ASA Forum 2016: Part 1-SANAA

Last Saturday I had the pleasure of going to the 2016 ASA Forum held at Impact. There were three international lectures the first was from Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa from SANAA. Having founded their practice in 1995 they were awarded the Pritzker prize in 2010. I was super excited about this lecture as they are particular heroes of mine. I remember one of my tutors, David S.Willey, showing us Naoshima Ferry Terminal which is a super lightweight confection of skinny circular steel columns, mirrored walls and the thinnest imaginable flat roof that defies gravity. We were asked to examine the elegance of the structure and consider the engineering that is required to design such a slender roof with robustness to withstand coastal weather conditions. It was an awakening the complexities underlying apparent simplicity.Beautiful images from Rasmus Hjortshøj on Behance

The lecture wasn’t about their early work though it covered their very high profile Rolex learning Centre, Inujima Art House Project, Teshima Art Museum, Nakamachi Terrace Community Center and Library, Tsuruoka city cultural hall and Grace Farms Cultural Centre. Each project had a very clear central idea and there were reoccurring themes of sinuous forms, reflective materials, and inclusion of the landscape.

Rolex Learning Centre Lausanne University. Image from…

Tsuruoka city cultural hall was conceived as a series of roof that mass to a central point sufficient to contain a theater with fly tower. The incremental increase in height is to reduce the impact of the mass on the low rise character of the city. Even the auditorium is non conventional with an uneven distribution of seating areas that are meant to be reflective of  vineyards.

The projects were presented with very minimal black line figureground with no line hierarchy or fills and visuals were collage-esque and slightly whimsical which I particularly enjoyed (sadly I don’t have any images of those ). I’ll leave you with ‘Garden and House’ which was a very clearly executed study of transparent living and has been popping up all over pinterest for quite some time.