Creative Use of Materials - AR Awards For Emerging Architecture

The Architectural Review Awards for Emerging Architecture is billed as the biggest and best award for young architects in the world. Inaugurated in 1999, the award is intended to bring wider international recognition to a talented new generation of architects and designers. The Awards have attracted entries from more than 80 countries, representing every inhabited continent. Awards are for built or manufactured work only, and besides buildings, the full range of design activity, from landscapes and urban spaces to furniture and cutlery can be submitted.

My design picks from the award winners last year (2006) are simple and elegant designs using a single material to create a small and intimate space. Neither were not official winners but instead from the "hightly recommended" sub-awards group, and shared a unique approach to design and constuction using a single material in a creative way.

Concrete Pod

Kazuya Morita designed and built this airy structure from white concrete mixed with fiberglass and a lightweight aggregate (perlite?). The resulting concrete mix was troweled on to a layered styrofoam mould form. The concrete a remarkable thickness of only 15mm. The final work, a structure of immense beauty and simplicity, is very strong and can easily sustain the wieght of a person.

Architect
Kazuya Morita Architecture Studio, Kyoto
Photograph
Ichiro Sugioka

Mafoombey Acoustic Space

Carved from a stack of 360 layers of corrugated cardboard this intimate sound installation is set within a 2.5 meter cube. Designed as a space for listening to and experiencing music, the initial concept for the design developed from the architect’s ambition to create a strong spatial intensity and a distinct internal atmosphere. All services, including cable runs and apertures for the six-speaker surround sound system are integrated within an irregular free-form interior.

Architect
Martti Kalliala and Esa Ruskeepää
with Martin Lukasczyk,
Helsinki
Photograph
Jukka Uotila,