co+labo radović                    co+labo's Pavilion bubbles at HAPP 2015                                                                                       

On 26 October, a bubbly co+labo's experimental Pavilion has been opened at the Keio Hiyoshi Campus Autumn Festival. The Festival lasts until the next week. Come along and enjoy co+labo's award winning "cloud" while the weather in Tokyo is still fine.

co+labo team, just before the opening

co+labo radović      co+labo organises a Meijo-Sano lecture in Theories of Architecture                                           

Following our tradition of collaboration with excellent Japanese architects of younger generation, on Tuesday 27 October co+labo  is organising first in the series of Theory of Architecture and Urban Design guest lectures in semester 2 2015. In their, by now regular, appearance in System Design, Sano Satoshi (EUREKA) and Meijo Toshiki (Kengo Kuma Architecture Associates) speak about their own work and comment on a number of broader architectural and urban themes.

co+labo radović          invitation to HAPP 2015 and opening of co+labo's cloud Pavilion                                                    

On 26 October, playful co+labo's Pavilion will be innaugurated and offered for fun to the visitors of Hiyoshi Autumn Festival. If you happen to be near Hiyoshi, please, come along and join co+labo's team, the winner at the Keio University HAPP Competition 2015 in this modest celebration. All co+labo projects are 100% designed by students.

co+labo radović  co+labo in top 3% at the International Competition for Miyajimaguchi Area 

co+labo team having been shortlisted to the top eight at the International Urban Planning Competition for Miyajimaguchi Area, co+labo has achieved one of its biggest successes. The competition, which focused at the future of Miyamiguchi, the community which connects the UNESCO Heritage Site of Itsukushima Shrine with the rest of Japan and the World, attracted more than 1,000 applicants, 230 of which have submitted their projects and managed to satisfy the competition requirements. The panel of experts, including Kakayuki Kishii, Tadao Ando and Mikako Ishikawa, has shortlisted eight projects, one of which was our proposal. As always, co+labo work was completed entirely by students. That is important to remember because this was not a student competition, but an international professional contest, in which young co+labo competed with some of the top expert teams.

co+labo Miyajimaguchi Team+Darko, and the certificate of their success

On 17 October, the public Jury session was held at the Hatsukaichi Town Hall. The three winning schemes are Anetos, Kansai University and Nosigner and Pacific Consultants. Our selection to the top 3% is truly remarkable, especially in educational terms. co+labo, future architects and urbanists, firmly and uncompromisingly presented the potential of radical realism, praxis of eco-urbanity which is rooted in the principles of environmental and cultural responsibility and our strong belief in ethical urbanism, bottom-up approach to thinking, making and living the urban.

                  Parts of the co+labo proposal for the future of Miyajimaguchi

The members of co+labo Miyajimaguchi Urban design Team were (in alphabetic order): Roxane Czarnobroda, Ryoto Amano, Yuta Sato, Moe Suzuki, Tomotake Miyagaki, Vedrana Ikalović and Wakataro Ueno (guided by Darko Radović, advised by Davisi Boontharm, Vuk Radović and Sano Satoshi). At the final-eight session, co+labo team was represented by Ryoto Amano, Moe Suzuki, Tomotake Miyagaki and Darko Radović.

                  From presentation and ceremony at the Hatsukaichi Town Hall

co+labo radović      final tests of co+labo's HAPP cloud Pavilion                                               

co+labo team is making final adjustments of the HAPP, Hiyoshi Art and Performance Project pavilion, which will be erected on 26 October, as part of the Hiyoshi Autumn Festival, regular event organised by Keio Research Center for the Liberal-Arts. The core team members, Ueno Wakataro, Tsuji Soyoka and Magome Ayumu, assisted and visited by other co+labo students and friends, are exploring the best position for their bubbly "cloud", so that it can contribute to the main aim of the Festival, help facilitate communication between the University and its broader community.

co+labo's scheme was the winner at the Keio University  - HAPP Competition 2015. 

co+labo radović         co+labo's Miyatake Sotaro @ Gehl Architects in Copenhagen                                             

Final year Masters student at co+labo, Sotaro Miyatake, took a year off to embark on some intensive internship,  enrich his experience and further expand his understanding of and the skills in making quality in architecture and urban design. Since September, he is at the co+labo's prestigious partner Gehl Architects in Copenhagen. Miyatake-san currently works on several Gehl project under the mentorship of David Sim, a Creative Director and Partner at Gehl's and a regular contributor to various co+labo activities, from joint fieldwork in Tokyo to research Conferences and Symposia, regardless of those are held in the biggest city in the world, Tokyo or at the tiny island of Vis.

Once he gets back to co+labo, Miyatake's experience will help us further advance the quality of our research and design-reserach in the field of urban quality, expand collaboration with Gehl's, and inspire our other students to seek international knowledge and top global standard skills.

Photo: Miyatake-san, under the close scrutiny of his mentor@Gehl's, David Sim.

co+labo radović  internal co+labo Competition for a new stage in the life of our Barn House

In 2012, by winning the 3rd LIXIL International Competition for the Next Generation Sustainable House, co+labo has achieved one of its greatest successes. The win at the reputable international competition was a big achievement itself. But, the most important was that the victory was based on true design-reserach exploration of the basic principles of co+labo  on rigorous application of an ethos of environmental and cultural responsiveness and responsibility, broader ideas which have found their spatial expression by responding to multilayered, complex physical, climatic, social and cultural realities of Memu Meadows, Taiki Cho, Hokkaido. 

The Barn House questioned and enriched the requirements of the competition brief to accommodate two visiting researchers by adding another two residents, two horses which provided critical contribution to energy balance of the house AND whose presence continues to provoke critical thinking and generates an awareness about the widespread environmental and cultural degradation. The Barn House was designed to remind that sustainable architecture has to address not only the pragmatic issues such as energy balance, but also those related to the poetics and totality of place, that it has the responsibility to deal with meaning, identity, otherness and belonging.One of important aspect of the co+labo concept of Barn House was that the project was never to be finished. The house was conceived as a space of learning, a space to learn in, a space to learn from, and a space which iteslf learns, changes and, hopefully, gets better. 

Over the last three years, during their regular visits to Memu Meadows, co+labo students investigated various aspects of the performance of the building, and contributed to efforts to improve it. During the last summer, we have organised an internal co+labo competition of ideas, aiming to open new stage in the life of the Barn House. We sought to address the quality of life of both human and equine residents, and how to make them fully live Hokkaido and enjoy life there.

The Jury members were Milica Muminović (University of Canberra), Komatsu Katsuhito (KKAA, Kengo Kuma Architecture Associates) - both the members of the award winning team,  Saikawa Takumi (KKAA, the LIXIL competition advisor), Vuk Radović (co+labo founding partner and team advisor), Meijo Toshiki (KKAA) and Kondo Tetsuo (Kondo Architects). The Chair of the Jury was Darko Radović, and Technical Secretary and Advisor Sano Satoshi.

The awards at the Internal co+labo Barn House Competition 2015 went to:

1st prize: Invitation of the Landscape - Tomotake Miyagaki, Ryoto Amano, Hisamu Yamamori

2nd prize: The Four Season Deck - Conan Ito, Vitor Masayuki Endo, Carolina Emi Muraki

3rd prize: Ivy and Frost - Moe Suzuki, Wakataro Ueno, Ayumu Magome

The members of the Jury have identified a number of elements in each of the projects which deserve consideration, and suggested their further development.  co+labo's visiting PhD student Paula Jaen will be in charge of design development team and help the Barn House find new expressions of the values and ideals our laboratory stands for.

co+labo radović a special introduction to Brazilian master modernist for co+labo+friends   

On 12 October, co+labo members were treated with a very special gift - a guided tour through the exhibition Oscar Niemeyer: The Man Who Built Brasilia at MOT, The Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo. The tour was organised and guided by an old friend of co+labo, the Ambassador of Brazil in Japan, Mr André Correa do Lago. In true co+labo spirit (represented by  + ... + ... + ...), we invited members of Keio's other architecture and urban design laboratories.

A passionate architectural aficionado, André do Lago provided an enlightening introduction and guided us through the exhibition, skilfully set up and curated by MOT's Yuko Hasegawa and SANAA's Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa.

co+labo's collaboration with André do Lago and the Embassy of Brazil, which started with our urban research pavilion in front of the Embassy in Aoyama during the football World Cup in 2014, continues. 
colaboradović.blogspot.com will keep you posted about our ambitious plans for future collaboration.

co+labo radović      co+labo's Narumi Hanako wins SD Architectural Graduation Competition          

Each year, after completing their final studio, undergraduate students of architecture and urban design at Keio's Department of  Systems Design can enter the SD Graduation Competition. The 2015 Jury (Jorge Almazán, Rafael Balboa, Davisi Boontharm, Hiroyuki Ito, Tatsuya Kishimoto, Masayuki Kohiyama, Darko Radović and Satoshi Sano) have awarded First Prize to co+labo's Hanako Narumi, and her project Artistic Plaza, in front of Rieka Hara (Almazán Studio) and Taiga Sato (Kishimoto Studio). The Awards include books and sponsorship at the JIA Competition 2015.

co+labo radović      co+labo's enigmatic cloud emerges at the skies of Yagami Campus        

As reported at this blog on 19 July, a team of co+labo Masters and undergraduate students has won Keio University Hiyoshi Art and Performance Project - HAPP Competition 2015. Over the last two months, the idea of In the Cloud - on the Cloud pavilion has gone through rigorous design development and expert consultations, which included a number of 1:1 scale tests. As the opening date is getting close, so the co+labo cloud starts to take its final shape and slowly emerge at the skies above Yagami. After the remaining several experiments with contextualisation and adaptiation to the site, the pavilion will have its inaugural appearance at the Hiyoshi Campus Autumn Festival, organised by Keio Research Center for the Liberal-Arts with an aim to facilitate communication between the University and its broader community.

The Cloud will be used in co+labo urban research projects.

co+labo radović             Darko-先生’s  還暦                                                                                               

With some delay, due to a lot of travel, co+labo has organised Darko-先生’s  還暦 (for those not knowing what還暦 is ... check here)

co+labo radović         co+labo's Suzuki Akitaka @ Politecnico di Milano                                  

First year Masters student at co+labo, Aki Suzuki has started his Keio-PoliMi Double Degree studies at Politecnico's ABC Campus in Lecco. This indeed is a big step for both Aki-san and for co+labo. His move marks the opening of a new stage in an already rich collaboration between two great universities in the fields of architecture and urbanism. From an initiative by Professors Marco Imperadori and Darko Radović, over the last several years collaboration between Politecnico di Milano and Keio University steadily grew to include regular visits, exchange of students, exchange of staff to this, first full Double Degree candidature in the fields related to production of space. 

Aki-san was well received by Professors Imperadori and Masera, (recent Visiting Research Fellow at Keio/co+labo, greeted and guided by his old friends, Arch. Antonella Colistra and PoliMi students Silvia Spallina and Salvatore Nastasi - who all also studied at co+labo radović. Our Suzuki Moe and Miyagaki Tomo recently visited Milano, to make sure that Aki-san is settling in well (... and, by the way, also visited Triennale). 

In parallel to this, significant efforts are being done to start ambitious, collaborative research in the near future. We will keep you posted ... In the meantime - tutti auguri a nostro Aki-san!  

co+labo radović                    co+labo @ Anatomy of the Islands ... 4th time  ... report 3           

Anatomy of the Islands design-reserach Workshop has finished on 26 September, with public presentation and discussion. Students from Graz, Ljubljana, Split, Tokyo and Vienna, who were organised in seven groups, presented their ideas how to deal with the problems of depopulation and excessive mass tourism, and spatial projections of other, more environmentally and culturally responsible ways of synthesis between global challenges and local resources - at the example of the Island of Vis, its two beautiful towns, agricultural hinterland and the pristine coast.

For last two days, Keio team was joined by Tetsuo Kondo, an exciting young architect, a regular contributor to co+labo. 

(fragments from some of the final Anatomy of Islands presentations)

co+labo students Magome, Narumi, Sato, Tajima and Yamamori continued their journey and on the way back visited Barcelona. Jaume Carné, an excellent urbanist from the Catalan capital and Darko's old friend, gave them a very special tour, combining some of the regular sites which he shows those who join his excellent BiciCulturaBCN tours with useful feedback and advice about their own investigations of urban quality at co+labo. 

(BCN bike tour, BiciCulturaBCN - warmly recommended by co+labo to all who love cities, urban culture, architecture and Barcelona, and its passionate mind and heart - Mr Jaume Carné)

The other two co+labo students decided to stay at the Balkans, Carolina exploring the Adriatic Coast in early Autumn and Vedrana doing some PhD fieldwork in her Bosnia.