Japanese Architect Shuhei Endo Named Winner of 2002 Kenneth F. Brown Architecture Design Award

Endo wins $20,000 for his lyrical house project

University of Hawaiʻi

A total of 120 projects by architects from over 15 countries throughout the Asia Pacific region were submitted for the fourth Kenneth F. Brown Architecture Design Award Program. From among these entrants emerged a lyrical house project in Shiga, Japan, as the 2002 winner of the Kenneth F. Brown Award, which includes a cash prize of $20,000.

The jurors cited the work of the small house addition in Shiga by Japanese architect Shuhei Endo as a tour de force in its "ingenious juxtaposition of interlocking spaces, comprised of continuously folded space-cells… engendering a totally unprecedented building syntax." Another project by Endo also received honorable mention recognition.

The prize money, totaling $25,000, was divided for the 2002 program and a second prize of $5,000 was awarded for a landscape project in China. Eight other projects revealing a spectrum of architectural ideas from all across the Asia Pacific region were cited as Honorable Mentions. The designers and their projects will be recognized during the Fifth International Symposium on Asia Pacific Architecture, hosted by the University of Hawaiʻi School of Architecture, and currently underway at the UH Mānoa campus (April 9-11, 2003).

The Kenneth F. Brown Asia Pacific Architecture Award Program is a biennial event sponsored by the UH School of Architecture in cooperation with the Architects Regional Council Asia (ARCASIA). The program, inaugurated in 1995, was named in honor of eminent architect and civic-minded humanitarian Kenneth F. Brown, FAIA, with the purpose of recognizing and celebrating outstanding examples of contemporary architecture in the Asia-Pacific region, while also establishing, through the periodic selection of outstanding architectural work, a critical foundation for the improvement of the built environment.

The jurors for the 2002 program included Gregory Burgess (Australia), Kenneth Frampton (USA) and William Lim (Singapore), joined by Kenneth Brown himself. Burgess is an acclaimed architect from Australia who holds the distinction of winning the Kenneth Brown Award twice, in 1995 and 1998; Frampton, who is a professor at Columbia University in New York City, is arguably the most distinguished architectural historian and critic today; and Lim, an architect from Singapore, is also one of the most influential writers on architecture and urbanism in Southeast Asia. The 2002 program was chaired by Dr. Kazi K. Ashraf of the UH School of Architecture.

While the jurors cited Endo‘s winning project, also called Springtecture, as creating an unprecedented building syntax, they were also appreciative of the ways the project evoked elements of Japanese domestic architecture in the spatial fluidity reminiscent of the sukiya zukuri style, the light-weight fabrication, and a "surprisingly human scale." In honoring the second-prize winner, an urban landscape realized at the Jinji Lake Open Space in Suzhou, China, by the Hong Kong-based office of EDAW Earthasia Ltd., the jurors noted the decisive way the project "introduced an international hybrid concept of land-form into what is still the unsophisticated and provincial context of Chinese architectural culture."

2002 Award Recipients:

Winner: Shuhei Endo, Japan -- Project: SPRINGTECTURE B -- Location: Higashiasai-gun, Shiga, Japan

Second Prize: EDAW Earthasia Ltd., Hong Kong -- Project: Jinji Lake Open Space -- Location: Suzhou Industrial Park, Suzhou, Jiangsu, China

Honorable Mentions:

Ashton Raggatt McDougall Pty Ltd., Australia -- Project: National Museum of Australia -- Location: Canberra, Australia

I.I.S. University of Tokyo, Japan -- Project: Leek House -- Location: Machida-shi, Tokyo Japan

Glenn Murcutt, Australia -- Project: Gathawudu Community Housing, Marika Alderton House -- Location: Yirrkala Northern Territory, Australia

Joseph Lim Ee Man, Singapore -- Project: Lee Treehouse -- Location: Singapore

Kerry Hill Architects, Singapore -- Project: The Lalu -- Location: Sun Moon Lake, Nantou, Taiwan, R.O.C.

Lab Architecture Studio with Bates Smart, Australia -- Project: Federation Square -- Location: Melbourne, Australia

Mathew & Ghosh Architects, India -- Project: Benjamin House -- Location: Bangalore, India

Shuhei Endo, Japan -- Project: SLOWTECTURE S -- Location: Maihara, Shiga, Japan