Japan National Stadium and Galaxy Soho by Zaha Hadid Architects

Zaha Hadid to design
Japan National Stadium

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15 November 2012 | 33 comments

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News: UK firm Zaha Hadid Architects has been selected to design the new national stadium for Japan.

The new 80,000-seat stadium will replace the existing Kasumigaoka National Stadium in Tokyo and could become the main sporting venue for the 2020 Olympic Games if Japan is successful in its bid to host the event.

The arena is also earmarked to host the 2019 Rugby World Cup and will be offered to FIFA as a possible venue for future World Cup football matches.

Zaha Hadid Architects has seen off ten other finalists to win the competition, which was organised by the Japan Sport Council.
The new building is scheduled for completion in 2018.
Also this week, the Zaha Hadid-designed Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum opened to the public at Michigan State University.
See more stories about Zaha Hadid Architects, including the recently completed Galaxy Soho, a 330,000-square-metre retail, office and entertainment complex in Beijing.

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Galaxy Soho by Zaha Hadid Architects
photographed by Hufton + Crow

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15 November 2012 | 14 comments

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When Zaha Hadid Architects’ 330,000-square-metre Galaxy Soho complex opened in Beijing last month our readers were left guessing how it relates to the surrounding neighbourhood. This set of images by photographers Hufton + Crow shows just that (+ slideshow).

Completed last month by Zaha Hadid Architects, the retail, office and entertainment complex comprises four domed structures, which are fused together by bridges and platforms around a series of public courtyards and a large central “canyon”.

The buildings sit within the second-ring business district in the north-east of the city, but are also prominently visible from the narrow alleyways of the densely populated surrounding neighbourhoods.

These ancient passages, named hutongs, have been typical of Beijing’s urban fabric for hundreds of years, but have been in decline since the mid-twentieth century as the city’s development continues to increase.

The architect claims that the buildings respond to and are respectful of China’s historic building typologies, with courtyards and “fluid movement” between spaces.

“The design responds to the varied contextual relationships and dynamic conditions of Beijing,” said Hadid at the time of the opening. “We have created a variety of public spaces that directly engage with the city, reinterpreting the traditional urban fabric and contemporary living patterns into a seamless urban landscape inspired by nature.”

The decline of Beiijing’s hutongs was one of the issues addressed during this year’s Beijing Design Week. The event’s director Aric Chen commented during the festival that contemporary China should “slow down” and look to “craft thinking” to deal with the disparity between the country’s small and large-scale design challenges.

In other recent news, designer Michael Young has tipped China to have a design scene that will rival Japan’s in less than 20 years.

You can see more images of Galaxy Soho in our earlier story, following the opening last month.

Zaha Hadid Architects has also just been selected to design a new national stadium for Japan and completed an art gallery at Michigan State University.

See all our stories about Zaha Hadid Architects »

See all our stories about China »

Photography is by Hufton + Crow.

Pont de Singe bridge

Pont de Singe bridge
by Olivier Grossetête

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15 November 2012 | 5 comments

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French artist Olivier Grossetête used three enormous helium balloons to float a rope bridge over a lake in Tatton Park, a historic estate in north-west England.

Oliver Grossetête created Pont de Singe, which means “monkey bridge”, for the Tatton Park Biennial, which this year was themed around flight.

Located in the park’s Japanese garden, the structure comprised a long rope bridge made of cedar wood held aloft by three helium-filled balloons. The ends of the bridge were left to trail in the water.

Though visitors weren’t allowed to use the bridge, it would theoretically be strong enough to hold the weight of a person, according to Grossetête.

Replacing the usual foundations and joints of a bridge with three balloons leads us to question our perceptions, the artist explained. ”My artistic work tries to make alive the poetry and dreams within our everyday life,” added Grossetête.

The artist had previously experimented with another floating bridge in his 2007 project Pont Suspendu, where he used a cluster of helium balloons to float a small bridge structure into the air.

Balloons have appeared in a number of projects we’ve featured on Dezeen, including a proposal for a transport network of enormous floating balloons and a bench that appears to be held up by bunches of balloons at each end.

We’ve also featured lots of unusual bridges on Dezeen, such as a wobbling wire bridge designed to span the Seine in Paris and a sunken bridge in a moat that brings the water up to a pedestrian’s eye level.

See all our stories about balloons »
See all our stories about bridges »

Photographs are by Wilf and Duncan Hull.

MICHELANGELO’S WAR

For those interested, see updates on the construction of the Light Pavilion.

(above and below) Michelangelo Buonarotti’s drawings for the fortifications of Florence, made in 1528-9. Courtesy of the Casa Buonarotti, Florence, Italy.

In 1528, when the Papal armies were threatening to attack Florence and restore the Medici family to autocratic power, the Florentine Republic gave Michelangelo Buonarotti the responsibility of strengthening the city’s fortified defenses. By the time the attack came in 1529, he had designed and overseen the construction of a number of ‘bastions’ at crucial junctures in the existing defensive wall around the city. These were so effective that the citizens of Florence were able to repel the superior attacking troops for nearly eleven months, until—through an act of political treachery—the city finally fell in 1530.

The design drawings Michelangelo made for the bastions had to consider their two main functions. First, to provide protected openings for the defenders to fire their muskets at the attackers, each of which covered a relatively narrow field of fire, but together covered the widest possible field of fire. Second, the walls of the bastion had to deflect incoming cannon fire in the form of cannon balls, which were as yet non-explosive. To accomplish both of these purposes, the walls had to be not only thick but relatively short and angled sharply with adjoining walls, creating a ‘corrugation’ that would conceal gun ports and better resist the impact of cannon balls. In his drawings, Michelangelo primarily studied possible variations on this fundamental idea.

For all their practical purpose, these drawings have uncommon aesthetic power. Of course, this is because they are made by one of the greatest sculptors, and a self-taught architect—an “amateur of genius,” as he has been called—but it is also because the bastions required had too short a history as a building type to have ossified into a rigid typology. Michelangelo was relatively free to invent strong new forms and didn’t hesitate to do so. Using straight and curved lines in various combinations, these designs assume—to the contemporary eye—the character of plans for buildings belonging to our era rather than his; or, at the very least, they anticipate expressionistic architecture of the present and last centuries that has been realized because of advances in building technology.

This bit of speculation is not, however, at the heart of the drawings’ emotional and intellectual power. For that, we have to look to a fluidity of invention captured in the drawings. Michelangelo’s mastery of mostly freehand pen and ink drawing (each line is precise and cannot be erased) gave him the freedom to experiment with form. Without this mastery, he would have sought, as any artist would, the safety of more familiar forms. We are struck by the élan of the designs, as much as by their visual coherence. We are moved by the seemingly effortless way they undertake the always risky task of invention. Not least, the fortification drawings inspire us to equip ourselves with the skills necessary to explore daring new possibilities for architecture, ones that engage the daunting challenges we—as Michelangelo—must confront.

LW

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