Urban Park, Kotabaru Jogjakarta

A wonderful architect, a close friend of mine, Fenty Anggreta, managed to implement these wavy and undulating forms of Ito’s roof into her final project on her way to get her bachelor degree, a project which I later have the chance to work on the three dimensional model. At that time, she had no idea about how the forms she applied on the design already been done by Ito in another part of the world.

Her final project is about recreating an urban park on an ex-stadium site, which no longer able to support the global function of region of Kotabaru in Jogjakarta. The project, in a macro context, act as a generator to revive the urban and/or public activities within the region, as it is also meant to attract many visitors from the regions around Kotabaru to gather there, to shop there, to do many "happy family" activities at the place. It acts as an "oasis for the city".

It fascinates me how telepathy seems kind of working at that time. The result is fabulous. Here are several computer renderings on that “legendary” final project.

The wavy curvy roof in this urban park project.

A formal composition of an enclaving roof and mass with a sphere in the center of the site.

As seen from a helicopter, maybe?

Playful composition of park elements, berms, public seatings, and open spaces.

An outdoor cafe provided in front of the shopping tenants.

Sitting walls, a circulation path also functioning as public seatings, looking toward the cafe and shopping tenants area.

Mural wall, a wall where you can draw for free, a response for a need to establish a creative city.

The complex's main entrance.


Small water park with fountains, is a fun spot to be. Located next to the sphere gallery.

There are still several beautiful renderings for this project, which I will put on the next entry, wait for a couple of minutes.
P.S: Dedicated to Fenty Anggreta, my inspiration. :)

My fascination on Toyo Ito’s works

Toyo Ito, I believe many of you are familiar with his works, such as TOD’s Omotesando, Fukuoka I Project, Mikimoto Ginza, and (in my opinion) the infamous Sendai Mediatheque. I first encounter his works in an old GA Document from my campus’ digital library, which was a kindergarten in Germany. Its formal language, how the form of mass seems to create a dialogue with the courtyard within the site, and in the big picture, his effort to create an architecture, (in his own word) an ephemeral or blurring architecture, is so intriguing, that I continue to follow the traces of this Japanese architect.

I was lucky to experience one of his exhibitions in Tokyo, back in 2006, which according to my opinion is one of the best architecture exhibitions I have ever seen (probably because I haven’t seen many of them, exhibitions.). It felt like finding treasures hidden beneath the soil of a holy land. All of the secrets, how a project develops, how early sketches define the real construction, up to how the structure of his elements of architecture made and put together explained in a simple and understandable manner. All those projects displayed there explained not only by posters or by visual graphics, but also through several one by one-scale models, in one room, they even displyed Ito's wavy curvy flooring which was used on Kagamigahara project, Meiso no Mori. (too bad that taking picture was forbidden at that place.)

Here are several pictures of his works I was able to see with my own eyes, simply a wonderful experience, because architecture is about experiencing space, not only understanding the aesthetics of forms, i believe so.

TOD's Omotesando

photograph courtesy of Harry Kurniawan

Sendai Mediatheque

photograph courtesy of Harry Kurniawan

Crematorium at Kagamigahara

At that time, Ito’s wavy, undulating roof forms, as exposed in his works, such as, I project in Fukuoka, and a crematorium in Kagamigahara (as pictured above) looks new and inspiring to me.