a powerful event this year, and I wanted to send an e-mail to recount some of the most notable events.

First and foremost, AIA released a first look at their Repositioning Implementation Plan. Please see this web site for several videos on the Repositioning taken from Grassroots:

http://www.aia.org/about/repositioning/index.htm

The first video, “What it is to be an Architect,” is less than 2 minutes and it is a succinct message at the heart of the repositioning designed to educate the public about what architects do, as well as to help us talk more clearly about what we do to the public.

The next video is the presentation that LaPlaca Cohen and Pentagram gave at Grassroots. I would highly encourage you to watch this video as it outlines the entire Repositioning process to date, which is the largest collection of data LaPlaca Cohen and Pentagram have ever compiled. The message is to shift the conversation away from what the AIA does to why we practice architecture and why architecture matters. The message is really about empowerment and empowering individual members to fuse practice with passion, focus on connectivity and become a messenger for change. Please see the following page for an outline of the Repositioning statements:

http://www.aia.org/about/repositioning/aiab098128
After LaPlaca Cohen and Pentagram’s presentation the AIA responded with the video titled “Repositioning Forum.” I encourage you to listen to the AIA response to LaPlaca Cohen and Pentagram’s presentation as it demonstrates the leadership commitment toward action. After the Repositioning presentations we all broke-out into small groups to discuss what is most important to us. Many topics were explored such as:

· Leadership structure—are one year terms too short for consistency in leadership and institutional memory in the AIA?

• Lack of coordination between local, state, regional and national components
• Board size—are 60 members on the AIA National Board too many to get things done?
• Engage the Emerging Professional
• Inefficacy of Communications—the AIA sends out too many messages and lacks focus
• Passive Reactiveness—the AIA should lead, not follow on important issues

Please see the image at the top, for a list of priorities we discussed and how the participants responded. This response shown here was fairly typical across all the groups in that there was a bell curve of importance, with the three most important items being “engage the emerging professional,” “inefficacy of communications,” and “passive reactiveness.” From this response it is clear that the Emerging Professional is one of the most important priorities among the respondents and with AIA National. This puts us in a great place to ask for what we think is important and to exhibit leadership within the Institute. This commitment to the Emerging Professional should transmitted to your local component leadership.

For the Repositioning the AIA wants actionable goals that signal real change. A few of the take-aways include:

• AIA’s commitment to prioritize initiatives and focus on only those programs with the greatest value to the members and eliminate programs that have less value. This will require analyzing the benefits of different programs, seeking member input and making recommendations to the Board in the Spring of 2014. The AIA will also update/streamline their entire communication strategy and refresh their graphic identity
• The AIA also intends to take a stand on important issues that define and impact the architecture profession.
• Engage the emerging professional by hosting an Emerging Professionals Summit in November 2013. The purpose of this summit will be to develop an action plan for best serving emerging professionals
• Generate a comprehensive study on Gender and Inclusiveness in the profession to be completed by 2014
• Provide an Innovation Fund by 2014 for existing or new programs that can be replicated by other AIA Components
• Select Repositioning Ambassadors to provide guidance in setting AIA-wide priorities

I think that there is a sincere motivation for change within the highest leadership at AIA, so I am hopeful that the changes outlined here will take place and have a positive effect. From discussions at Grassroots I think that it will be valuable to have Emerging Professionals on AIA Boards, including local components. Emerging Professionals should also be treated the same as licensed architects, and we should not be sitting at a “kid’s table.” We are the future of the profession need to be at part of the discussion and at the same table if the AIA is serious about engagement. I’d encourage you to discuss this with your local components. Another important issue is for local firms to value involvement in the AIA and allow time away from work for emerging professionals to be involved. A big change in culture is needed within the profession and each of you will be a part of this change! Making sure that individual architecture firms understand the value of involvement is an issue we can all help solve.

The AIA has also now published an Annual Report that details all of the Institute’s activities and is helpful in understanding the full scope of our Institute. Please download a copy here:

http://www.aia.org/aiaucmp/groups/aia/documents/pdf/aiab098122.pdf
Finally, AIA National Convention is coming-up soon and I would encourage all Associates to try and attend. There is a discount for early registration, but it ends on April 10th, so please do not delay if you are interested in attending. This is the first year that we will have an Emerging Professionals Lounge within the main convention floor, so it will be an exciting time and we will be literally in the center of all the activity there. Please see this link for more information:
http://convention.aia.org/event/registration/discounts-promotions.aspx

All the best,
Joe

The AIA Manifesto

The AIA is working on repositioning itself to better represent architects to the public and better serve its members. This short video is a poetic look at the value architects bring to society. I had the privilege of attending the AIA Grassroots and Leadership conference in Washington D.C. last week on a scholarship. It was an incredible experience to see how the organization works, lend my ideas on how it can be improved, and help advocate for important issues to our congressmen and women.

Watch this short video, visit the website, and offer your suggestions on how to make the AIA better address the issues facing the profession of architecture.

Public Interest Design: The Anthropomorphism of Architecture

By Stacy Scott

There is an instant of awareness in the career of a designer when one becomes overwhelmed with what design could be, yet also paralyzed with the thought that is absolutely too much and not enough. This mindset of impending irrelevancy has infected the very core of the art community sporadically over its history. As designers, we must become sympathetic to the fact that our calling is prone to feeling shallow and we will often deeply crave a reminder that we are necessary. The solution comes through design embracing the responsibility and power to house and add new borders to world progress. Public Interest design is completely self-defining; it is relevancy in its most urgent form. Finally, design is reclaimed by its rightful owner: the people.

Public interest design is an infant subset of sustainable design. It takes a new approach of immersing the practitioner deep into the needs of the environment to produce solutions from the inside, as opposed to architecture (occasionally known for under-prioritizing context) treating problems from a distant and isolated vacuum. 

In his Curry Stone Prize project summary video, Michael Murphy of MASS Design Group speaks about moving to Rwanda full time to work on a new hospital in the Burera District. “This kind of deep immersion, I realized, was something that was missing from the architectural profession.” 

One of the distinguishing factors of PI design asks the question: Is this inherently about making the lives of the people in the surrounding community better? 

MASS Design has become very recognized in the architecture and humanitarian community because of their extensive work in Rwanda. A winner of the 2012 Curry Stone Prize, their partnership with Partners in Health to produce the Butaro Hospital became a referencing point in what PI design should look like. An amazing example of the solutions that arose out of their dedication to focus on making the building work for the target user group was removing the hallways from the plan. The building, hallway free, allowed for greater ventilation, and a cliff-drop in the spreading of airborne diseases such as TB that were becoming worse due to the cramped setup of the previous clinic. The collaboration with the community members, Partners in Health and Harvard Medical School, as well as deep research on what caused past problems and how that could be eliminated represents how PI design has made a spinoff of what old design methods used to include. Teamwork is another distinguishing point in PI design that proves that more can be done when architecture opens its definition to include more multi-disciplinary focusing. 

What better way to encourage collaboration than to enlighten the community around you to what their options for betterment are? Project H Design, a humanitarian non-profit design group in San Rafael, California, sees design education as an amazing way to get the community to self-diagnose and treat design problems. Their education program Studio H, is a design/build program targeted at high school students. Studio-H.org defines their program as on that, “… sparks community development through real-world, built projects.” Peter Smith in his 1994 article, Art and Irrelevance states about artistic education targeted at children, “I generally conclude that what [the students] have learned is that art is something that has nothing to do with here or now. It has nothing to do with their lives or feelings or knowledge encountered in their experiences.” Studio H takes a completely different approach. The students learn about practical design by gaining relevant skills that improve the creative capital and aid in the design future of their community. This type of approach is great because it recruits relevancy back into its own community patrons. 

Public Interest design is explicitly for people, by people. It is community born, and aligns solutions with resources. It is the late night propeller for many designers pouring over exacting and often needy work. It is psychosocial. It is empowering. It is given life by those that utilize it. If you are a designer or a patron of design, that is feeling haunted by irrelevancy, remember that the potency of design is not in size but intent and this can make it a catalyzer like no other.

Video: "A million times" by Humans since 1982

Evolution of traditional KIMONO store in Kyoto by Yusuke Seki

 

Gofuku, or the Kimono, is a traditional Japanese clothing. Historically Japanese people would wear Kimonos for everyday life however, nowadays it is mainly worn for special occasions, as it has a recent reputation as a garment reserved for high society.

The idea for this store is to re-introduce the Kimono culture to contemporary society. It has a clear 3-step price system to allow new customers to choose the suitable product, and to compare to other traditional kimono stores. On the second floor, it opens up as a gallery space with kimono related modern art and a design works exhibition. The main design concept uses aspects from the past and introduces new hand craft towards a new design for the future. The design is simple, understated and elegant to allow the beauty and intricacy of the cloth to stand out.

The Interior design consists of 3 types of showcases according to the price range, frame and type of composition of the Kimono. Other products are displayed on custom designed shelves and tables, using warm wood in contrast to modern metal legs tied together with twine. The white tiles from the original Tofu store were preserved to pay homage to the building's past.

The store is located at the feet of Yasaka Shrine (八坂神社, Yasaka-jinja) a Shinto shrine in the Gion District of Kyoto, Japan. The original building was constructed 70 years ago, and was previously a Tofu store.

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Art Direction & Total Design: Yusuke Seki (http://yusukeseki.com/)
Cliant: WAKON（http://www.wakon.net/about/）
Officaial website: Otsuka Gofukuten (http://www.otsuka-gofukuten.jp/)
Brand Direction: Jun Nakagawa (http://www.yu-nakagawa.co.jp/) & Yu Yamada (http://wearemethod.com/)
Photo : Takumi Ota (http://www.phota.jp/ )
Location : Kyoto, Japan
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Visualization Secrets of the Rock-Stars of Architecture | Courtesy of Transparent House

By Krista Mollion

Over the past several years, we have looked on in fascination as Talkitect.com has organized a growing global community of individuals interested in built environments. Into this international community’s ongoing dialogue around contemporary design and architecture, we are very grateful for the opportunity to share our expertise in 3D visualization.

Talkitect.com publisher Lucas Gray recently reached out to let us know he felt that his readers would be interested in learning more about our work as a visualization studio, the relationship between designers and digital artists, how details need to flow back-and-forth, and how we actually go about performing what many view as magic. Shall we begin?

First, by way of introduction… Transparent House was launched in 2004 with offices in San Francisco, Moscow and Berlin. Today, we like to position ourselves as the next-generation creative studio exceling at the intersection of digital, art, and commerce. By specializing in the creation of stunning 3D assets, branded environments and high-end retail developments, we have built solid relationships with many of the world’s premier architects, designers and real estate developers. Although a great deal of our focus is on assisting architects through visualization, our own creative developments have also helped expand our reputation. To illustrate the ideas presented here, we are showing a project we completed entirely in-house: The Crescent Moon Tower project, which we designed for the 2009 ThyssenKrupp Architecture Competition.

In everything we do, we employ strategic digital innovation and 3D for high-profile, future-looking brands. Design and 3D are in our DNA, and our constant goal is making 3D the spectacular core of phenomenal promotional campaigns. When it comes to our client relationships, we always feel that the key is setting clear goals, because we know that the less precise the communication, the weaker the renderings will be.

In order to produce amazing renderings, we need not only architectural and other design files, we also need to know who the target audience is and what our clients are trying to communicate to them. We always say that the story comes first, which we develop the design around. Through this approach, we become a partner to the designers serving one common client. We perceive our job as filling-in whatever designers cannot; breathing life into the designs at whatever stage of development they may be at. We do this by adding rich entourage elements and creating the right atmosphere, like “busy and exciting” for a commercial retail space, or “serene relaxation” for a hospitality project.

As you all surely know, Talkitect’s Lucas Gray is especially interested in the lighting aspects of visualization, and the accurate representation of shadows, streams of light, and reflections. Essentially, we always choose the type of light source or technique depending on the results we want to achieve. There are different types of lights in 3D: point lights, spot lights, area lights, direct lights, and others. To simulate the sun, we use a direct light or a special Sun light: Both give strong direct light and sharp shadows. We use Spot lights or IES lights to emit a single point of light any direction with an angle of up to 180 degrees. An IES is a more advanced spot light, where the real light information of particular lighting fixtures can be used, providing more accurate results. Area lights allow us to show big light fixtures like lamp shades, offering soft light and soft shadows.

Of course, each light source has many settings that we always leverage to the greatest effect possible. Another technique is using Image Based Lighting instead of light sources, which is especially good for product and exterior renderings. To understand this light, think about it like a big sphere with a texture on it. Finally, some materials also allow self-illumination, which can be used along with light sources to deliver incredibly nuanced looks.

Briefly, everyone understands that reflections are complex because they are produced by lights and they also depend on the characteristics of materials. Since light sources make reflections, we create some lighting setups exclusively for purposes of creating the desired reflections. This is one reason why lighting setups can be quite complex for product rendering: Some lights are used for lighting, some for reflections, and some for both. In the past, because of the lack of computing resources, we often had to “fake” some lights and reflections to make the results appear as photo-realistic as possible, but these days, we are able to simulate the properties of real light fixtures, resulting in renderings that are infinitely superior.

Most of the innovations I’ve mentioned in this quick discussion can be seen in our Tower Moon project. Providing a bit more perspective on our track-record, every day, we are educating business professionals in many industries on how they can best use 3D visualization in their daily work to "wow" their target audiences and do so in ways that are extremely cost-effective, scalable and useful. To experience our capabilities in more depth, please check-out the newest projects presented on our website or contact us for a personal demonstration.

We hope you enjoy seeing our work, which represents our continuing journey inspired by the collaborations we’ve enjoyed with our clients. Now we are just wondering what we can do for you?

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Also check out these videos of Transparent House's work: http://www.talkitect.com/2013/02/video-dream-journey-by-transparent-house.html
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Krista Mollion is principal and strategist for the international next-generation creative studio Transparent House. She joined the company soon after its inception, after handling project management assignments for Autodesk, Siebel Systems and many other leading high-tech companies. With her international business experience, Krista encourages clients to think big about ways to expand into new markets by maximizing the ever-expanding benefits of 3D visualization.

Video: Dream Journey by Transparent House

To continue with our exploration of architectural visualization, here are two short videos created by Transparent House showing some of their rendering work as well as a "making of" featurette. I am particularly impressed with the use of light and texture at the beginning of the first film. The second film offers a glimpse into the process of creating 2 still images - pretty impressive.

Juxtaposition

by Kristin Slavin

The key to conextual design is knowing the history and culture of a place or time, and using that information to inform the next intervention. Like artists and photographers, architects and interior designers think about the composition of space. Rather than the two dimensional placement of objects within a frame, however, designers think about composition in relation to an entire building. With a huge existing building and furniture stock, one growing challenge is introducing new furniture into existing buildings and vice versa. Especially since furniture is originally built to a distinct time period's fashions and culture.

As artists have known for centuries, the juxtaposition of old and new can create a moving environment, respecting the old while allowing the new to speak for itself. One of the most famous instances of this condition in architecture is the Louvre in Paris. I.M. Pei's glass pyramid jutting up into the courtyard at the entrance of the existing building is only one of many renovations The Louvre has undergone over the centuries. Rather than destroy part of what was there or try to match the French Rennesaince style, the new entrance allows the history of the building to stay intact while adding another very distinct piece that represents the time it was designed in. The controversy and debate created by contrasts such as these encourage renewed discussions about each time period's design trends, and allows designers to grow by understanding more about how fashions progress.

Looking specifically at furniture, the juxtaposition of furniture of one time period and a building of another provides the same drama and conversation catalyst. An antique wardrobe, bed and chase in a stark, concrete box of a room provides floral patterns set against a matte gray backdrop. Conversely, modern tables and chairs with clean lines and a simple pallets of materials within an old brick warehouse highlights texture and materiality. 

Several factors should be taken into acount when designing with contrast. While the two styles work best when disticntly unique, the color pallettes and textures must still compliment one another. Color theory and graphic design become even more important when two styles are inherently different. The three deimensionality of spacial design allows you to compose an entire set of objects so that no matter what angle you view the space from, the building and furniture work together.

High fashion photography uses contrast regularly to emphasize an aspect of an image, set a mood, and draw the eye. Architecture and interior design can use the same principles to achieve the same effect while respecting original styles.

House O by Peter Ruge Architekten

The Berlin based architecture firm Peter Ruge Architekten, the firm where I worked while living in the vibrant German capital, has recently completed a wonderful residential project in a small village outside the city. It's simplicity and elegance make it stand out as a great example of contemporary residential architecture. It is particularly noteworthy as it demonstrates the ability for a modern aesthetic to be implemented in a historic town context. 

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The residential building lies upon a hill in a beautiful small village in the district Potsdam-Mittelmark in a fantastic scenic situation with breathtaking views over the nearby lake. The surroundings are dominated by a combination of historical and modern mansions nestled into a picturesque landscape. To preserve this feeling, as many of the large old trees on the site were preserved as possible.

The new building was designed as a modern residential building with 3 flats. The floor plans are designed to be flexible and open. The main flat extends across two floors. Simple and reserved materials (exposed concrete, glass, wood, natural stone) underline the modern architectural style to accentuate focus on the connection between the interior and outdoor spaces. All upper floors can be accessed via the sculptural external staircase.

The concept for the facades plays with the contrast of open and closed dependent upon the surroundings and importance of natural perspectives. The narrow sides are glazed toward the south into the garden, and toward the north with the magnificent view over the lake. The west and east facades to the neighbouring sites are mainly closed and designed with large prefabricated concrete elements and some narrow glass bands. The inside of the building appears light, bright and friendly through the open glazed south and north facade. During the seasons the changing surroundings and the large deciduous trees will continuously vary the spatial impression. I the winter months the views will open up to be panoramic allowing the bright sunlight and warmth to enter the interior. During summer the leafy canopy of the trees will filter the light, block unwanted heat gain, and make dapple shadows dance across the interior.

The building is heated using geothermal energy with an integrated bus technology allowing the individual residents to control their environment.

Portrait of a House – a new photo book by Simon Devitt

Regular contributor to this blog, photographer Simon Devitt, has recently announced his forthcoming photo book called Portrait of a House. We are proud of his accomplishment and are excited to showcase the book here. It will be officially released in late March.

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Portrait of a House is a photo book by photographer Simon Devitt in collaboration with graphic designer Arch MacDonnell (Inhouse Design). This is Devitts first foray in the photo book genre. His book explores the Athfield House - the ‘village on the hill’ - an architectural experiment that Ian Athfield started in 1965 on the Khandallah hillside in Wellington, and which he is still altering and extending today.

The house is renowned in bohemian and academic circles for its many colourful dinner parties and occasions, and is infamous with neighbours past and present for the antics of its free-range livestock and frequent run-ins with Council. Roosters have been shot, construction shut down and architectural pilgrimages made.

At last count 25 people live in its array of buildings, with 40 people working for Athfield Architects within its walls. Ironically the property was given a heritage listing by Council a number of years back, despite the years of acrimony, to which Ath laughed “what a bloody cheek!” and had the status changed to ‘organic heritage’ so that he could continue working on it. So the maverick architect has created an important piece of New Zealand history. About his almost 50-year experiment he understatedly concludes, “it hasn’t been entirely successful but it hasn’t been a failure.”

This is an extraordinary story told though Devitt’s sensitive eye, blended with historic photographs, paintings and drawings from the Athfield archive. Clare Athfield’s contribution of her own recipes (dating from the 1960s until now) complements a selection of personal letters by family, friends, colleagues and clients which are insightful and often very funny - memories that make Simon’s photographs all the more potent in their beauty and silence.

The sense that ‘the walls can talk’ is evoked in Devitt’s narrative, and is a record of why the house is an important part of Wellington’s history, with many of its stories now urban legend. However, the photographer doesn’t set the house up in a heroic way, although there are undoubtedly some sublime images. He is candid, ambiguous, and at times irreverent - but then so are the owners.

The idea for the book came from Devitt’s admiration of Robin Morrison’s work and in particular Morrison’s 1978 photo book Images of a House about a William Gummer-designed house built in 1916. “A house is a pretty refined subject to make a book about,” explains Devitt. “It is not market driven, it is content driven and born out of passion. Life has happened there like in no other house, and the ‘living’ leaves its evidence, time has played out on its surface. There is a lot to be said about sitting still and how that looks. The Athfield house is a wonderful example of this. An accessible counterpoint to a largely asset based living that pervades New Zealand"

Devitt has been a professional photographer of architecture for over 14 years. His work ranks as some of the most important in New Zealand architectural photography. He has been published extensively both locally and internationally, contributing to over twenty books and magazines such as HOME, Urbis, Architecture New Zealand, Dwell, Wallpaper*, Habitus and Indesign. He launched the book Summer Houses through Penguin in 2011 with writer Andrea Stevens and is working on a second book for them for release in early 2014. Devitt has contributed significantly to a number of major publications by Julia Gatley, including Long Live the Modern.

Portrait of a House will be launched in February 2013. Only 1,000 copies will be printed with 100 special editions that include one of five photographic prints. At 140 pages, uncoated paper, an exposed, section sewn binding and cardboard case, this will be a true collector’s item for those interested in New Zealand history, architecture, design and photography.

Simon Devitt
simon@simondevitt.com
021 680 959

Distribution contact:
Balasoglou Books
John Balasoglou
j.balasoglou@xtra.co.nz
021 662 339