BLDGBLOG - Of jellyfish, loops, site constraints, and canopies

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Of jellyfish, loops, site constraints, and canopies - Wed, 04 Apr 2007 07:53:00 +0000

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[image: Jellyfish House by IwamotoScott].

One of the speakers at the big event this Saturday will be Lisa Iwamoto, of IwamotoScott Architecture and Assistant Professor of Architecture at UC-Berkeley.
Lisa and her firm's co-principal, Craig Scott, seem to be everywhere lately. IwamotoScott was a finalist, for instance, in the 2006 Next Generation contest sponsored by Metropolis; they both taught at the Urban Islands design studio in Sydney, Australia, last summer; they were finalists for this year's PS1 courtyard competition in New York; they just spoke as part of the Architectural League's Emerging Voices series; their work is featured in "Innovation by Design," on display now at SF MOMA; they're featured in "Open House: Architecture and Technologies for Intelligent Living" in Pasadena; and Lisa was even on the judging panel for last year's Bottom Line Design Awards.
For all of that, however, I've hardly even cracked the long list of credits that IwamotoScott has amassed; for more comprehensive coverage, visit their site and click on Profile.

'>[image: Jellyfish House by IwamotoScott].

Lisa will be presenting two projects on Saturday; those projects are the Jellyfish House and the PS1 competition entry, and they're both worth hearing about.
I don't want to pre-empt her talk by giving away too much information, however – so I'll just show you a few images, quote a few soundbites, and urge you to stop by the event if you're anywhere near San Francisco.
So the Jellyfish House, we read, "is modeled on the idea that, like the sea creature, it coexists with its environment."

'>[image: Jellyfish House by IwamotoScott].

As such, the house is designed "as a mutable layered skin, or 'deep surface', that mediates internal and external environments."
That "external environment" is rather interesting, in this case, because the proposed site is actually an artificial island, in the middle of San Francisco Bay. The island once served as a military base, which means that there is a legacy of "toxic soil" to clean-up – but the project, being impressively imagined on a variety of levels, has detoxification schemes built directly into it.

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