Modern Architecture ; Organic Architecture. Centre Pompidou-Metz & Kawatana Community Centre
- 1. THEORY OF MODERN ARCHITECTURE STUDIES ON ORGANIC ARCHITECTURE; BUILDINGS BY SHIGERU BAN AND KENGO KUMA NAME: MIRRA NAZIRA BINTIYAHYA AZMUDDIN (A15BE0082) DIYANA FATIN BINTIMOHD FUAD (A15BE0032) LECTURER: DR. WAN HASHIMAH BINTIWAN ISMAIL SBEA 2831 (2016/2017)
- 2. 1 CONTENT No. TITLE Page 1. Introduction 2 2. Building 1: Pomidou Centre-Shigeru Ban 3-8 3. Building 2: Kawatana-Kengo Kuma 9-13 4. Conclusion 14 5. References 15
- 3. 2 Introduction The idea of organic architecture was promoted by the famous architect; Frank Lloyd Wright. Organic architecture is definedas a philosophy of architecture which promotes harmony between human habitation and the natural world and can be achievedthrough design approaches that aim to be sympathetic and well-integratedwith a site, so buildings, furnishings, and surroundings become part of a unified, interrelatedcomposition. Organic architecture strives to unify space, to blend interiors andexteriors, and create a harmonic built environment not separate or dominant from nature but as a unifiedwhole . Two building chosen as reference studies; Pomidou Centre by Shigeru Ban and Kawatana by Kengo Kuma will help us to understand more about the idea of organic architecture, the pros and cons in designing this type of philosophy.
- 4. 3 (QUESTION 1) Building’s Introduction Pompidou Centre is designed by Shigeru Ban Architects and the main contractor is Metz Metropole which located in Metz, France. The construction started on November 7th 2006 and inauguratedin May 12th 2010. The entire construction cost about 66.33 million Euros. Pompidou Centre’s height is about 77m and the floor area is 10600 m2. Pompidou Centre is one of arts centre locatedin Paris that exhibit temporary exhibition of the French National Museum of Modern Art which is considered the largest European collection of 20th and 21st century arts. Pompidou Centre is the largest temporary exhibition space outside Paris in France that is divided into 3 galleries, a theatre, an auditorium, a circular shaped restaurant. This building is well known for its architecture with its remarkable roof structure which has become one of the most complex built to date and has since become one of the most visited cultural place in France outside Paris.
- 5. 4 Architecture Concept, Theories andConstruction The Pompidou Centre’s is intentionally designed to give a unique experience that may differs from any typical art museum to the visitors that come visit to the art centre ; a place for visitors to connect with artistic creation in all its forms. It is a living place with events scheduled throughout the year. It is an exceptional place it is a place of excellence,a multi- disciplinary programming of innovative, world-class temporary exhibitions. The museum-surrounding garden has been thought by French landscape architect Jean de Gastine using the concepts of sustainable gardening and it is also surrounded by two gardens and a terrace. This gently sloping terrace provides a direct pedestrian link to the railway station. Partly landscaped, it has the same dimensions as the Piazza in front of the Centre Pompidou. The terrace was designedby Agence Nicolas Michelin Associés and Paso Doble, who also createdthe garden to the north of the Centre Pompidou- Metz. The five-acre garden is planted with flowering cherries, and its grassy folds enable rainwater to be collected from the roof and terrace which implying its sustainable gardening concept. There are also multiple pathways for visitors to make their way around and through the park. Three galleries in the shape of rectangular (parallelepipedic) tubes weave through the building at different levels, jutting out through the roof with huge picture windows angled towards landmarks such as the cathedral, the station and Seille Park, showing visitors genuine “postcard” images of the city of Metz.
- 6. 5 The three boxes is also rotated so that natural light comes directly in each boxes and the long narrow plan has been inspired from Nave of Metz Cathedral. The Centre Pompidou-Metz is a large hexagonal structure with three galleries running through the building which is inspiredby a Chinese Hat.
- 7. 6 Inside the building, the general atmosphere is light with a pale wood roof, white-painted walls and floors in pearl-grey polished concrete. The roof, the relation between the interior and exterior and the four exhibition galleries make uphighly innovative architectural choices. This indoor outdoor connection also allows the visitors to be connectedto gardens outside. While from the outdoor perspective, this organic shaped building’s roof allows the building to not be a stranger to its natural surrounding. The organic shaped roof also changed the firmness of the wood structure and turned it into a natural looking soft natural materials that brings the building into another level of organic building as it use woods mostly in the roof construction. This undoubte dly give the visitor a new experience while visiting the exhibition underneath the organic roof which has become one of the complex roof ever built to date. The wood been chosen as the main structure support for the roof is also because it is an inexhaustible andbio degradable material The huge size of its main nave and exhibition area with huge open spaces promotes inventiveness andwill continually pleasantly surprise the visitor. The large volume of the forum can be accessedfree of charge, where people can have tea and freely enjoy the sculptures and installations there while they are drawn by glimpses of the artwork in the galleries, and gradually experience the sequences of spaces as they proceed further. This suits its main intention which is to gather more people to come visit the art centre. The interstitial areas between the large roof and each volume have various functions ;a forum space for gathering, an exhibition space for displaying sculptures, taking advantage of the natural light filtering in through the roof.
- 8. 7 The roof structure. The roof is 90meters wide hexagon form of hexagonal wooden units that resembles the cane - work pattern of a Chinese hat with a surface area of 8500m2. The roof’s geometry is irregular and the entire wooden structure is covered with white PTFE membrane and a coating of Teflon, which has the distinction of being self-cleaning, protects from direct sunlight and transparent at night that undoubtedly offers the viewers a stunning and unique overview. It took ten months to prepare and four months to install the wood mesh, which comprises 18 kilometres of glue-laminatedtimber beams, a technique invented100 years ago. 95% of the roof timbers are made from Austrian or Swiss spruce; the remainder are beech and larch. Every single beam was CNC-machinedto unique proportions. This enabledboth the production of multi- directional curves and the perforations for the final assembly (node points, pins and braces).
- 9. 8 The method used connecting the wood structure is by interlacing the wood piece by piece so that the woods will support each other. The tensile membrane, the moisture-resistant membrane of fiberglass and Teflon (PTFE) is stretchedover the lattice structure. The entire geometry was modelled using proprietary form-finding software. The architects Shigeru Ban and Jean de Gastines chose wood because it is an inexhaustible and easily recycledmaterial. The architecture of the Centre Pompidou-Metz meets environmental quality and sustainable development criteria, andas such is coherent with the urban redevelopment programme being carriedout in the city’s Amphithéâtre district. The roof structure was assembled by weaving six beams into a hexagon, an innovative, benchmark concept in the construction world.
- 10. 9 Kengo Kuma, a Japanese architect andprofessor at the Graduate School of Architecture at the University of Tokyo. He was born in Yokohoma, but afterwards moved to New York City in the United States of America to further his studies at a university calledColumbia University as a visiting researcher from 1985 to 1986. The year after, he founded the Spatial Design Studio before establishing his own office called Kengo Kuma & Associates in 1990. His goal has always been to recover the tradition of Japanese buildings to reinterpret these traditions in modern time. He tried to go through with this goal by using material theory. Kengo Kuma uses materials to create the superficial use of ‘light’ materials - going deeper to make use of even solid objects and materials andtransform them into seeming to be ‘light’ and ‘transparent’ materials. Even while detailing stone work, Kengo Kuma tries to display a different texture or character to express a certain ‘lightness’ andimmateriality of the material - creating a sense of illusion and ambiguity as well as weakness - a big contrast to its natural solid state and construction.
- 11. 10 Organic architecture is a term that was initially introducedby Frank Lloyd Wright. It was meant to be describe the environmental approach to his architectural design. The philosophy bloomed from the ideas of Wright’s mentor, Louis Sullivan who believedin the approach ‘form follows function’. This philosophy promotes harmony between human’s habitation and the surrounding natural world. Organic architecture is implementedwe ll through the integration of designs on site, to the point that the buildings, furnishes, even andsurroundings became part of the whole unitedand interrelatedcomposition. One of Kengo Kuma’s projects was createdof from a complex of organic forms influenced by the surrounding landscape of the site in Kawatana, a spa town that is in search of revival. Kawatana is located in the Shimonoseki province, a renowned region in the south with histories of cultural exchanges and abundant in thermal baths as well as delicious seafood. Due to some causes, Kawatana lost its vitality as the number of visitors and residents declined and the closure of certain thermal baths as well as the closure of public transports.
- 12. 11 According to Kengo Kuma, something is organic if it possesses the dynamism of living creatures. After reading context carefully, Kengo Kuma proposed a building that is similar to a quarry which follows the contours of the land of the site and impersonates the profile of the mountains that stand out on the landscape surrounding the city. Composed of irregular polygons, the building was designed to be able to cate r several different functions: such as exhibit and events spaces, a museum of traditional culture and folklore, and a tourist information center. He createda space with rare connective quality that unifiedthe various programmatic needs but also createdfluid circulation inside andoutside the building. With the three main functions of the building focusing on the hall to hold public events and symposia, the folk museum is used to display Japanese culture and lifestyle, and then there is the tourist information center.
- 13. 12 Instead of dividing these according to its role, Kengo Kuma & Associates planned the spaces to connect to accommodate various activities going on at the same time. Entrances of the building are located at three places - at the intersection, in the middle of the approach to the shrine, and at the event square leading up to the hill at the back of the building. With this, people can come in and out freely from these entrances. The center of the building though is intendedto work as a meeting point for people there - coming from any type of background - who would have never had had met if this place had not existed. The project is deemedspecial thanks to its ability to bring people together - acting as a social condenser for users and prioritizes the relationships between people greatly.
- 14. 13 The building’s plan with a form of a rhizome, has no hierarchical structure that expands adapting to the ground and interacts with the surrounding landscape. As organic architecture varies subjectively from one person to another, Kengo Kuma holds onto his principles where he reconsiders the distinctions made by man regarding these issues andproposes an architecture that summarizes these questions not by focusing on forms and facades, but rather focuses more on the relationships establishedbetween people and relationships between people and objects. As Kengo Kuma wanted to merge the landscape of the surrounding mountains with the building, the roof and walls of the his design naturally formed a continuous system that rose from and falls towards the ground without acting too much of a contrast - but rather flowing together with it. The joints have flat and spherical parts. The spherical parts consents the welded panels that differs from one another, with irregular polygonal shapes. The H-shaped steel beams are encasedwith soft plastic and are connected by those spheres, as well. The beams form load-bearing structures for the building, with the surface constructed of reinforced concrete having a 12cm thickness, the dimensionedstructural cements being one of the most narrow ones in used. Since the Kawatana project investigates the phenomena of organic forms, it differs pretty greatly from Western organicism - be it both American or European. In Kengo Kuma’s case, it is constantly evolving architecture, given by opening up to the possible.
- 15. 14 CONCLUSION To pull of an organic architecture design is not an easy task. There are a lot of things must be taken into account in designing an organic design. Organic architecture requires countless studies on the site area in order to design a harmony balance between the building itself, the human habitants and its natural surroundings. Though both building were praised, there are also some critics received, like Pompidou Centre, although the design includes some sustainable design in it, some satisfying spati al elements including the panoramic views from the galleries andthe translucent roof lit up at night, some critics claimedthat the gallery interiors feel careless, the spaces don’t show the attention that architect such as Ranzo Piano would bring to mate rials, proportion or details. The ideas was more for a studied casualness but it doesn’t come off. It shows that organic architecture is not an easy architectural philosophy to be applied in the design, but with more studies they actually can. The architects must allow themselves to be inspired by nature and be sustainable, healthy, conserving, and diverse, unfold, like an organism, from the seed within, exist in the "continuous present" and "begin again and follow the flows and be flexible and adaptable.
- 16. 15 References 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_architecture 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centre_Pompidou-Metz 3. https://www.dezeen.com/2010/02/17/centre -pompidou-metz-by-shigeru-ban/ 4. http://www.archdaily.com/490141/centre-pompidou-metz-shigeru-ban-architects 5. http://www.centrepompidou-metz.fr/en/unique-architecture 6. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_architecture 7. http://www.domusweb.it/en/architecture/2011/05/23/kengo-kuma-new- organic.html 8. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kengo_Kuma