CHECKING IN
AUGUST 2017
In July, following a recent opportunity to begin designing a concept store for fashion brand HiPanda, two of the NMLA team were lucky enough to travel to Tokyo for a site visit.
After leaving the airport, we begin driving through the narrow Tokyo streets as the dizzying cityscape towers upwards. Some things seem similar, but always more…vertical. Stepping out of the car the humid air quickly envelops, reminding us we are certainly not in Camden anymore. Pure overstimulation.
Stepping into Hotel Okura’s lobby the chaos of the megalopolis washes off and is replaced with Zen. Passing the immaculately stacked wall of umbrellas, the ‘bell captain’ gracefully bows with a slight smile seeing how large my eyes have become. The dimly lit mirage of greens and browns is so consistently assembled it seems to hum. While the giant world map hanging on the wall is supposed to remind us of the new time zone, it instead seems to catapult us back 5 decades, straight into a scene from Madmen. The hotel’s 60s style interior has remained completely untouched. And it’s marvellous. Even the impeccable uniforms of the staff match the muffled beige palette. While at each turn there are plethora patterns and textures, it still feels incredibly understated.
Designed by Yoshiro Taniguchi and Hideo Kosaka in 1962, the modern design clearly references more traditional Japanese forms and palettes. Unfortunately, the original Northern Wing of the hotel (which was arguably the most authentic and impressive of the two) was demolished in 2015 to make way for a much larger tower ahead of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. Despite widespread outcry to try and save the adored modernist relic, the Northern Wing fell to the wrecking ball .
Yet so many aspects of the Southern Wing still hold endless charms and we were so lucky to experience them. Warm timber and brass detailing forms the backdrop to lighter elements like shoji screens and ornate wall hangings. The wide low spaces are punctuated by dangling hexagonal pendants and potplants. When standing in the space you can instantly see why writers have been inspired to set their scenes within these walls. James Bond spent a night or two here, while local writers seem equally enamoured, and Haruki Murakami sends Aomame here in his unnerving and fantastical 1Q84.
While Tokyo charges ahead into the future almost everywhere you look, it was so special to witness this elegant design, perfectly frozen in time.
CLAD IN A GARMENT OF POETIC IMAGERY
JANUARY 2014
The following text seeks to explore the communicative role of architecture, highlighting how the buildings of Louis Sullivan offer an antidote to the stoicism of the modern movement.
The reasons for the adoption of a muted architectural language in the beginning of the 20th century were numerous, but perhaps the inability of architecture to communicate can be traced back to a Critique of Judgement wherein Immanuel Kant called for true artists to ignore conventional rules governing popular taste as a means to preserve the integrity of the artist / genius in the landscape of an emerging aesthetically uneducated middle class. The restriction of this Kantian ideology can be clearly seen in the modern movement where the elimination of ornament in favour of purely functional structures was meant to appeal to our morality. We were meant to appreciate their honest expression but this simplified architectural rhetoric stripped architecture of its ability to express meaning beyond its function and reduced the ability of the architect to infer a narrative.
It is here I believe that the architecture of Louis Sullivan offers a counterpoint to the stoicism of the modern movement. Sullivan’s response to the modernist doctrine was not to abandon ornament but to heed the advice of Owen Jones and devise a new and contemporary ornamental vocabulary. The Guaranty Building represents the high point of Sullivan’s communicative architecture. The building presents a veiled ornamental screen of rich terracotta tiles which act to delineate the tripartite composition of the facades. The ornament at the base of the building reflects the connections of its veiled steel structure which support the vertical mullions above. The repetitive program on the upper floors are articulated by a rigid pattern of piers and ornate spandrels. Sullivan completes the composition by employing a concave cornice which absorbs the vertical mullions and acts to complete a flowing continuous organic architecture.
‘Our buildings thus clad in a garment of poetic imagery… will appeal with redoubled power, like a sonorous melody overlaid with harmonious voices’[1] . Although Sullivan never acknowledged the influence of Semper, the Garment analogy used by Sullivan is a clear reference to Semper’s theory of dressing and his insistence that the ‘archetypal origin of built form was textile production’[2]. It is also indicative of the ‘strong influence that German culture had on Chicago in the 19th century’[3].
Ornament was for Sullivan and Semper a demonstration of essential artistic and social motives, ‘being fundamental, the wreath was not only initial, it was also profoundly significant because it manifested the unity of the social body, the people themselves’ [4.
Sullivan’s Architecture represents an alternative modernism where function and ornament were not considered to be in opposition but could coexist to create a symbolic architecture which sought to communicate.
[1] Louis H Sullivan, Kindergarten Chats, Dover Publications Inc, 1980
[2] Kenneth Frampton, Studies in Tectonic Culture, The MIT Press, 1995
[3] Ibid.
[4] David Leatherbarrow, The Roots of Architectural Invention, Cambridge University Press, 1993
Images from John Szarkowski – ‘the idea of Louis Sullivan’ Thames & Hudson, 2000
Joseph Mackey holds a BArch degree from University College Dublin. Joseph won an Architecture Association of Ireland Student Award in 2006 and the Arup Architecture Graduates Medal in 2010. Between 2006 and 2012 he worked with the Renzo Piano Building Workshop in Paris, Tom dePaor in Dublin and Eric Parry Architects in London. Since joining Niall McLaughlin Architects in 2012 he has been working on a chapel for monks in Dublin, the repair and extension of the old Radcliffe Infirmary Outpatients Building in Oxford and the T1 Building for Argent in King’s Cross, London. The T1 Building is a large mixed use development containing a district energy centre, an indoor sports pitch, car parking, shops, bars and 80 apartments.