Waiting for the Storm
2022
Tokyo, Japan
Competition Proposal
Waiting for the Storm is a speculative design proposal for a house during an impending storm. NO OFFICE took the given prompt of “storm house” and composed a series of distinct rooms that react to a hypothetical gust of wind. Taking from Jeff Wall’s 1993, A Sudden Gust of Wind (after Hokusai), the house reacts to a series of environmental actions. Throughout the various vignettes domestic life takes place while the inhabitants confront the realities of an imminent climate event.
NO OFFICE took inspiration for this project from the Japanese art of arranging flowers: ikebana. Like Wall’s photography, ikebana is the staging of flowers to evoke a certain feeling or emotion. Flowers have a mind of their own and they tend to grow and contort in esoteric ways, and ikebana is the careful process of staging flowers in a way that appears to be natural but is very finely crafted. Our project uses this idea as a jumping off point in a deliberately fanciful way. The architecture is pulled apart and the rooms are divided into separate volumes of program. The flowers weave their way around the architecture in a seemingly effortless, yet highly prescriptive way.
Project Team: Nimet Anwar, Omar Ali, and Olivia Vercruysse
2022
Tokyo, Japan
Competition Proposal
Waiting for the Storm is a speculative design proposal for a house during an impending storm. NO OFFICE took the given prompt of “storm house” and composed a series of distinct rooms that react to a hypothetical gust of wind. Taking from Jeff Wall’s 1993, A Sudden Gust of Wind (after Hokusai), the house reacts to a series of environmental actions. Throughout the various vignettes domestic life takes place while the inhabitants confront the realities of an imminent climate event.
NO OFFICE took inspiration for this project from the Japanese art of arranging flowers: ikebana. Like Wall’s photography, ikebana is the staging of flowers to evoke a certain feeling or emotion. Flowers have a mind of their own and they tend to grow and contort in esoteric ways, and ikebana is the careful process of staging flowers in a way that appears to be natural but is very finely crafted. Our project uses this idea as a jumping off point in a deliberately fanciful way. The architecture is pulled apart and the rooms are divided into separate volumes of program. The flowers weave their way around the architecture in a seemingly effortless, yet highly prescriptive way.
Project Team: Nimet Anwar, Omar Ali, and Olivia Vercruysse
