ANNOUNCING THE WINNERS
The fourth cycle of the Kenneth F. Brown Architecture Design Award concluded last spring with a lyrical house project in Shiga, Japan as the winner of $20,000. A total of 120 projects were submitted for the Award from architects representing over 15 countries from the Asia Pacific region. The Jurors cited the work of the small house addition in Shiga by the Japanese architect Shuhei Endo as a tour de force in its “ingenious juxtaposition of interlocking spaces, comprised of continuously folded space-cells… engendering a totally unprecedented building syntax.” Another project by Mr. Endo also received an Honorable Mention. The prize money was divided for the 2002-03 cycle giving a second prize of $5,000 to a landscape project in China. Eight other projects revealing a spectrum of architectural ideas from across the Asia and Pacific region were cited as Honorable Mentions.
The Kenneth F. Brown Asia Pacific Architecture Award Program is a biennial event sponsored by the University of Hawaii’s School of Architecture in cooperation with the Architects Regional Council Asia (ARCASIA). The program, inaugurated in 1995, was named in honor of eminent architect and civic-minded humanitarian, Kenneth F. Brown, FAIA, with the purpose of recognizing and celebrating outstanding examples of contemporary architecture in the Asia-Pacific region. The goal of the Award program, through the periodic selection of outstanding architectural work, is also to establish a critical foundation for the improvement of the built environment.
The Jurors for the 2002-03 cycle included Gregory Burgess (Australia), Kenneth Frampton (U.S.A.), and William Lim (Singapore). Mr. Burgess is an acclaimed architect from Australia who has the distinction of winning the Kenneth Brown Award twice (1995 and 1998); Prof. Frampton, who teaches at Columbia University in New York City, is arguably the most distinguished architectural historian and critic today; and Mr. Lim, an architect from Singapore, is also one of the most influential writers on architecture and urbanism in South-East Asia. The Jury was also joined by Kenneth F. Brown himself. Prof. Balkrishna Doshi of India, who was originally a member of the Jury, unfortunately could not participate in the deliberation. The 2002-03 cycle was chaired by Dr. Kazi K. Ashraf of the University of Hawaii School of Architecture.
While the Jurors cited Mr. Endo’s winning project, also called Springtecture, as creating an unprecedented building syntax, they were also appreciative of the ways the project evoked elements of Japanese domestic architecture in the spatial fluidity reminiscent of the sukiya zukuri style, the light-weight fabrication, and a “surprisingly human scale.” In honoring the second prize winner, an urban landscape realized at the Jinji Lake Open Space in Suzhou, China by the Hong Kong-based office of EDAW Earthasia Limited, the Jurors noted the decisive way the project “introduced an international hybrid concept of land-form into what is still the unsophisticated and provincial context of Chinese architectural culture.”
The Year 2002-03 Award Recipients
Winner:
Shuhei Endo, Japan
Project: SPRINGTECTURE B
Location: Higashiasai-gun, Shiga, Japan
Second Prize:
EDAW Earthasia Ltd., Hong Kong
Jinji Lake Open Space
Suzhou Industrial Park, Suzhou, Jiangsu, China
Honorable Mentions:
Ashton Raggatt McDougall Pty Ltd. and Robert Peck von Hartel Trethowan, Australia
National Museum of Australia
Canberra, Australia
I.I.S. University of Tokyo, Japan
Leek House
Machida-shi, Tokyo, Japan
Glenn Murcutt , Australia
Gathawudu Community Housing, Marika Alderton House
Yirrkala Northern Territory, Australia
Joseph Lim Ee Man, Singapore
Lee Treehouse
Singapore
Kerry Hill Architects, Singapore
The Lalu
Sun Moon Lake, Nantou, Taiwan, R.O.C.
Lab Architecture Studio with Bates Smart, Australia
Federation Square
Melbourne, Australia
Mathew & Ghosh Architects, India
Benjamin House
Bangalore, India
Shuhei Endo, Japan
SLOWTECTURE S
Maihara, Shiga, Japan
Jurors’ Statement.
Following the first three cycles of this award which premiated a total of seven designs over the three occasions, this year’s jury elected to declare a first and a second prize winner and to bestow an honorable mention on eight other realized works.
The first prize was awarded to a small house addition in Tokyo designed by the young Japanese architect Shuhei Endo of Osaka who as it happens was also the architect of one of the honorable mentions, namely a training center, clad in core ten steel, and erected by the side of an auto route in Maharashika, Japan. While both of these works made a highly imaginative use of a corrugated metal skin, the small house was unquestionably a tour de force in this medium. Through his ingenious juxtaposition of interlocking spaces, comprised of continuously folded space-cells, Shuhei engendered a totally unprecedented building syntax. At the same time this house, rendered as a kind of “mobius strip,” still displays some of the attributes that we associate with the Japanese domestic tradition. This is perhaps most evident in the similarity obtaining between the corrugated sheet and the undulating ridge and eaves profiles that we invariably encounter in a traditional tile roof. The diagonal displacement of Shuhei’s folded forms also seems to evoke the spatial fluidity of the sukiya zukuri style in Japanese architecture, not to mention the fact that the forms themselves are made of relatively light-weight fabric. The superimposed furnishing of these ribbed metallic cavities with anthropomorphically modulated wooden space-dividers, suspended floors and free-standing cabinets, bestow upon this dynamic dwelling a surprisingly human scale.
Apart from its stereotomic brilliance, the urban landscape realized at the Jinji Lake Open Space in Suzhou to the designs of Frank Cho of EDAW Earthasia Ltd, based in Hong Kong, was deemed to merit a second prize by virtue of the decisive way in which it has introduced an international, hybrid concept of land-form into what is still the unsophisticated and provincial context of Chinese architectural culture. This design is distinguished by paved plazas and stepped esplanades of compelling grandeur, while the whole is sharply defined throughout the water’s edge where it meets the vast expanse of the lake. Designed to be occupied by large urban gatherings it is ingeniously articulated by lighting pylons and other discrete forms of park furniture.
With the exception of an elegant Neo-Corbusian cubistic house realized in Bangalore to the designs of the architects Mathew and Ghosh, the two other domestic works given honorable mentions in this cycle. These were both of a so-called “vernacular” orientation, the first being Glen Murcutt’s tectonically brilliant, Marika-Alderton house, built for an aboriginal family living in New Arnhemland in the Northern Territory of Australia; the second being a long, pitched roof, timber house, the so-called Leek House, that was built in Tokyo to the designs of Terunobu Fujimori of the IIS University, Tokyo. The merit of this last was deemed to reside above all in the sympathetic timber revetment and articulation of its internal volumes, along with the unexpected poetic character of a pitched roof planted with leeks.
Two other mentioned works of a totally different genre and scale world reflect the somewhat universal trend towards hybrid structures turning on an extensive use of louvered timber revetment laid over a steel and/or concrete superstructure. The first of these was a relatively large luxury hotel built on the edge of Sun Moon Lake in Taiwan to the designs of the distinguished Australian architect, Kerry Hill; the second was a rhythmically compelling demonstration of a tree-house in Singapore wherein a steel-framed, multi-leveled, timber-slatted house and a tree are allowed to co-exist, without the one in any way impinging on the other. The architect in this instance was Joseph Kim. It is interesting to note how both of these architects would come to derive their works from the Japanese timber tradition of latticework screens.
Among the four Australian architects recognized in this year’s cycle, were two somewhat radical “deconstructivist” works; Lab Architectural Studio’s Federation Square cultural center in Melbourne and Ashton, Ragett and McDougall’s National Museum in Canberra. Both of these complexes were subject to a great deal of heated debate among the jurors and their ultimate inclusion within the eight honorable mentions was as much due to their dynamic iconoclastic character as to their relative merits as civic set pieces.
Kenneth Frampton, Chair
Kenneth F. Brown
Gregory Burgess
William S.W. Lim
