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THE PLAN 147, the fourth issue for 2023, looks at a range of projects from around the world: from China and Japan, via Kenya, North Africa, the United States, and Europe. The cover features Studio Gang’s design of the Richard Gilder Center for Science, Education, and Innovation in New York.
Opening THE PLAN 147 is the editorial “Reviving the Culture of Weaving as a Modus Operandi: Social Architecture in a Modern World,” by interdisciplinary artist and architect Abeer Seikaly. The article investigates how weaving – and, with it, the loom – is a tool with enormous social impact in the Bedouin communities of the Middle East and North Africa. With weaving, it’s possible to shape forms of social and circular architecture, and maintain a continuity between past, present, and future, while adapting to local circumstances and maintaining a sensitivity to cultural heritage.
In the Letters from China column, Li Xiangning talks about the Zijing Conference Center and International Campus, designed by Studio Zhu Pei. The complex adapts to its hilly location, while combining modern elements with the natural setting. Zhu Pei’s architecture creates open, fluid spaces between buildings, while establishing a harmonious relationship between the built and natural environments.
Charles Dupont wrote the Highlights column, which focuses on the JARZM private home. Located in Los Angeles, California, it’s the residence of the architects themselves: John Friedman Alice Kimm Architects. The house is distinguished by large openings, pronounced transparency, large skylights, and contrasting materials. This is a harmonious space that reveals both the architects’ hands and the influences of their great teachers.
Still in the States, Studio Gang has designed the Richard Gilder Center for Science, Education, and Innovation inside the American Museum of Natural History in New York. The project is built around its large full-height atrium, designed as if it were a canyon – a space that can arouse amazement and wonder.
We then move to Tokyo for the latest project by Kazuyo Sejima & Associates for the Japan Women’s University. Sejima, who studied at this university, has designed flowing, simple spaces combined with geometries that fuse Japanese sensibilities with international influences.
Next, it’s on to Kenya, where 2022 Pritzker Prize winner Diébédo Francis Kéré has designed the Startup Lions Campus near Lake Turkana. The project, an information and communication technologies education and training complex, is built around integrating connecting paths that widen and form steps. But even more importantly, it uses an element of traditional African architecture in the form of ventilation towers, with these prism-like structures appearing to be a part of the surrounding area.
In Saronno, in northern Italy’s Varese area, INS Ilaria Nava Studio has created a home it calls Z-Shaped Villa. With extensive white surfaces combined with timber finishes, both inside and out, the villa has a chromatic purity that lets the volumes of the design star.
Is it possible to create a timeless building that also ages well? John McAslan + Partners considered this question when designing an administration building for the Baitul Futuh Mosque in London. This is a design that acts as an intermediary between cultures, while symbolizing sharing between the religious and local communities.
THE PLAN 147 closes with a renovation and reuse project: the Sunspace creative space in La Spezia, a project overseen by caarpa and MMAA – Studio Manfroni & Associati. The design retains the main elements of what was once the Cinema Diana, keeping the staircase and upper circle, while adding a steel and corrugated sheeting structure.
THE PLAN 147, the fourth issue for 2023, opens with the editorial “Reviving the Culture of Weaving as a Modus Operandi: Social Architecture in a Modern World” by Abeer Seikaly. It’s followed by the columns Letters from China, by Li Xiangning, a... Read More
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