Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
What if we could work in a park? Kengo Kuma blurs the line between nature and the built environment for his new mixed-use Park Habitat Tower for Canadian developer Ian Gillespie.
The result is a building design driven by performance; a better relationship to nature that will make this project a more meaningful place to work and live.
With Park Habitat, Gillespie worked with Kuma to design a building that brings together residential and natural spaces in the city center.
Designed to elevate and celebrate nature in downtown San Jose, Park Habitat is composed of workspace, retail and a museum, interwoven with vegetation and a verdant landscape.
Bordered by the Convention Center, the Tech Interactive, San Jose Civic Center and Plaza de Cesar Chavez, the project blends deep sustainability, natural elements and an expansive public realm, to form a connection point and an anchor for a cultural district in the city.
The 22-storey building will yield 1.28 million square feet, divided between office space, retail, and commercial space for its immediate neighbor, the Tech Interactive museum.
Four levels of parking will be included below ground.
The building’s façade is given texture with its irregular spread of floor-to-ceiling windows, vertical planter modules, and vertical louvers. A few portals open up across the massing for park-like terraces.
However, the facade’s material choice and relative aesthetic restraint differentiate Park Habitat from the original examples of Metabolist architecture.
Gillespie’s proposal—one of the Canadian firm’s five Silicon Valley proposals—includes several approaches to reduce the building’s environmental impact.
Kuma’s biophilic façade is the most visible solution. It is a protective layer of louvers and planter modules that will provide passive climate control by minimizing direct sunlight’s effects.
The firm states it is influenced by the growth and form of trees in the forest, pointing out that they offer smaller plants space to flourish on bark and irregular growth with knots and holes.
The design here has a notable ideological connection with the post-war Japanese Metabolism movement.
Other traditions of Japanese design aesthetic, such as layering and the use of natural materials like wood, clearly distinguish this project as the first of a few that could spark a renaissance in Silicon Valley.
“At Park Habitat,” states Gillespie, “the intent was clear from the onset.”
“For our first significant project in Silicon Valley I chose Kengo Kuma for a very deliberate reason: Kuma-San has risen to the pinnacle of his profession by blurring the lines between nature and the built environment. His practice is dedicated to making buildings less definitive or solid and more ephemeral. In essence, creating a particular condition more than a particular architecture.”
Architects: Kengo Kuma & Associates
Developer: Westbank Corp.
