2015

A concrete tree trunk growing in the middle of a commercial street in Tokyo, an airport terminal that looks almost like a bird’s wing, a skyscraper facade that seems to move like ocean waves, a visitors’ center perfectly integrated into the landscape of Taiwan’s largest lake – nature is everpresent in Japanese architect Norihiko Dan’s buildings. His architecture never stands alone, for Dan always seeks symbiosis; this appears in his combination of geometric-archetypical with organic forms, in his urban planning projects, which bring submerged historic and cultural identities back to light, as well as in the ecological orientation of his buildings. With dramatic contrasts in architectural language and choice of materials Norihiko Dan insistently calls for a relationship between human beings and their surroundings.

Laka Competitions invites designers from around the world to submit their ideas of ‘architecture that reacts’. That means architecture which is able to respond and adjust dynamically to the current needs and circumstances. These circumstances are often unpredictable, but their consequences can be crucial. The architecture that reacts is the architecture that lives as a living organism, since it responds to the external stimuli and it develops because of it.— to react is to live