Shared by Deve Architects, Näverket is a competition entry for the Södra Tennis Competition in Sweden.

How can wood construction be utilized to create the ultimate competitive tennis environment in Växjö, Sweden?

After laying out a continuous tennis surface on the Södra Tennis site, a simple shell is created to enclose three indoor courts, while leaving two for outdoor play. The shell is to be constructed primarily of timber elements and cladding.  Irregular wooden slats express a solid building volume while simultaneously mimicking the slender tree trunks that populate Swedish forests. The facade also includes vast areas of north-facing glass to provide adequate diffuse light and maintain the continuity of the tennis surface.

Näverket - Södra Tennis Hall, render courtesy Deve Architects

The roof, which slopes down towards the human scale entrance, acts almost as a fifth facade, and is planted with a wide variety of grasses and mosses so as to provide passive environmental benefits while blending into the surrounding meadow when viewed from future high rises planned for the Välle Broar housing development.

Näverket - Södra Tennis Hall, render courtesy Deve Architects

An important aspect of the Södra Tennis Hall, is that it should be flexible for local expansion as well as global replication. This requirement might make it difficult to retain an established local identity, but by using different modular structural and spatial systems, Nätverket’s construction could easily be added to or replicated at another site without the building seeming like a product of placeless industrial fabrication. The primary loads are carried by a glu-lam timber grid, and the spatial layout allows for more courts to be added without amending the original bearing structure.  The offices and training rooms that serve the tennis courts are free-standing within the large volume, so as needs and uses change, each building can adapt easily.

Conceptual diagrams, , drawing courtesy Deve Architects

The tennis hall is organized so that the three indoor tcourts are all contained in one large volume, with a series of service volumes attached to a promenade running alongside them. The area on top of the service volumes is used for spectators, but includes several social spaces to be used by athletes as well. The large competition space is can be also used for other events like conventions, concerts, or markets, contributing to the flexible nature of the building construction.

Floor plan, drawing courtesy Deve Architects

Section, drawing courtesy Deve Architects

+ Project credits / data

Project: Näverket – Södra Tennis Hall
Location: Sweden
Architect: DEVE Architects | http://www.deve.dk/
Team: Morten Vedelsbøl, Scott Grbavac, Zazia Bigom
Typology: Competition | Sport

+ All images and drawings courtesy Deve Architects

Designed by Japanese designer Tokujin Yoshioka, TWILIGHT is a project installed in MOROSO Showroom during Milan design week, it was to display new chair series “MOON.”

Sketch courtesy Tokujin Yoshioka

Tokujin Yoshioka stated,

Nature is beautiful, yet the unimaginable energy inheres behind its beauty. Its beauty uplifts our emotion, and resonant in our heart, yet sometimes shows its threatening expression.

We have witnessed nature’s threats with our own eyes, and we have been reminded by the the importance of living with nature.

I would like to think deeply about the nature and continue persuing the creation that seeks and express its elements of the beauty.

With the deepest hopes in our future, I am presenting an exhibition “TWILIGHT-Tokujin Yoshioka” at MOROSO Showroom.

Creating the space with the light and the aura, I will display a new chair series “MOON.”

“MOON” is the chair as if sculpted from this beautiful rounded shape of the Moon. In this exhibition, the light reflects on the surface of the chairs and reveals the beauty of the various textures exist in the different kinds of white materials, such as plastics, and unique fabrics.

The space would remind people of the natural phenomenon, known as the angel’s ladder, and will bring visitors the celestial experience as if embraced by the natural world.

I hope the light of “TWILIGHT” will glow within people’s heart all over the world.

MOON chair, image courtesy Alessandro Paderni

MOON chair, image courtesy Tokujin Yoshioka

+ Design theory by Tokujin Yoshioka

Until now, I have not talked much about design. One of the reasons is that I am not good at speaking. The main reason is, however, I do not think I can express my design in words. My design is more eloquent than words: Once it is worded, I fear that the image disappears. Because it is beyond one's understanding, monodukuri is mysterious and beautiful.

For me, design is not making but creating. Design is not to be described in words but it should tell a story. When it becomes to tell the story, the meaning will become clear of itself.

Design is free. There is no rule how design should be. It is impossible to define what the ultimate is. Intrinsically, there is no ultimate because design is always changing. Design is what we feel. That is why I enjoy it.

When seeing my design, people think that I am using new materials or new technologies. However, it is not true. Maybe I just find hidden beauty in things, which others have not noticed before me. To know the intrinsic beauty of materials: I like a paper when it is crumpled. I also find beauty in torn papers.

We might be able to understand the beauty of things only when we stop thinking with own head. The unexpected, accidental happening is the most wonderful thing. What we can accomplish with deliberation might be only a fraction of what one can do.

If possible, I do not want to make a form. I think my design is just like a fluid and beautiful dress drape, which combines the smoothness and contingency at the same time. I believe that there is something that we cannot express only with CGs or drawings; design that appears as we feel, not as we think. It reminds me of the breathtaking scenery of clouds which I see from a window of an airplane.

What is poetic? – The beauty that is leaded by phenomenon. The scenery is ever changing its appearance and property. I feel life from it: There I can find the beauty of the all God's creatures. Snow crystal is more beautiful than any other designs. It strongly touches my heart. I wish I could carry cloud home. Mother nature is the most wondrous and fascinating design that exists in the world of this universe. I do not want to make a form perhaps because I became to realize the enchantment of nature.

Light and air; even we know and talk a lot about them, there is no substitute for an experience. My design is completed by remembrance of beauty, which is evoked by our experience and something that is asleep in our mind.

Well painted picture does not always touch people's heart because the energy comes from somewhere completely different. What we need is a brand new emotion. From great pleasure to daily trivial happiness, it is feeling that completes design. I am not making a thing but I am realizing the energy that emotion has.

Sometime it is said that design is not art. For some people, I think art is quite attractive, but simultaneously, art is also the most frightening thing. People often ask me the difference between art and design. Through the ages, people listen to music and enjoy art while design had not existed there. Why people listen to music. Perhaps we can find an answer here.

Mind is never enriched only by simplicity and usability. We need music that resonates with us, smiting movies, uncontrollable love, the beauty of law of nature.

Where does your idea come from? That is the question I want to ask myself. I am really thankful for the ideas, which spring out from the fountain of inspiration. I am always looking for and setting forth a new goal. I think it is fortunate to always have both aims and things I want to create. The idea matures in the course of daily lives; big tasks and challenges are the first step forward to see a ray of light in various experiments and failures and miraculous result is finally produced in the end. That is the moment when an angel appears and smiles upon me.

The fortuity only turns up only to those who are ready to embrace it.

Henri Poincare

Sushi is not only about slicing fishes and shaping in one's hand. Rather it begins with selecting ingredients carefully, that is, studying the universe of seafood and the sea, and one eats sushi. Then sushi is completed as a cuisine for the first time. The finest tofu is so rich without soy source.

My design has never existed before, but for some reason, they are well integrated with our everyday lives and remain. In my design, the shape of the lighting fixture disappears. Only the light itself emerges. For a chair, I might be trying to design just the sense of seating.

I cannot ask for anything more than a chair, which realized the comfort in seating and the sense of sitter's floating in the air released from the gravity. The phenomenon and the feeling may be all that is needed so are things not recognized visually. I am not a designer of shapes. The ultimate design is a thing without a form. Light is all we need for a lighting fixture. A good lighting fixture is close to a bare light bulb or the light itself.

I design time, air, and light. Perhaps I want to create an aura of mystery, which could somehow change the entire air around us. I have started wondering for what purpose I was sent to this universe. I listen to my emotions. A strange elated feeling beyond unconsciousness.

Design is poetry and it conveys joy to people. Humans are emotional creatures. The soul-stirring music. The fragrance, which reminds one of his lover's perfume. They have no shape but they reach people's heart. Within my own lifetime, when I take a step toward the future, I want to create things. I want to spend the rest of my life designing things, which will touch more people. So I continue my design.

A single design can make one's life change magically and bring happiness to the people around the world.

Design fills the possibility of our lives with new hopes. Design has dreams. That is why it is so wonderful.

TWILIGHT, image courtesy Tokujin Yoshioka

+ Interview with Tokujin Yoshioka about TWILIGHT

Please tell us about your new chair “MOON” presented in the exihibition “TWILIGHT” -Tokujin Yoshioka
"MOON" is a chair inspired by the beauty of the moon, its glowing light and shadows. The “MOON” comes as a series, in which different kinds of materials including plastics, polyurethane, and unique fabrics are incorporated in each of the chairs. Light reflects on the surface of these chairs, revealing the beauty of the various textures that are inherent in each of their materials.

TWILIGHT, image courtesy Tokujin Yoshioka

There is a certain mystique quality to the light of the moon. Its unexplainable beauty is one of the finest expressions of the natural world. “MOON” is a chair sculpted in the form of this beautiful rounded shape of the Moon, and embodying its lambent wax and wane. The chairs express: the full moon when seen from above; the half moon when seen profile; and the crescent when seen from an angle.

In this exhibition, you are unifying the color of all chairs as white. What does white symbolize to you?
People often ask me if “white” holds a spiritual meaning for me. Rather, I believe I use whiteness and transparency as means in the expression of “light”. Through the years, I have been engaged in studying the essences of the human senses; integrating natural laws and phenomena as elements in the design language, and seeing how they affect our feelings and how they work to inspire us.

I believe that somewhere in the beauty of nature, there is the hint to the answer that explains the qualities that strongly stir our senses. Light, is such a natural phenomena, without a definitive shape or outline, and yet embodying the power to bring out the emotive in people. Such motifs are what laminates within me, and represents themselves in the works where whiteness prevails.

TWILIGHT, image courtesy Tokujin Yoshioka

Please talk about the new installation “TWILIGHT”
The installation “TWILIGHT” is a space created through the use of light and its aura. It creates the scene where crepuscular rays break through the clouds and pour unto the ground. The work is suggestive of the natural phenomenon known as the angel’s ladder. It will to bring visitors the celestial experience of being embraced by the natural world.

TWILIGHT, image courtesy Tokujin Yoshioka

It seems your design remind people of the natural phenomenon. Could we hear your opinion about the nature?
This kind of beauty only existing in split seconds, is something that can never be reproduced. I seek in my own designs, for the emotional energy that people experience before such ephemeral beauty of the nature.

Nature is beautiful, and embodies the energy that is beyond our imaginative scope. I think deeply about nature once again, and am reminded of my own pursuit to continue seeking and expressing, through my creations, the essential elements of this beautiful nature. Many around the world are concerned, given the recent Earthquake in North East Japan.

What are your thoughts about the situation, and your messages for the future?
I would first of all like to extend my heartfelt sympathy to the victims of the earthquake and the tsunami, and my sincere appreciation to those working for the relief of the area.

With the additional burden of an alert at the nuclear power plant, we still ache over the continuing hardships of the people. I believe in our power to overcome this hardship we are currently facing.

I have taken actions to call to those abroad for donations dedicated to help those in the affected areas. I extend a big appreciation to all the support offered and for the warm messages received. We are reminded again of our lives and the resources that are available to us, and are forced to reflect upon the privileged lives many of us live. As we see nature show its fearful side with its astounding power, I once again, strongly feel the significance that nature holds for us in our co-existence.

Please tell us about your up-coming projects.
I am presenting my works at “Glasstress 2011″ held during the Venice Biennale this year, scheduled from June 4th to November 27th. The long-planned project “KOU-AN-Transparent Japanese Tea House” will be officially presented for the first time at this event.

The idea of “KOU-AN-Transparent Japanese Tea House” originates from the concept for the “Transparent Japanese House”(2002), which was to build a Japanese traditional house using transparent glass as its material. This long-dream project will finally see its beginnings of the glass tea house at this special occasion. Currently, its original glass roof tile is in its design and production stages.

This year, at “Glasstress 2011″, the model for the tea house will be displayed. The completed architecture in full-scale is scheduled to be realized in 2013.

The old and new elements will blend, and their contrast will give birth to new elements. This project will be the proposal for the design of the future. Also at the exhibition, the table of the massive optical glass block “Waterfall” will be presented.

+ About Tokujin Yoshioka

Tokujin Yoshioka, image courtesy Masahiro Okamura

Born in Saga, Japan in 1967. After worked under Shiro Kuramata and Issey Miyake, established his own studio, Tokujin Yoshioka Design in 2000.

Tokujin has collaborated with various noted companies in and outside Japan such as HERMES, SWAROVSKI and ISSEY MIYAKE, which he has been doing shop design and installation.

The paper chair "Honey-pop" (2001), Yamagiwa's lighting "ToFU" and cell phone "MEDIA SKIN" for au design project have been highly evaluated as art works simply more than design works and became a part of permanent collections in the world's well-known museums such as Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York.

+ Major awards

• Mainichi Design Award, 2001
• Cultural Affairs Section of Government of Japan, Encourage Prize, 2006
• Design Miami/Designer of the Year, 2007
• Wallpaper Design Awards, 2008
• Design for Asia Award (DFA Award), 2008
• Elle Deco International Design Awards (EDIDA)/ Designer of the Year, 2009
• Artist of the Year / TOKYO Design & Art ENVIROMENTAL AWARDS, 2010
• A&W Architektur & Wohnen/Designer of the Year, 2011

Selected as one of "100 Japanese respected by the world" in Newsweek magazine of Japanese edition.

In 2009, Tokujin presented a new book "Invisible Forms", in which he gives away his own design theory.

In 2010, his portfolio book "TOKUJIN YOSHIOKA" is published from Rizzoli International.

+ All images courtesy Tokujin Yoshioka

Designed by Australian architectural firm Architects EAT, Linear House is situated on a slight hill, 500m away from the Portsea back beach. The site is a relatively large and newly subdivided lot of 2600m2, and the client wanted a holiday house that will eventually become their permanent family home.

Linear House, image courtesy Architects EAT | Photo by James Coombe

Linear House, image courtesy Architects EAT | Photo by James Coombe

Architects EAT calls the underlying principle of our design: 'beads on a string' (it is a term borrowed from our 2nd year architectural course where architect were required to design a linear house). Revisiting this principle produces an architecture of a pathway where journey is spatially defined by a series of unfolding spaces. It also deals with spatial narrative as a combination of the memory of the place where one has just passed through in comparison to the expectation of what might be next.

Linear House, image courtesy Architects EAT | Photo by James Coombe

Linear House, image courtesy Architects EAT | Photo by James Coombe

The project was achieved with a modest budget, at the same time considers sustainability at a strategic level: space zoning, cross ventilation, solar orientation and thermal mass, as well as utilizing rain water storage, solar electricity, insulation and double glazing to further enhances the sustainable outcome of the house.

Linear House, image courtesy Architects EAT | Photo by Albert Mo

Linear House - Ground floor plan, drawing courtesy Architects EAT

Linear House - First floor plan, drawing courtesy Architects EAT

+ Project credits / data

Project: Linear House
Architect: Architects EAT | http://www.eatas.com.au/newsite/index.html
Structural Engineer: KH Engineering
Building Surveyor: Mike Neighbour Consultant
Builder: Mark Southwell
Landscaper: Ian Patterson
Photographer: James Coombe, Albert Mo
Typology: House

+ About Architects EAT

Architects EAT is a well recognized creative firm for architecture and interior design. Since 2000 Architects EAT's body of work across Australia and Asia has demonstrated their ability to seamlessly integrate creativity and functionality. Their architecture is driven by a consistent philosophy, not a predetermined style. The result is buildings that sit comfortably in their surroundings and work well for the people who use them.

They believe in the phenomenological dimension of design: architecture must be experienced intuitively first hand. This philosophical approach is based on the physical and haptic experience of building materials and their properties that pertain to the sense of touch, sound, sight, weight, patina and the interplay of natural lights and shadows.

+ All images and drawings courtesy of Architects EAT | Photo by James Coombe & Albert Mo

+ Recommended project by Architects EAT on +MOOD

ELM & Willow House | Architects Eat

Open House is an Australian house designed by Architects EAT. The internal planning strategies are devoted to the layering of spaces, and orchestrating the sequences in a mise-en-scene liked methodology.

Open House, image courtesy Architects EAT | Photo by James Coombe

Open House, image courtesy Architects EAT | Photo by James Coombe

Architects EAT have opened up the interior, got rid of the original rabbit warren internal walls, and starting from the dramatic suspended black raw steel staircase as the focal point upon entry (which leads to two children's bedroom upstairs), the interior then unfolds from the living room, to the kitchen then to the courtyard and dining, then finally to the master bedroom and it's private courtyard at the end.

Open House, image courtesy Architects EAT | Photo by James Coombe

The kitchen and dining open toward a north facing courtyard, with a double sliding doors that span over five meters, in a Japanese courtyard house like manner, where indoor and outdoor are seamlessly connected. The courtyard is fully decked with spotted gum, and it is decisively minimal and low maintenance, with only a single Japanese maple tree as its decoration.

Open House, image courtesy Architects EAT | Photo by James Coombe

The careful selection of raw and recycled material was based on complementary textures which shape and humanize the space in an innovative and sustainable fashion. Architect wanted the meticulous balance between scale and playfulness to be symbiotic while allowing the integrity of each material to remain evident in the final result.

Open House - Original floor plan, drawing courtesy Architects EAT

Open House - Proposed floor plan, drawing courtesy Architects EAT

+ Project credits / data

Architect: Architects EAT | http://www.eatas.com.au/newsite/index.html
Structural Engineer: R. Bliem and Associates Pty Ltd
Building Surveyor: Building Strategies
Builder: Sargant Construction
Landscaper: Matt Ford – Landshapes
Photographer: James Coombe
Typology: House

+ All images and drawings courtesy of Architects EAT | Photo by James Coombe