New Architecture: Japan's Silver Mountain and Red Cliff Tower

The shimmering free form of the Silver Mountain building is a foil to the rectilinear block of the adjoining mosaic-tiled Red Cliff tower.

Japanese architect Kunihide Oshinomi has designed a glimmering, anthropomorphic building like a futuristic sea anenome at the Senzoku Gakuen College of Music in Kawasaki prefecture, Ambrosio De Lauro reports with Jeanne-Marie Cilento. Photographs by Atsushi Nakamichi

CALLED Silver Mountain, the building is at the heart of a small complex and is clad in gleaming stainless-steel plates. The neat block of an adjoining red, mosaic-tiled tower provides a rectilinear foil to the silvery, amorphous form. Oshinomi’s firm K/O Design Studio with Kajima Design created the new buildings which house rehearsal halls along with offices and faculty and student lounges.

“Designed at the pivotal point of traffic of the college of music's campus, the new buildings have a powerful outline of form and contrasts of silver and red," says Oshinomi. “I looked back to the basic principles of architecture ~ form, space, material and colour."

Oshinomi is head of K/O Design Studio and visiting professor at both the Tokyo Institute of Technology and the Yokohama National University's Graduate School. He established his architectural design company in 1993 and has worked on a wide range of design projects from skyscrapers to houses and from furniture to fashion. "We believe that architecture is only a small part of the human environment and we don't think architecture should be treated as a special factor from a design point of view,'' says Oshinomi. "We like to design surroundings that create a sophisticated environmental harmony."

Completed in August 2013, the design of the Silver Mountain building's stainless-steel plate cladding was originally worked out using computer simulation. The pattern was developed using 3D surface analysis to work out the best combination of standard rectilinear tiles plus curved and trapezoidal panels that were used for irregularly-shaped spaces. The adjacent Red Cliff tower block is finished in a graphic, patch-work of three different tones of red, mosaic tiles.

An airy, glass space connects the low-rise red tower to the globular silver building. "The cloud of glass is like a valley between the 'mountain' and the 'cliff', says Oshinomi. "It is one of the main pedestrian routes for this campus." Opening from three, curving foyers are the rehearsal halls which are located on different levels. The undulating concrete walls of the rehearsal spaces are designed to enhance their acoustic qualities. "The interior of Silver Mountain has a 3D free form and the lobby is like dramatic cave," says Oshinomo. "The rehearsal halls are flanked by exposed concrete-waved walls to stop echoes."

The Red Cliff building houses a faculty lounge on the ground floor furnished with mid-century modern armchairs, a meeting room, and a lounge area for students. Above are four floors containing the offices of the Senzoku Gakuen College of Music offices.

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Lit up at night, the shimmering buildings look like they are glowing sea creatures.

The silvery, free-form building is clad in specially-designed stainless-steel panels and is offset by the rustic stone paving that follows the pattern of an Italian medieval village. 

The curving, reflective surface reflects the blue sky of a sunny day in Kawasaki prefecture.

The scale of each building appears to change dramatically depending on where it is viewed. 

The tower is clad in different tones of red mosaic tiles and is connected by a "cloud" of glass that the designer says forms a valley between the "Red Cliff" and the "Silver Mountain."

Built from reinforced concrete, the interior of the building has sweeping curved walls.

The interior of the buildings are left clear and uncluttered with specially-designed seating.

The undulating concrete walls of the rehearsal spaces were designed to enhance their acoustic qualities. 

"The rehearsal halls are flanked by exposed concrete-waved walls to stop echoes,"  explains designer Kunihide Oshinomi. 

Honey-coloured wood floors contrast with the raw concrete walls of the three different rehearsal halls.

Opening from the glass "valley" are curving foyers leading to the rehearsal halls which are located on different levels.

The Red Cliff tower block is finished in a graphic, patch-work of three different tones of red, mosaic tiles. 

The Red Cliff building houses a faculty lounge on the ground floor furnished with mid-century modern armchairs, a meeting room and a lounge area for students.

The design of the Silver Mountain building's stainless-steel plate cladding was originally worked out using computer simulation. The pattern was developed using 3D surface analysis to work out the best combination of standard rectilinear tiles plus curved and trapezoidal panels.

Computer models of the Silver Mountain building's curvature.

The first floor plan of the complex showing the rehearsal room, curving foyer  and the glass-roofed "cloud" connecting the building to the red-tiled office block.

New Architecture: Scope By MA-Style Architects in Japan

"The large opening on the north side projects into the landscape and catches the changes of the season and daily weather, bringing in light and a feeling of the wind," say the architects.

Poised on a hill looking over tea plantations in Southern Japan, Scope is a sculptural new building designed by mA-style architects, reports Jeanne-Marie Cilento. Photographs by Kai Nakamura

DESIGNED as a giant viewfinder, the building has a jutting rectilinear snout that takes in the green swathes of the surrounding tea bushes. The house is compact ~ barely one hundred square metres ~ but has the strong presence of an abstract Henry Moore statue and the charisma of Le Corbusier’s small chapel at Ronchamp. The telescopic second level has a single glazed wall, like a lense, focusing all attention out to the brilliant emerald plants producing green tea that cover the Makinohara Plateau below.

Atsushi and Mayuma Kawamoto of mA-style architects wanted to create a contemporary new building in this small town in Shizuoka Prefecture. Sited high on a stone platform, Scope is resoundingly Modernist but has a certain grace of scale and lightness that prevents it dominating the landscape dotted with modest houses.

“We felt it was necessary for the client, who has lived in this area a long time, to design a building which could recapture the charm of the land afresh,’’ Atsushi Kawamoto explains. “The site consists of a tiered stone wall in a landslide prevention zone which is why we couldn't use the whole site for construction. We created the "telescope" form on the second level as a trapezoid because the view to the north is beautiful and the room spreads out in that direction."

Supported on two slanting volumes of exposed concrete, the second level’s horizontal viewfinder is rendered in a contrasting crisp white. "This large opening on the north side projects out into the landscape and catches the changes of the season and daily weather, bringing in light and a feeling of the wind," say the architects.

Entry to the house is through a covered courtyard created by the concrete walls. Inside, the light-filled entrance is bare apart from an elegant white spiral stair leading up to the main floor. The ground level houses a Japanese room and bathrooms that flank either side of the entry.

The curving stairway leads up to the top floor with several bedrooms and the spacious open plan living and dining room with its single expansive view across the tea plantations. Here, the interior has been kept to minimalist essentials with concrete floors, white walls and a pale, stream-lined kitchen.

“The internal space is simply organised so it is in harmony with the scenery outside,” Kawamoto says. “We can really create a rich experience by tying human beings and nature together through architecture.”

The slim and elegant spiral stair leading up from the entrance to the top level.

 The "lense" of the telescopic second level that has glazed walls and doors opening on to a balcony that forms the rim of the viewfinder.

The stream-lined kitchen with a far-reaching outlook across the tea plantations of Southern Japan.

The brilliant green tea bushes covering the Makinohara Plateau in the Shizuoka Prefecture in Japan.

The minimalist living and dining room divided by a sleek kitchen all in white.

The main bathroom with its deep Japanese tub, long basin with mirrored cupboards above and stony, concrete walls.

The house sits like a sculptural monument on a tiered stone wall above the modest local houses.

Slanted walls of raw concrete support the white-rendered, telescopic second level.

A courtyard of slim trees and gravel is created between the two concrete volumes of the ground floor that support the full-width of the top level above.

Scope lit up at twilight creating a welcoming courtyard entrance into the house.

Photo Essay: Positive Tension - Jubilee Church by Richard Meier

The soaring concrete sails of Richard Meier's church in the Tor Tre Teste suburb of Rome: both monolithic and full of light ~ it seems to embody creative energy and cathartic power. 

Traversing the city of Rome, through poor neighbourhoods far from the splendour of the historic centre, Andreas Romagnoli shoot’s Richard Meier’s Dives in Misericordia (Mercy of God) church. Like an image from a neorealist film, the church appears floating on a field of travertine marble ringed by a tangle of hive-like apartment buildings and a green park, write Andreas Romagnoli & Jeanne-Marie Cilento

THIS urban Roman scene in Tor Tre Teste balances the formal purity of the church’s architecture with the chaos of the tenements that surround it. The building is both monolithic and full of light ~ it seems to embody creative energy and cathartic power. Meier has said from an early age, he was inspired by the light and form of the great Baroque Roman churches designed by Bernini and Borromini.

''The central ideas for creating a sacred space have to do with truth and authenticity,'' Meier said about designing the church, ''a search for clarity, peace, transparency, a yearning for tranquillity, a place to evoke other worldliness in a way that is uplifting. And to express spirituality, the architect has to think of the original material of architecture ~ space and light.'' Modernist in design, the church also harks back to the simplicity and strength of the Bauhaus with the tension between line, curve and surface.

Today, Richard Meier is famed for his white buildings bathed in light, and the interior of this church has soaring ceilings and skylights made of glass that run the entire length of the building, inspiring a meditative atmosphere conducive to prayer and thought. Standing between one of the building’s soaring sails with the blue sky above, there is a sense of continuation that creates a virtual bridge between the earth and the heavens. The central body of the church is made up of three large white concrete sails that swell as if blown by the wind and discreetly refer to the Trinity. According to the seasons, the play of light on the inner sails changes, creating a volatile texture of shadows across the different surfaces of the building.

Richard Meier is an unusual choice to build a parish church in an outer suburb of Rome. Famous for his Getty Centre in Los Angeles and later the 2006 Ara Pacis Museum in Rome, the architect was initially chosen by international competition in 1996. The Vatican wanted a new, modern and iconic building to serve as a symbol of renewal in a degraded urban context: to be called the Jubilee Church in celebration of the 2,000th anniversary of Christianity.

In 1995, the Archdiocese of Rome invited six leading architects to submit designs: Frank Gehry, Peter Eisenman, Santiago Calatrava, Tadao Ando and Günter Behnisch, as well as Richard Meier. When Meier's design was chosen, he showed the model to the bishop of Rome, Pope John Paul II. At the time of the consecration of the church in 2003 Meier said: ''When I think of a place of worship, I think of a place where one can sit and be reminded of all the things that are important outside our individual lives.''

The building's three sails sweep over a side chapel and half of the nave while a glass roof connects to a community building, a four-story atrium, living space for the parish priest, a community meeting room, classrooms and a tower with five vertically placed bells. The interior of the church combines sophistication and simplicity with the largest sail rising to nearly 27 metres above the nave. The materials are a subtle mix of golden wood walls and the pale travertine marble of the church's floor, altar and baptismal font.

Construction of the church was delayed for years by a shortage of funds and financial pressures led the archdiocese to seek donations of materials from builders and suppliers. Meier's design combines curvilinear and rectilinear shapes and also posed technical challenges. For engineers, the main hurdle was building the freestanding sails, which are designed to withstand heat, wind and earthquakes. Made of enormous blocks of precast white concrete, the sails were lifted into place by a massive steel machine that moved on rails. ''It took enormous effort to create what today looks so simple,'' Meier said.

Click on photographs for full screen slide show

The central body of the church is made up of three large white concrete sails that swell as if blown by the wind and discreetly refer to the Trinity. Meier's design combines curvilinear and rectilinear shapes and posed many construction challenges. 

''When I think of a place of worship, I think of a place where one can sit and be reminded of all the things that are important outside our individual lives,'' Meier said. 

Like an image from a neorealist film, the church appears floating on a field of travertine marble ringed by a tangle of hive-like apartment buildings and a green park.

Made of enormous blocks of precast white concrete, the sails were lifted into place by a massive steel machine that moved on rails. ''It took enormous effort to create what today looks so simple,'' Mr. Meier said.

Modernist in design, the church also harks back to the simplicity and strength of the Bauhaus with the tension between line, curve and surface. 

According to the seasons, the play of light changes, creating a volatile texture of shadows across the different surfaces of the building. 

For engineers, the main hurdle was building the freestanding sails, which are designed to withstand heat, wind and earthquakes. 

Standing between one of the building’s soaring sails with the blue sky above, there is a sense of continuation that creates a virtual bridge between the earth and the heavens.

Today, the pure whiteness and perfection of the building is showing signs of wear and tear. Construction of the church was delayed for years by a shortage of funds and financial pressures led the archdiocese to seek donations of materials from builders and suppliers. 

The three sails sweep over a side chapel and half of the nave while a glass roof connects to a community building, a four-story atrium, living space for the parish priest, a community meeting room, classrooms and a tower with five vertically placed bells.  

The interior of the church combines sophistication and simplicity with the largest sail rising to 27 metres above the nave. The materials are a subtle mix of golden wood walls and the pale travertine marble of the church's floor, altar and baptismal font. Photograph courtesy of Richard Meier & Partners Architects

Architecture: Ludwig Mies Van der Rohe's Villa Tugendhat

The famous Barcelona chairs that were originally designed especially for the Villa Tughendhat in 1928 by Mies van der Rohe and Lilly Reich. 

One of the icons of early twentieth century Modernism, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe's Villa Tugendhat has been restored to it's austere 1929 splendour after a two-year renovation. Filled with many of the architect's influential furniture designs still produced today, the house looks serenely across to the historic centre of Brno in the Czech Republic, write Andreas Romagnoli & Jeanne-Marie Cilento. Photographs by Andreas Romagnoli

MIES van der Rohe’s Villa Tugendhat retains it's revolutionary purity and cutting-edge style even after nearly a century of minimalist design. The architect's famous less is more dictum is fully evinced in the functional design of the house. Completed in 1930, the sleek building strikes a perfect balance between the rigorous Rationalists and the Bauhaus school mixed with a starkly dynamic Central European aesthetic.

The villa combines that alchemy of art, philosophy and architecture that was key to the early Modernist movement. Mies Van der Rohe believed that architecture in its simplest form is essentially functional but that at its highest level it could engender a spiritual experience and enter the realm of pure art.

Considered one of the finest examples of the International Style of architecture, the Villa Tugendhat is part of the Modern movement that developed in early twentieth century Europe. The design also implements new spatial concepts and aesthetic innovations that were created to meet the needs of the new way of life tied to modern industrial production. Not surprisingly, Greta and Fritz Tugendhat, who commissioned the house, were both from wealthy families of textile entrepreneurs in the city of Brno.

The location of the villa on a steep hill overlooking the town, was one of the factors that influenced the design of the house. The building was oriented to the south-west to have a complete view of the historic centre of the city, including both hills that dominate the skyline.

One of the most interesting aspects of the house is the interior  which retains many original pieces of furniture designed by Mies van der Rohe which later became icons of European design. The elegant austerity of the rooms and furniture inside the villa represent the spirit and the intentions of the entire building.

While the individual zones within the living areas are divided by a wall of honey-coloured, veined onyx from the foothills of the Atlas mountains in Morocco, a striking half-circular wall is made from Macassar ebony wood mined on the island of Celebes in south-east Asia. 

Mies van der Rohe’s colleagues Lilly Reich and Sergius Ruegenberg also collaborated with him on the furnishings of the house. The furniture is mostly made from tubular steel with rosewood, zebra wood and Macassar ebony. The majority of the metal furniture was produced in Berlin, while the built-in furniture was produced in Brno by architect Jan Vaňek who was also working on the interiors of Adolf Loos’ Müller Villa in Prague.

Three Tugendhat armchairs originally stood in front of the living room’s onyx wall, upholstered in silver-grey, plus three Barcelona armchairs and a stool in emerald green leather, a glass table and a white bench. A strong colour accent was provided by a reclining chair with ruby red velvet upholstering. The 'Brno' chairs made from tubular steel and upholstered in white sheepskin were situated around the round, retractable dining table designed by Mies van der Rohe and made from black polished pear wood.

The three-storey house is built with an innovative steel skeleton with reinforced concrete ceilings and brick masonry. The slim and elegant supporting columns of a cross-shaped profile are part of the interior’s living spaces. While the villa’s basement level contains the utility facilities, the ground floor houses the main living areas with the conservatory and the terrace as well as the kitchen and servants' rooms. The third storey, on the first floor, houses the main entrance from the street plus bedrooms for the family.

Mies Van der Rohe wanted the façade of the house to be covered in climbing plants to create an optical disappearance of the building's mass into the greenery plus enhancing the link between the interior and the exterior. Today, the garden’s connections with the main living areas is most apparent where the dining area links with the elongated half-circular terrace under the weeping window.

Completed in 2012, the extensive restoration of the exterior and interior of the house and gardens aimed to bring back the villa's original 1929 design. Today, the Villa Tugendhat is the only example of Modern architecture in the Czech Republic recorded on the UNESCO list of world cultural heritage.

The MR chaise longue and table specially designed for the Villa Tugendhat by Mies van der Rohe and still being produced today. 

Looking out across the city of Brno in the Czech Republic through Villa Tugendhat's enormous glass walls.

A beautifully designed Macassar wood table, its dark striations make a striking contrast to the pale floors and walls of glass.

The newly restored garden front of the villa that overlooks the historic centre of Brno. Plants are being trained up the walls to recreate Mies van der Rohe's design of reducing the mass of the house and blending the building into the garden.

Plants on the terrace and the green Barcelona chairs bring the garden inside. 

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The broad marble stairs leading up from the garden to the villa's central living areas. 

The curving opaque glass wall at one side of the Villa Tugendhat's entrance makes a dynamic contrast with the buidling's flat, cream-coloured concrete walls and the cross-shaped elegant support beams that can be seen inside and out of the house. 

The iconic Barcelona chairs designed especially for the Villa Tughendhat in 1928 by Mies van der Rohe and Lilly Reich. 

The rich woods used in the interior design of the house make a dramatic contrast to the chrome columns and clean minimalist lines of the rest of the living spaces.

A photograph of the sitting area with its Barcelona chairs soon after the house was completed in 1930. 

The Macassar wood is used to great effect in the library and gives a sense of warmth to the interior's glass and chrome surfaces.

Two of the D42 armchairs in wicker and chrome chairs and table designed by Mies van der Rohe.

The garden facade of the house showing how the plants will grow up the sides of the building to make the villa seem as if it is floating on a green base of leaves.

The curving Macassar ebony wood wall that wraps around the living area and delineates different areas for sitting and dining. 

The golden onyx wall used to divide the sitting room and library that Mies van der Rohe was to use to great effect in the Barcelona Pavilion.

It's seems remarkable that barely twenty years ago, fashionable houses were still decorated in the high Edwardian or Victorian style. The Villa Tugendhat's decisive simplicity and functionalism mixed with raw, rich natural materials would pave the way for the ongoing appeal of Modernist architecture. 

This photograph from the 1930s after the house was completed for the Tugendhat family shows the natural light flooding in from the revolutionary glass walls that surround the living areas. 

Sitting area in the library taken shortly after the house was completed, The chairs are Mies van der Rohe's Brno armchairs still in production today.