ALVAAR ALTO: SAVOY RESTAURANT

ESPAÑOL

Alvar Aalto, a Finnish architect sometimes called the "father of modern architecture", is renowned for the quality of its architecture, inserted within the Modernist Movement but full of warmth, superb handling of scale and the materials and respect for the surrounding context . Among his best known works are the Academic Bookstore, the Finlandia Hall,  the Finnish Pavilion for the Paris Exposition of 1937 or the City Hall of Saynastalo .

Less known is, however, his works as interior and furniture designer. This post focuses precisely on the Savoy Restaurant in Helsinki, which still retain some of his original designs.

View from the old terrace, before being covered with glass, for obvious climatic reasons ( Helsinki is at latitude 60)

Opened in 1937, the Savoy is a luxury restaurant located at the top of the Industrial building, which was not designed by Aalto.


It consists of two areas, one indoor area and the terrace overlooking the Esplanadi Park, one of the most important public spaces of Helsinki. In addition, there are some exclusive banqueting cabinets.

Lobby at the restaurant entrance.

Originally the restaurant interior was designed by Alvar Aalto and his wife Aino, in collaboration with textile artist Dora Jung. The construction was carried out by Artek Oy.

Views and details of the living room

View to the terrace

Esplanade Park View from the terrace.

Despite being a luxury restaurant, Aalto rejects the glitz and instead he choose simple , austere, minimalist style, creating a warm and intimate atmosphere of elegant proportions. Among the designed elements are the club chairs by Aino Aalto and the luminaires  by Alvar Aalto.

Detail of the luminaires

The restaurant also contains a display of the famous Savoy vase, designed in 1936, which consists of a hyperbolic curve surface which folds sinuously along two similar curvatures of different radii.


The design, as Aalto was inspired by the Finnish Eskimos girls' breeches. In the words of Professor Jan Michl, "it represents the qualities of the quintessential Finnish design: originality, openness and aesthetic sophistication."


The Savoy vases were placed on each table and allowed the flowers to be arranged in different ways.


Despite its name, the vases were not made exclusively for the restaurant, but were part of a collection for Karhula and Iittala factory for  the Paris International Exposition in 1937. In fact, the shape of the vase is similar to Aalto's Finnish Pavilion built for that Expo.

Finland Pavilion, by Alvar Aalto. Paris Exposition, 1937

Since the first vases were made using wooden molds, their surfaces were slightly more textured than they are today. A curious fact is that originally, after the glass hardened, the wooden mold was burned in order to release the vase.

Currently the Savoy vase rights have been acquired by the restaurant, and it is now called Aalto Vase.

Left: detail of the floor. Right: the restaurant was so expensive that we could only afford to eat a dessert (it was such a treat!). In the background you can see the Aalto vase, still used on each table.

SEE ALSO
- INTERIOR DESIGN

• hhstyle.com/Casa/Limited, Tokyo, Japan. Tadao Ando (2005)
• Koizumi Lighting Theater, Tokyo, Japan. Peter Eisenman (1988-90)
• Restaurant at the Burj Al Arab, Dubai, UAE

With Manu and Moumita, great friends and hosts with whom we ventured to explore a bit of architecture in Helsinki. 

HERZOG & DEMEURON IN TOKYO: PRADA

ESPAÑOL

I think it will be interesting to compare the work of two foreign offices in Tokyo: Herzog & De Meuron and Renzo Piano, both Pritzker Prize laureates. Both use glass in the design of ravishing fashion stores, converting their works in glamorous, elegant lamps. However, while Italian master uses the concept of curtain wall for his Maison Hermes store, the Swiss architects applied the concept of a frame structure for their Prada (2003).

LOCATION

The Prada store stands in Harajuku, Aoyama district, near the Omotesando boulevard.

See location on Google Maps

CONCEPT

The store designed by the Swiss architects Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron appears as a sculptural element in the middle of the compact urban fabric.

Images and sections courtesy of Herzog & De Mouron

As we approach to the building during the day, the form stands out in the skyline basically composed of concrete boxes. The shape of Prada, with its green glass faceted surface, looks like a kind of emerald, it seems carved rather than constructed.

Three views of the volume of the building.

The building is preceded by a small square, gained from Tokyo's speculative public space, where every square meter is used to its full commercial value. But this square, defined by a moss covered, aging looking wall, seems to have little social success (it is a bit intimidating to sit there and be observed by the fierce look of the security guards). It is, however, useful to better appreciate the architecture.

"We decided early on to focus on vertical volume containing the maximum permitted gross floor area so that part of the lot acreage can remain undeveloped. This area will form a kind of plaza, comparable to the public spaces of a European city."

It is an irregular volume, its 6 floors have been crafted so that the volume does not seem so high, and also to comply with height regulations imposed by the urban planning in this area. For this reason, some of its corners have been lowered, so that the perception of its volume varies from the user's location.

The volume consists of a diamond grid of made of metal pipes, whose openings have been cladded with glass panels, either concave, convex or flat, some transparent, others translucent, giving texture and variety to the surface.

"an interactive optical device. Because some of the glass is curved, it seems to move as you walk around it. That creates awareness of both the merchandise and the city—there's an intense dialogue between actors. Also, the grid brings a human scale to the architecture, like display windows. It's almost old-fashioned."

Jacques Herzog.

This frame defines the shape of the openings (including the entrance) and behaves like an element that unifies the irregular and gently angled shape of the building.

Photo courtesy of mcoxy

The rhomboid-grid has also structural purposes, behaving like a flexible mesh that supports, along with the elevators, the concrete slabs and allows more elasticity to the union of metal and glass in case of an earthquake.

3D representation of the structural system

Photos courtesy of Architectural Record.

In the luminous interior space, the decor uses materials ranging from resin, silicone and glass fiber, leather, or porous wood.

Photos courtesy of The Sketch

Like Toyo Ito's Tod's Omotesando , the Herzog & DeMeuron's building gains more presence at night, when resembles a huge faceted emerald, a large sophisticated lamp to display the Prada fashion products.

In this way the interior becomes much more exposed, to be shown to the outside, behaving like a giant shop window.

Photo courtesy of Rim

Photo courtesy of dnc

Photo courtesy of Katsudon

SEE ALSO:
- SHOPS AND COMMERCIAL FACILITIES.

• De Beers, Ginza. Jun Matsui.
• Gyre, MRDV
• Maison Hermes, Renzo Piano
• Namba Parks, Osaka
• TOD'S Omotesando, Toyo Ito
• Omotesando Hills. Tokyo, Japan (Tadao Ando).

ARATA ISOZAKI: KYOTO CONCERT HALL

ESPAÑOL

The Kyoto Concert Hall is adjacent to Tadao Ando's Garden of Fine Arts. The Kyoto Concert Hall was designed by another internationally renowned Japanese figure, Arata Isozaki.

Isozaki, (1931 -) was a disciple of Kenzo Tange, a prestigious master of architecture in the 60s. Arata Isozaki has designed buildings in Asia, Europe and America, and has been a visiting professor at numerous universities, including Harvard, Columbia and Yale. His work skillfully combines the sensibility of traditional Japanese architecture with Western postmodernism, innovating in the use and juxtaposition of materials, using eclectic details and blending elements of the past with technologically sophisticated details.


The Kyoto Concert Hall is an example of his professional expertise. It is a 5-story building, planned to commemorate the 1200 anniversary of the founding of Kyoto city, opened in 1995 and since then dedicated to the dissemination of classical music, either instumental or choral.

Photo courtesy of D'Arne & Ming

The building houses two concert halls. The Main Hall, has a capacity of 1833 seats and the small hexagonal ensemble -designed for small concerts- contains 500 seats. In addition, it contains offices and large and spacious waiting rooms.

See location on Google Maps

Isozaki faces the difficult task of achieving a harmonious fusion between past and present, in a city of rich historical heritage such as Kyoto. However, he does not literally copy traditional Japanese elements from the past, nor impose a strange Western architecture.

Plants of the Concert Hall

As Paul Goldberger,a critic from the New York Times, mentioned:

"the real fusion is not between cultures but between eras, between the acceptance of forms transmitted to us and those to come."

Isozaki's scheme, courtesy arcspace.com

Isozaki's proposal combines both styles in a series of volumes, in which the massive orthogonal concert hall is screened by the graceful arrange of curved glass screens. Their winding silhouettes result in the building's main facade, whose setback from the street creates an atrium that allows a better observation of the venue.

It is noteworthy that the building is not entered from the main facade, but from the side. As Isozaki himself recalls,

"I made the approach complex and difficult to understand spatially... the way the Hall is long, bending in various ways and then spiralling upwards. the approach to a temple in Kyoto is never straight. It bends and turns. That is the technique used to make a small place seem more extensive. I use that technique three-dimensionally, not two-dimensionally. "

At the corner, a stunning sheer volume of conical shape is placed surrounded by clear, calm water. In its first floor the cone houses a French food restaurant (I do not recommend the Japanese style crepes), which can be accessed by a bridge over the water, designed by Isozaki as a remembrance to Japan's tradition. A few blocks of natural stone limit the pool, whose rough surface contrasts with the fine finishing details of the structure.

But the main function of this great black drum is hosting the Ensemble and the ramps that lead to higher areas. Frank L. Wright had a similar idea at the Guggenheim Museum in New York and Richard Meier did the same in his High Museum in Atlanta: both developed their circulations as helical ramps that allow the access to the various levels.

At the core of the black drum, the helicoid houses a geometric interior design. Its walls are not vertical, but tilted in the opposite direction to the generatrix of the cone, containing a series of twelve columns that evoke the Zodiac signs, symbols of ancient astrology. Its ceiling is a triangular net of cambered beams, while the design of the floor creates an optical illusion reminiscent of Escher's impossible perspectives.

There are large foyers, a prelude to the main hall and the Ensemble, ideal for post-concert gatherings. Here, Isozaki locates a series of suspended translucent glass partitions that protect the interior from the direct sunlight without interfering with its spectacular view of the nearby botanical garden and evoke the shoji or traditional Japanese screen made of paper and wood.

The main concert hall is a rectangular box, such as the one in the theaters in Boston or Vienna.

This space is the most exquisite one in the building, every detail in his wooden interior has been taken into account to provide comfort, lighting, acoustics during the performances.

It is sober, precise, and serene as a Japanese temple. The interior hosts an impressive organ of over 7000 tubes, which is the visual spot, perpendicular to the room's longitudinal axis.
The hexagonal Ensemble is designed for small concerts or chamber music and can accommodate 500 spectators.The entire lighting system is mounted on a triangular grid, arranged within an metallic ellipse, which Isozaki called a "stellar constellation", and it appears to float as a spacecraft on top of the stage.


Here, in brief, polyphonic chorus will execute the soft notes of a traditional Japanese song. In time, the notes of a Strauss minuet coming from the flutes will float among the fine wooden lattice slats, which so delicately and graciously adorn the lower part of the room.

SEE ALSO:

- OTHER WORKS BY ARATA ISOZAKI

• Metabolist Movement (1960-70)
• Nexus World, Fukuoka, Japan. With Koolhaas, Portzampark, Holl, etc. (1991)

- CONCERT HALLS, ARENAS

• Richmond Olympic Oval, Vancouver
• Sydney Opera House, Australia. Jørn Utzon
• Za Koenji Theater, Tokyo, Japan. Toyo Ito