久し振りのヘルシンキ

今日本とイギリスを結便の中フィンエアーが一番安いからよく使っている。先日ヘルシンキに二泊してからロンドンまで乗り継いだ。二十年ぶりにフィンランドの空気を吸った。四月になるとすでに日が長く夜九時すぎても暗くならない。港がきれいな空のしたに広がっている。

1991年に来た時ロシア経由で電車で到着した。その日車窓から見たアアルトのフィンランディアホールが今回もほぼ同じ街並みの中にそのまま残っている。アアルトは決して大げさな操作はしない。古典的なモダーニズムとは言っていいでしょうか？フィンランディアは敷地の状況とよくフィットし、周りのものを一つの風景としてまとめてくれる印象がする。

As I had a little time I also went to see the Aalto House at Riihitie. He lived here with his family for 40 years.  Until the 1950's he was also using a section of the house as his studio. Like Finlandia Hall one comes away with the impression of understatement and simplicity. The house is surprisngly modest in both scale and material use.

It appeared to be framed in concrete with vertical supports in brick/blockwork or steel columns in places, and also some timber walling. It must have been a slightly unusual system for the early 1930's - presumably most domestic buildings in Finland would still have used timber structures at the time. I would like to know more about his structural engineer Magnus Malmberg.

Tours of the house are well run by the Alvar Aalto Foundation. Apparently 30% of the visitors are Japanese, so I was reassured that the Aalto influence is still alive and strong amongst many of the architects I work with. I couldn't resist buying a three-legged Artek stool to go with our three-legged Crown Table in the office!

Back in Tokyo I feel like we need another dose of Aalto - appropriate use of materials, no waste, and a classical sense of form, proportion, and links to nature. Aalto's hand is so sure it almost breaks your heart.

After the earthquake

We design our buildings to deflect about one two-hundredth of their height in an earthquake. Although I am used to that on paper it was still amazing looking out from our office window along Roppongi-doori during the event on Friday to see 10-15 storey buildings swaying like trees. They looked just like the computer models we make for dynamic analyses.

A once in a lifetime view! My only mistake was not having a movie camera to hand.

Tokyo got away with limited structural damage. My condominium was left with some supicious diagonal shear cracks though. It's difficult to tell whether they are in zatsukabe or main walls. The shaking was 5+ on the scale 1-7, so buildings should still be within their elastic range.

Walking around Tokyo on Saturday I found that the same textbook cracking had occurred in one of the Imperial Palace outbuildings. This is probably of traditional wall construction so resistance is limited, but it does indicate that the shaking was just short of causing some major damage.

Some stores seem to be running out of supplies as the distribution networks are disrupted. We have power cuts planned from today in the areas surrounding Tokyo. This is one of the convenience stores just along from Ark Hills.

In general though the preparedness is impressive. It was bad luck that the particular circumstances of this earthquake caused a tsunami just too large for the defences to cope with. Probably well over a one in two hundered year event. My suggestion going forward is not to allow any timber buildings in Sanriku coastal towns, and also to provide refuge towers to hold four or five people at least 15m above the ground in each building.


And finally a nice shot from the TV news:

Small bridges

A little bit of structural design goes a long way! I found this glass bridge while walking to the office the other day near Ladbroke Grove. Apart from the properly engineered glass elements the contrast of materials is just great. Two masonry buildings built a hundred years or so before connected with the magical 'new' structural material glass.

If you look up close you can see the triple-laminate glass beams behind the glass facade panels. The whole thing is simple yet sensitive - no clumsy brackets and bolts here. And crossing it must give the users a chance to escape for a moment the heavy interiors each side and step into another world.

Speaking of bridges, on February 19 I managed to get on the first flight of the reinstated BA0007 now flying from Heathrow to Haneda. This really does bring Tokyo and London a little bit closer! 

和服を着ていた二人の女性が降りるゲートで「Welcome to Haneda!」と皆を歓迎していた。
始発のモノレールで浜松町まで乗り、まだ暗くて静かな東京を部屋まで歩いた。