EXHIBITION UNDERGROUND by TORAFU ARCHITECTS
The settings for the exhibition "Underground" was held in Miraikan, Odaiba. The purpose with this exhibition was to showcase the "the underground", which was one of the largest aspects in Miraikan's history. "We were required to make it possible for the visitors to deeply feel that the route starts from the earth surface and that it ends at the deepest part of earth".
The theme of the 2010 Shanghai World Expo is “Better City, Better Life”, and the special theme for the Hong Kong Pavilion is “Hong Kong - a city with unlimited potential“. A concept design competition that received some 80+ submissions. "Our submission was awarded the First Prize, and formed the basis for the final design and execution by the government and another architectural firm."
The project does not simply concern itself with the construction of a commercial or railway link, nor a bridge connecting one continent to another. The amplitude, site, geopolitical context as well as the global ecological conscience entails a proposal far more audacious, an active project sensitive to the conditions of the site.
The 220,000 square meter pedestrian-oriented Linked Hybrid complex, sited adjacent to the site of old city wall of Beijing, aims to counter the current urban developments in China by creating a new twenty-first century porous urban space, inviting and open to the public from every side. Filmic urban public space; around, over and through multifaceted spatial layers, as well as the many passages through the project, make the Linked Hybrid an “open city within a city”. The project promotes interactive relations and encourages encounters in the public spaces that vary from commercial, residential, and educational to recreational. The entire complex is a three-dimensional urban space in which buildings on the ground, under the ground and over the ground are fused together.
To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle, requires creative imagination and marks real advance in science. - Albert Einstein
Leonardo da Vinci had a way of looking and understanding problems, he called it: saper vedere (knowing how to see). Da vinci believed that problems should be restructured in different ways so that we can see it from different perspectives. One of the ways that our minds make things easier is by creating a first impression of a problem. This instant intuitive problem definition makes it really hard to get creative insights. Hence, we need to consciously look at problems from different angles, different perspectives. The first impressions we have are often based on our old knowledge, this knowledge in some way creates the experience and therefore we never look at anything from a different perspective, we constantly look at problems like we always have done.
Sanjay Puri Architects with Sanjay Puri was established in 1992. The firm strongly believes in discovering new territories of design and so has accomplished a range of projects including townships, software parks, residential buildings, retail malls, hotels and entertainment centers. Now they are taking on the Synergy, a corporate building in Dubai.
