During 2011 WOHA has started to gain recognition for their green practices and distinctive approach to making commercial buildings. This year they also received the renowned Lubetkin Prize, awarded by the Royal Institute of British Architects RIBA.
Themes such as creating value through communal areas and permeability for climate and nature are all addressed in WOHA’s first monographic exhibition opening in Frankfurt on December 1, 2011. The exhibition will use examples of open tropical family homes, green high-rises and projects (still in the completion phase) and real examples such as their office and hotel complex in Singapore’PARKROYAL on Pickering’.
The exhibition showcases 19 of WOHA’s projects in total, all presented with large-format photos and plans. Excerpts from interviews and project texts will also be displayed with digital images and models as background.
WOHA Architects made their name in Asia in the late 1990s with the creation of open, single-family dwellings suitable for the tropics. Today they mainly design high-rises and large structures such as a mega residential park in India, or office and hotel towers in Singapore. Air-conditioning is merely an additional feature in most of these open structures, because the building structure itself provides the cooling. Natural lighting is standard, solar modules harvest energy for use in the building and water for domestic purposes and rainwater are reused.
WOHA architects from Singapore – Wong Mun Summ and Richard Hassell – have realized buildings and landscapes, interiors and exteriors in projects such as the Singapore School of the Arts and the seminal residential high-rise The Met in Bangkok, the latter which received the International Highrise Award 2010.
Habitusliving supports and acknowledges this kind of practice and hopes the exhibition will travel to South Asia and Australia very soon.
02.12.2011 – 29.04.2012, ground floor
Opening: Thursday, 01.12.2011, 19:00
Deutsches Architekturmuseum
Schaumainkai 43
Frankfurt a.M.
Germany
For more information visit: Dam Gallery Online.
A catalogue accompanying the exhibition is being published by Prestel Verlag.
