Hiroshi Sambuichi camouflages the presence of a dental clinic beneath a series of artificial hills covered in low hedges. The patients’ fears are exorcised by the building’s design: curvilinear wood panelled spaces alternate with large glazed surfaces. Nature is present in the background, but only metaphorically. Despite the best of intentions, there are certain intractable anxieties that crop up every time we pay a visit to the dentist.

The very figure of the dentist conjures up fear of precision instruments like the scalpel, which, guided by a human hand, must manoeuvre in miniscule and somewhat sensitive areas. With this in mind, Japanese architect Hiroshi Sambuichi opted for the gentle approach in his extension design for a clinic in Otake, near Hiroshima. The centre specialising in dental care is camouflaged under an artificial landscape: a series of dunes covered in greenery held in place by a metal mesh.

Two design strategies were employed. Firstly, the space is based on a series of vaults whose interiors are panelled in wood. It would feel like entering a boat's upturned hull were it not for the large glass windows that open onto the outside. The waiting areas and treatment rooms face north so as to maintain uniform lighting. This orientation protects these rooms from direct natural light, thus minimising interference from this and the colour variations dictated by the changing seasons.

In the background, nature makes its presence felt in the site's native trees and the roofing’s covering of vegetation. In the normality of the urban landscape, the clinic jumps out of the blue with the singularity of its architecture.

Born in Hiroshima in 1968, Hiroshi Sambuichi reveals a different approach in each of his works. He has received a number of awards: in 2003 he was commended in the competition for emerging architects “ar+d”; in 2005 he was one of the finalists in the “Best Residential Projects” competition announced by Wallpaper; and last year he received the “Detail Prize 2005”.


by Laura Bossi
photographs Shinkenchiku/Sha
from Domus News

The textile brick designed by the Bouroullec brothers for Kvadrat is the latest step in their process of deconstructing space.


Modular cell fabrics

The textile brick designed by Erwan e Ronan Bouroullec for Kvadrat is the latest step in their process of deconstructing space. That process is now eroding the delimitation of space by such restraints as walls, doors and passageways – all hitherto regarded as closed and permanently fixed entities – which can instead be transformed into free configurations.

On one hand the aversion to fixed and definitive arrangements. On the other, a vision of open, free space, always ready to assume fresh configurations and different uses. This has always been the keynote of the Brittany-born brothers’ work. From their project for an open working environment developed with Vitra (the very long Joint table, on which workstations can be dismantled and recreated), to their early research into manufacturing modules that grow in space like creepers.

This rejection of permanently closed form has marked their work in a wide variety of fields: from carpets that can be rearranged ad infinitum thanks to their long connecting zips, to metal chairs decorated with motifs reproducing the vibration of colour for an unstable, active and ever-changing perception. In this latest episode, the Bouroullec brothers have collaborated with Kvadrat (one of the world’s leading manufacturers of textile furnishings with 2,400,000 metres of fabric per year) to mass-produce a textile module using industrial processes. The soft brick is in fact self-organised in a continuous surface. This determines its growth in space according to the context.


The sound quality of space

The brick’s basic module has no clearly perceptible form as such. Rather, its design springs from the scope for connection offered by its actual geometry. Once aggregated into a settled combination, the basic module tends to lose its separate identity and merge into a continuous flow. This gives it an indistinct and mutant perception, similar to the skin of a Jurassic animal. Each unit is a “fabric sandwich” containing a soft and highly deadening layer of cellular foam. In this way, areas enclosed by the flexible textile brick surfaces acquire a special sound quality that tends to create a muffled, protected, inward and warm sensation of that space.

The interior seems to reduce sound and to be isolated in itself. It is as if the textile wrapping utilises the capacity of sound to be deadened and reverberated by the fabric, in order to circumscribe the space. Space as a place of possible relations With their interior design of a fabric showroom, the Bouroullec brothers have succeeded in narrowing the free, regular plan space at the entrance. It then winds in a progression of more intimate and secluded, or wider and brighter spaces. Eventually it becomes denser or more rarefied in relation to the more traditional elements of interior design: walls, doors, spare space, services, offices… Each of these is treated as an episode in its own right, free at any moment to be replanned differently, thus adapting to changing interiors. In this way the space is broken down into autonomous and freely connectable episodes.

In studying the alterations of space generated by the combination of constantly mobile elements, the Bouroullec brothers have also tackled, together with the wall theme, that other consolidated element, the door. Generally formed by a break in the wall, this element is transformed into a physical presence: an item of furniture occupying the space with its mass. Thus the door, too, is subjected to the same “revision” that gives it the form of an ulterior mobile element. As a result the threshold and passage to an enclosed, protected interior is actually turned into micro-architecture. F.P.


photography by Ramak Fazel
edited by Francesca Picchi
from Domus 890 March 2006


some more immages

Rashiv Pashir, Tehran


A stone found in via Kafka in Prague, a “sacapuntas” bought in the old city of Barcelona, a mystic box, a paperweight donated by Foucault, a typographic cross, a plastic heart, a wooden elephant discarded by a travelling salesman, a model of a cell, a Persian pendant... These are the “works” in an unusual exhibition that brings together the relics of famous and unknown graphic designers from around the world. The result is a professional studio, that shows us their way of looking and their visual thoughts. In Milan from 5 to 10 April at the Galleria Aiap (via Ponchielli 3).

Sottospirito
Andrea Gabbianelli, via G. Mora 18, h. 17-20
Cocktail 5.4.2006, h. 17
Libreria Hoepli, via Hoepli 5, h. 10-19
Aiap, via Ponchielli 3, h. 14-18
http://www.aiap.it

from Domus News

Small chairs to suit Japanese aesthetics. Another 12 designs (for chairs and armchairs) have been added to the Nextmaruni collection. Designs by Alberto Meda, Harri Koskinen, Jasper Morrison, Kanji Ueki, Kazuyo Sejima + Ryue Nishizawa/Sanaa, Masayuki Kurokawa, Michele De Lucchi, Naoto Fukasawa, Shigeru Uchida, Shin Azumi, Tamotsu Yagi and Jutamas Buranaraktham + Piti Amraranga/o.d.a. Also, tables by Tomoko Azumi, Masayuki Kurokawa and Naoto Fukasawa.

Alsecondopiano, via Montenapoleone 16
Orari/Hours 5-10.4.2006, h. 10-19
Cocktail 5.4.2006, h. 18-21
http://www.nextmaruni.com

from Domus News

The Queen Mary University, the latest project to be completed by Will Alsop’s London office is a research centre offering workspace for 400 scientists in an open-plan environment.

The use of an open-plan environment was considered a key issue by the design team in the effort to foster new ideas through a process of cross-fertilisation. Another key issue was to maintain accessibility, so as to create a learning resource for the local community. The outward shell of the building, a largely transparent envelope intended to visually communicate its purpose, houses a workspace level above which a number of pods are suspended, each of which provides support facilities to the scientists below.

The pods were used as an opportunity to introduce a number of colourful sculptoreal elements into the workspace. The Cell, the largest of all the pods, is a giant orange molecule.

It provides 195 m2 of floorspace, on two floors, to be used as an interactive learning facility for the public. The Mushroom pod, an open-topped space, provides an area where seminars can be organised for up to 30 people. The Cloud and Spikey pods, located at the southern end of the pavilion, provide flexible meeting space. The white Cloud consists of a series of metal rings over which fabric is stretched to give it an elliptical form; Spikey is a combination of push-out and cable structures, one of the most complex tensile forms ever created as a usable architectural construction.

by Joseph Grima
from Domus News


you can find some more immages here