From Metropolismag

Woven into a rare stand of trees, Hiroshi Nakamura’s apartment building offers business travelers a place to land.

” Trees are rare enough in central Tokyo that discovering a grove of them is almost unimaginable. Yet land in the city is so expen­sive that when developer FLEG Inter­national held a design competition for a six-unit apartment building on a partially wooded lot, the sole stipulation was that the architects eke out the max­imum square footage possible on its 8,288 square feet. Hiroshi Nakamura, the ascendant 34-year-old protégé of Kengo Kuma, was the only one who didn’t propose to level the little forest. In his winning scheme—completed last August—rather than the trees and birds making way for the new residents, the newcomers were fitted in around the existing inhabitants.

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Rented by the month to American executives temporarily stationed in the city on business, Danc­ing Trees, Singing Birds butts right up against the woods. (The unlikely targets of the poetic complex are analysts at Morgan Stanley, whose Tokyo branch is nearby.) The young designer, who now helms Hiroshi Nakamura & NAP Architects, kept the foundation compact, setting the support pillars back from the periphery so as not to disturb root systems. Nine “human bird nests” cantilever out from the south facade, jutting between trunks and branches. Woven among them are six small birdhouses that Nakamura hung to ensure that birds remain on the site. “The forest should not just be something to look at, but rather something to feel entirely enclosed by,” he says. “Immersing the res­i­­dents in the forest is our way of raising their aware­ness of environmental issues.”

While he may not have had the option of sacrificing space to preserve foliage, Nakamura was able to forfeit views in two of the apartments—a potentially undesirable situation that he instead exploited in the design. Each dwelling has a theme, an explicit response to Japan’s monotonous apartment buildings. “You can already guess what is behind your neighbor’s doors,” Nakamura says of the city’s housing stock.

In contrast, he decided on six apartments of different sizes, each with a kitchen–dining room, a living room, a small bedroom, and a unique space devoted to a leisure activity. “On each site, and even within a site, I discover qualities that the building volume should respond to,” Nakamura says. Exotic designations such as Spa House and Library House, featured on nameplates by every door, are meant to arouse curiosity and suggest that Dancing Trees, Singing Birds is a place where neighbors—even temporary ones—will actually want to visit one another. “Ideally, they will form friendships or a small community together,” Nakamura says.”
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Haworth Tomkins

“This multi-award-winning project represents the latest stage in the development of a series of brownfield sites on London’s South Bank by the Coin Street Community Builders.

The site occupies two very different worlds - the nationally important cultural and tourist centre of the South Bank and the residential neighbourhoods of Coin Street and the Cut. The scheme, won through a limited entry competition, provides 59 dwellings including 32 family houses, the balance of accommodation being made up of a mixture of flats and maisonettes.

Urban housing still proves to be something of a paradox - the imperative to create buildings of sufficient scale that can fit comfortably into an exposed urban environment and how this can be reconciled with privacy and domestic scale. On such a prominent site a strong typology was needed, one that could be understood easily by both the public and its residents; a simple form that established very clear signals of public and private but of sufficient presence to maintain the metropolitan buzz.

The dwellings are therefore arranged around an open courtyard, a hollow square which allows communal space to be maximised in the form of a large landscaped garden which has absolute privacy and security from the street. The elevations of the houses acknowledge their dual aspect, addressing the public streetscape outside and the private garden very differently. The street facades are expressed as a simple brick screen with deep window reveals, and on the garden side more informal timber cladding has been selected to slowly weather and mature with the landscaping.

The scheme embodies many principles of sustainability, both in spatial planning and solar access - each dwelling has roof-mounted solar panels for the production of domestic hot water - and in the specification of insulation levels, ventilation systems and building materials to have the absolute minimum environmental impact.

Exterior:
Exposed aggregate concrete frame, Handmade facing brick, Powder-coated steel, Natural anodized aluminium, Red cedar timber boarding, Vitex timber boarding, Terne-coated stainless steel roof covering
Materials on public facades reinforce the tough, urban location, but on the private facade materials are softer, and designed to weather naturally.

IROKO HOUSE, COIN STREET
Client: Coin Street Community Builders
Value: £12,500,000
Completed August 2001

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Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios (FCB)

” We were appointed to design this new sustainable living quarter following success in a competition sponsored by The New Deal for Communities, New Cross Gate. The brief was to provide health, educational, community, creative and performing arts facilities together with a new public square and housing.
The winning scheme proposes 76 residential units surrounding a large public square planted with mature trees. At ground floor along the perimeter of the square are a doctors’ surgery, dentist, pharmacy, community hall, performance space, crèche and community café. A prominent civic building on New Cross Road houses a new adult learning centre and library.

The scheme demonstrates our obsession with shape, form and place-making. The scheme is like a Rubik cube unfolding – a series of complex buildings which together form a unified whole. This is one of the Mayor of London’s 100 spaces and our aim is ambitious: to pull together all the inter-connecting routes across this extensive site, to form a community with a strongly defined edge.
The square aims to put the built and natural environment on an equal footing. Green planted walls and flowering trees will provide animal habitats and a quiet urban oasis that will change with the seasons. Wind turbines will generate electricity to irrigate the trees with stored rain water. By defining the square with buildings of differing architectural languages, the square establishes itself as a public space for the entire community rather than a facility limited to this single development.”

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About FCB Studios

Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios was first established in 1978 and with offices in Bath and London we have grown steadily over the years to our present strength of 24 partners and 110 staff.

We believe the best buildings emerge from a clear concept that then finds its way into the DNA of the details. They also come from a strong working relationship with committed clients and creative consultants who understand the transformational power of architecture. Designing buildings is a process about which we are passionate, leading to a product we hope others will enjoy. It is a way of thinking – a way of life – leading to the creation of form and space that is memorable and inspirational.

Philosophy
Architecture is a social art with the ability to reflect and inform, to educate and transform. It is more than the creation of a functional built environment: it allows us to influence social change and respond positively to the environmental crisis of global warming.

Our architecture is rooted in a humane modernism which began almost a century ago with a radical re-evaluation of the way we see the world, and came to fruition in the post-war era of social reform and renewal. But we also have a reverence and fondness for the making of buildings that was embodied in the Arts and Crafts movement that preceded this. Re-interpreting the role of the craftsman gives our architecture a profound sense of materiality.

We produce work that is challenging and discursive. Work that informs, reflects and interprets.

We believe we have a unique understanding and approach to the environmental forces that shape our buildings, allowing the climate to impact on our architecture so that our architecture has minimum impact on the climate. Our architecture also needs to be robust enough in vision and concept to accommodate inevitable change. ” FCB STUDIOS - http://www.fcbstudios.com

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