By Martin Holtkamp
Two international awards for Inverted House
AHO’s Inverted House in Japan is still arousing great interest of architectural profession. It recently won The S-ARCH 2017 Award and High Commendation from AR House Award 2017.
The house, which was designed by AHO students Laura Cristea, Mari Hellum, Niklas Lenander and Stefan Hurrell, together with teachers Neven Mikac Fuchs, Thomas McQuillan and Raphael Zuber, was constructed 2015-2016 at Memu Meadows on Hokkaido with the help of Kengo Kuma & Associates. The house is sponsored by the Japanese Lixil Company.
The project recently won two prestigious international architectural prizes: The S-ARCH 2017 Award for the best-completed project last year in the category of experimental buildings, and High Commendation from AR House Award 2017, organized by Architectural Review, as one of three finalist projects.
The S.ARCH International Architecture awards are dedicated to the recognition of completed projects, their excellence in architecture, new ideas and their exemplary implementations that may challenge and inspire architects to set new architectural standards around the world.
The AHO Team members Mari Hellum and Stefan Hurrell presented the Inverted House project and received the award on S-ARCH architectural congress in Hong Kong in the beginning of June.
AR House Award recognizes innovation and excellence in the design of dwellings. This year’s judging panel included leading British architects Jamie Fobert and Tony Fretton, as well as Christine Murray, editor-in-chief of The Architectural Review and The Architects’ Journal. Over 250 entries were received from around the globe and considered by the Jury, who was looking for ingenious and future-leading houses that seek to push the single house-typology forward. Few days ago it became clear that Inverted House is Highly Commended, together with another Norwegian project, Hytte Arøya, by Lund Hagem arkitekter. The winner is Chinese project for Anti-seismic House in the earthquake area of Guangming.
About Inverted House, the AR judges made following comments:
‘Readdressing the fundamental role of the house as shelter, The Inverted House considers a radical realignment of interior and exterior space and the ability of architecture to contain and embrace a landscape,’ said Jamie Roberts.
‘The relation of Inverted House to its setting is distilled back to fundamentals so that both indoor and outdoor spaces can be fully appreciated by the mind and senses’, said Tony Fretton