Hazukashi House, Kyoto by Alts Design Office
Tag: japan
We work late
Spectacular black & white Tokyo cityscape photography by Martin Stavars
We find space
House in Fukawa, Japan by ‘Suppose Design Office’
We want a cabin
Final Wooden House in Kumamoto, Japan by Sou Fujimoto Architects / Photographed by Iwan Baan
Words from the architect: I thought of making an ultimate wooden architecture. It was conceived by just mindlessly stacking 350mm square.
Lumber is extremely versatile. In an ordinary wooden architecture, lumber is effectively differentiated according to functions in various localities precisely because it is so versatile. Columns, beams, foundations, exterior walls, interior walls, ceilings, floorings, insulations, furnishings, stairs, window frames, meaning all. However, I thought if lumber is indeed so versatile then why not create architecture by one rule that fulfills all of these functions. I envisioned the creation of new spatiality that preserves primitive conditions of a harmonious entity before various functions and roles differentiated.
There are no separations of floor, wall, and ceiling here. A place that one thought was a floor becomes a chair, a ceiling, a wall from various positions. The floor levels are relative and spatiality is perceived differently according to one’s position. Here, people are distributed three-dimensionally in the space. This is a place like an amorphous landscape with a new experience of various senses of distances. Inhabitants discover, rather than being prescribed, various functionalities in these convolutions.
This bungalow no longer fits the category of wooden architecture. If wooden architecture is merely something made from wood, then wood itself surpasses the architectural procedures to directly become a “place where people live” in this bungalow. It is of an existence akin to primitive conditions before architecture. Rather than just a new architecture, this is a new origin, a new existence.
Slippery Slope
House K by world renowned Japanese architect Sou Fujimoto / photographs by Iwan Baan, text by designboom:
Sou fujimoto‘s ‘house k’ is a voluminous, crescent-shaped home in northeastern osaka’s dense urban fabric. the approach to an disproportionate L shaped site is one of a soaring, thickened ground plane. pressed against the neighbors’ homes on three sides and bordered by a grove of trees, the rectangular volume literally grows out of the ground with a gentle concave motion until it peaks at the eastern-most point. the canopy therefore becomes a striking visual object from the exterior while providing the family with much-needed exterior space in the form of a rooftop terrace. the habitable roof additionally confronts the ubiquitous concrete slabs with a composition of trees in faceted metal planters.
Dot Dot Dot
“I’m Here, but Nothing” – black light art exhibition by Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama, 2000 using fluorescent sticker spots to fill an ordinary living room, giving the impression of a world seen through a magical, hallucinatory veil.
We are surrounded
‘A-art house’ by designed by Japanese architect Kazuyo Sejima (of the Japanese studio SANAA) in collaboration with Yuko Hasegawa (chief curator of Tokyo’s Museum of Contemporary Art) for the Inujima art house project inI nujima, Japan / Photographed by Iwan Baan
