User:KCagin1988/sandbox

YOKOHAMA INTERNATIONAL PORT TERMINAL

FAST FACTS

Yokohama international port terminal was built in 2002 by the Foreign Office Architects (FOA) from London and it is one of the biggest ports in Japan to openly trade with the West. Originally built in the 19th century, the Osanbashi Pier at the Yokohama port is still in use and was expanded with a landfill to create a site for the International port. The design of the port is unique in its kind for” blurring boundaries between architecture and landscape “ (1) by integrating open space into its structure. The upper wooden terrace is open to public for walking and gathering. Because of the geometric design complexities, the architects designed the port with the aid of a computer program.” The function of the terminal is not only regulating the flow of people, but also set up secondary use for public to take a walk on the upper part”.(2)

SIZE

The port building is 70 meters wide and goes 430 meters into the sea. The total height is approximately 15 meters.(3) Total floor area is 34,732 meters square and the building area is 27,270 meters square.(4)

THE HISTORY

Yokohama International Passenger Terminal at the Osanbashi Pier was originally constructed in 1894 and helped Yokohama to become Japan’s main water gateway to the world. (5) The pier was badly damaged in the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake and had to be rebuilt. Due to aging, reconstruction on the foundation of the pier started in 1988. Also, in 1994, the city held an International Design Competition for the reconstruction of the Pier. Young London group called Foreign Office Architects, better known as FOA, won the competition. The group faced many challenges once the project started and it is nearly cancelled because of the economic slump during the construction time. Fortunately, The Football World Cup became a motivation to complete the project in 2002 and the final games were held in Yokohama.(6)

MATERIALS AND STRUCTURE

For the Yokohama International Passenger port, the architects used limited details and materials to provide continuity of the topography. Primarily, the wood deck system, folding steel and fencing/handrail system are used across the space to provide continuity and the geometrical features applied for the structural variation. The structure is made of long pieces of steel closely placed to each other and has big lights. While different spaces are created through geometric variations, continuity of the space between the interior and exterior achieved through wooden surface along the length of the pier. All of the floors in the public spaces are wooden and gives the people the feeling of as if they are walking on a ship’s deck and it extends to the neighboring area called Yamashita. (7)

FOREIGN OFFICE ARCHITECTS COMPANY (FOA)

FOA is a London based architectural group and established in 1992 by husband and wife team Alejandro Zaera Polo and Farshid Moussavi. Moussavi received her Masters in Architecture from Harvard Graduate School of Design and worked for  the Office of Metropolitan Architecture (OMO) in Rotterdam (Rem Koolhaas, 1991-1993). (8) Alejandro Zaera Polo also graduated from Harvard and worked at OMO at the same time with Moussavi. They were short listed in the Ground Zero project competition and, soon after, they won the BBC Music Center design competition in White city, West London by competing against big names such as Zaha Hadid and Future Systems. With their Yokohama International Port Passenger Terminal, Foreign Office Architects (FOA) gained quick fame and started to be mentioned among the World’s biggest architects.(9)

ARCHITECTURAL STYLE AND CONCEPT FOA dedicated itself to explore contemporary urban conditions, lifestyles and construction technologies. Alejandro Zaera Polo and Farshid Moussavi, founders of the FOA, hate the “starchitect” label and they ironically reject it by saying, “we reject the icon.” (10) As much as they love Frank Gehry and Libeskind, FOA doesn’t like “flashy gestures” that designed to glorify the city. For them, Gehry and Liebeskind  constructed the same buildings everywhere and this kind of working philosophy is antiquated for them. To prevent architecture from sameness everywhere, FOA conceives each building like species grown for a specific ecosystem, which is an antidote to homogenizing globalization. In other words, they don’t want to stamp one style wherever they build a building. Their proposal for the Yokohama project is generated from a circulation diagram that aspires to eliminate the linear structure characteristic of piers and the directionality of the circulation. “Rather than developing the building as an object or figure on the pier, the project is produced as an extension of urban ground, constructed as a systematic transformation of the lines of the circulation diagram into a folded and bifurcated surface.” (11 ) Most importantly, this design is developed to deal with seismic forces that affect Japan.

Yokohama Maritime Terminal

REFERENCES (1) (2) (3) Pollack, Noami; Foreign Office Architects; Architectural Record Magazine 190,Part 11 (2002): 142-149 (4) internet- http://www25.big.or.jp/~k_wat/yokohama/eindex.htm

(5) (6) internet- http://www.galinsky.com/buildings/yokohamaipt/index.htm (7) internet- http://www.arcspace.com/features/foreign-office-architects/yokohama-international-port-terminal/ (8 )(11) Jodidio, Philip, Architecture Now;pg. 220; Taschen,;printed in Italy;2004; ISBN 3-8228-2935-8 (9)(10)  internet-http://designmuseum.org/design/foreign-office-architects