"i can also - though in no way claiming to represent or to analyze reality itself (these being the major gestures of western discourse) - isolate somewhere in the world (faraway) a certain number of features... and out of these deliberately form a system.
|
 |
Thursday, 15 October 09 - 11:10 PM (GMT -06:00) By ro / lu in white out |
| ||
"it is this system which i shall call: japan."
roland barthe envisioned japan as an unadulterated object - that eel skinned and served raw before your eyes. barthe's vision of a japan became a manifestation of satori, the zen term for an enlightened awareness of the nature of existence. enlightenment which can creep inside you following years of meditation or strike you in the flash of an instance. when zen master wumen achieved satori he wrote the following koan:
a thunder clap under the clear blue sky
all beings on earth open their eyes;
everything under earth bows together;
mount sumeru leaps up and dances.
i am no zen master. but i'm always amazed at how a topic as specific as japanese white (though its been graying recently) residential architecture can lead to so many different roads. surely there's something in that.
today amorphe presents a home for light beams, a place where nature enters a room unnoticed by its inhabitants. all homes have windows highlighting surfaces, but there's so much beauty in the image of an architect slaving to bring light into your everyday life in a purposeful and intentional way. blue screen house becomes a koan - you can't solve it to find enlightenment, it has no meaning, nor absurdity, rather it is meant to be experienced and reflected upon. i recommend watching the video here (just click on mov - it'll make sense when you get there).
hiatus - an interruption in time or continuity.
enjoy your weekend.
posted by nicolas allinder
"everything we hear is an echo. anyone can tell that echoes move forward and backward in time, in rings. but not everyone realizes that, as a result, silence becomes harder and harder for us to grasp... the echoes pouring through us out of the past...
|
|
|
Thursday, 08 October 09 - 09:39 PM (GMT -06:00) By ro / lu in white out |
| ||
innoshima no longer exists. another coastal town lost in the rush of japan's urbanization; the younger generations disappear into tokyo and its surrounding satellites in search of newness and change. they leave behind monuments to the past. kazuniro fujimoto documented several of these haunting subjects in the city of onomichi. these remnants of tradition most likely influenced his design of house in innoshima, a carcass beached along the port.
from the exterior you'd think gordon matta-clark had visited innoshima in its heyday, carving out another warehouse. most of the abscissions matta-clark left were demolished soon thereafter. they became a testament to the decay of the american city. in fujimoto's case, however, he has created a home in the form of ruins. house in innoshima looks like a suprematist's boat run ashore on japan's coast. shafts of light pours into the belly of the beast. whether or not it's inhabited seems secondary to its monolithic presence - a skeleton in the shipyard.
enjoy the weekend.
posted by nicolas allinder
"two bordering hyperbolic paraboloids are to be seen meeting on a straight line boundary immediately below the upper colonnade where 'branches' from the large tree like columns supporting the canopy over the crucifixion scene cross to form the central...
|
|
|
Thursday, 01 October 09 - 10:27 PM (GMT -06:00) By ro / lu in white out |
| ||
a mobius strip is a two dimensional object that can only exist in three dimensions; it is non-orientable. the mobius strip is also the source of inspiration for nmaeda atelier's celluloid jam. with their newest building, nmaeda atelier explore the boundaries between the inside and the outside. they've attempted this before here. this time it is not a picnic in the countryside. this time, the results are much more akin to a bizarre mixture of the organic flowing character of gaudi's park guell and the ascetic character of wittgenstein's house; a glaringly contradictory mixture of styles. the lifeless quality of the plastic strucutre somehow mixes well with the idea of the non-orientable, sinuous curves of the overlapping structure.
the mobius strip is also the source of inspiration for many artists, like escher, or the philosopher/writer alan watts. seems fitting for a man who once said, "really, the fundamental, ultimate mystery - the only thing you need to know to understand the deepest metaphysical secrets - is this: that for every outside there is an inside and for every inside there is an outside, and although they are different, they go together."
enjoy the weekend.
posted by nicolas allinder
m was supposedly instructed to go to a certain place, where she was brought into the presence of a man with a bluish mark on his face. the man, around thirty, never spoke while she was there, but his treatment was "incredibly effective". - h. murakami
|
|
|
Thursday, 24 September 09 - 10:24 PM (GMT -06:00) By ro / lu in white out |
| ||
takao shiotsuka ateliers' guest house is a temple to sensation. the brutalist facade, cut in a suprematist composition, belies an interior swimming in sublime emotion. it's a striking dichotomy - the kind one must experience standing under a light cannon in le corbusier's la tourette or sitting in a pew at ronchamp. sharp, abrasive geometry encapsulates a room brimming with light, the wavelengths shifting according to the elements both in the atmosphere and in the room. steven holl similarly explored the profound experience of light in his church in seattle, it's design animated by goethe's observation "if we look long through a blue pane of glass, everything afterwards appears in sunshine to the naked eye, even if the sky is gray and the scene colorless."
yet in a way contrary to holl, shiotsuka isolates the image of the sea from the full experience, rendering the ocean as an abstract expressionist painting. an experience to slowly drink in, to be subconsciously subsumed the way rothko would have wanted it; a religious experience transcending science. n guesthouse is not an experiment in chromatic space of visible wavelengths. it's poetry. the white walls are painted by the whims of the sea, at times feeding its inhabitants a tempest or others a moment of quiescence.
"we are nothing but a view of the world" - maurice merleau-ponty
enjoy the weekend.
posted by nicolas allinder
"do not do anything. it keeps drawing in the sense of touch of peripheral air, and the material and it piled up in an empty plate that keeps always projecting something moving always. then? it will keep being asked the person who peels off and breathes...
|
|
|
Thursday, 17 September 09 - 09:52 PM (GMT -06:00) By ro / lu in white out |
| ||
outside of the monks' quarters in the ryoan-ji temple near kyoto rests a small basin for purification. the kanji carved on the perimeter of the basin are meaningless unless combined with the kanji symbol for kuchi, represented by the basin's shape. together, these symbols, implied and inscribed, form the phrase "i only know plenty." or, "what one has is all on needs." for n maeda, all one needs is calm surroundings. then? is a contemporary temple to nature: the mountains constantly flowing by, shifting and altering, and yet always revealing the persistent image of a "forest". though far from the anti-materialist groundings of buddhism, then? is still a stunning place to watch life unfold.
all of this reminded me of a quote by henri-frederic amiel:
"any landscape is a condition of the spirit."
have a great weekend.
posted by nicolas allinder
"'they think it was a gesture, a protest... and so it is hard for them to think of that, or just a pure act of destruction; vandalism is the other.' 'and, for you?' inquired the interviewer. 'it's poetry', rauschenberg replied.
|
|
|
Thursday, 10 September 09 - 08:11 PM (GMT -06:00) By ro / lu in white out |
| ||
"beniya mukayu --- richness in emptiness ---
'an empty room will be filled with light because of it's emptiness.' these are the words of the famous chinese philosopher zhuangzi, who lived 2,300 years ago. his words signify that a mind entirely free of everything exists in a place of nothing --- a place belonging to nowhere.
'mukayu' is also a word from zhuangzi, meaning 'non-existence', 'non-purpose' or 'the natural state as it is', as used in his essay 'mukayu country'.
in 'mukayu country', the values of people are overturned. things considered useless are instead regarded as possessing great value.
take for example a large tree standing beside a road. becasue the tree is bent and twisted, it is of no use for timber and so is left uncut. and because it has grown so tall, it as able to give a pleasant shade to weary travelers on the road.
consider the time that remains as empty space in a busy schedule book. it is in fact a time filled with freedom, because it is empty. it is the peace of mind found in the shade of a large tree that had initially appeared useless.
such are the thoughts and feelings that reside in the name of this inn, 'mukayu'."
-kiyoshi sey takeyama (of amorphe)
i can imagine robert rauschenberg moving about amorphe's retreat in midorigoaka erasing de koonigs work. for him it was poetry not politics. amorphe's retreat in the middle of tokyo may just be the same thing.
i recommend looking into amorphe's beautiful work and interesting texts.
posted by nicolas allinder
"while one part of him said 'my brow my skull my jaw my hands' and the other said 'wait. wait. you cant know yet. you cannot know yet whether what you see is what you are looking at or what you are believing. wait. wait." - faulkner's absalom, absalom!
|
|
|
Thursday, 03 September 09 - 09:29 PM (GMT -06:00) By ro / lu in white out |
| ||
if i ever came across oborozukiyo house at night, a chill would certainly shiver up my neck rendering me uncomfortably alert. not out of fear, but unwarranted nervousness. the same way i feel when looking into those empty painted eyes of a woman sitting on her bed, staring out a window; a tension that hopper mastered so well. or the haunted feeling evoked in burchfield's painting of a dilapidated house in the wyoming countryside.
there is something ecclesiastical with this building as well as last week's, though this time much more intense in its emotion. i could imagine an old expressionist architect emigrating from germany to the us in the 30's, then to japan after the war where he would re-imagine the gothic revival church into a home and sanctuary. walled in, the ascetic interior becomes a perfect place to recede from society and read thus spoke zarathustra, or to disappear into a sublime nature.
in reality, kan izue has probably always lived in japan - though he did lecture in germany and may have had an opportunity to visit einstein tower. he may even have learned about bruno taut and his belief that "objects serve psychologically to mirror the actor's emotions and gestures." clearly i'm spooked. so, what do you think of this home?
please, check out the work of kan izue architect and associates. there is a palpable ascetic feeling that courses through his work. and while you're at it, if you haven't, i suggest reading charles holland's post about marine architecture, which opened this can of worms.
posted by nicolas allinder
"the cook (who cooks nothing at all) takes a living eel, sticks a long pin into its head, and scrapes it, skins it... the eel (or the piece of vegetable, of shellfish), crystallized in grease, like the branch of salzburg, is reduced to a tiny clump of..."
|
|
|
Thursday, 27 August 09 - 10:54 PM (GMT -06:00) By ro / lu in white out |
| ||
it takes a real master to intentionally present a piece of raw material in an enticing way. sashimi is nothing more than a piece of uncooked flesh, offered in a way i can't seem to resist. likewise, the simplicity and boldness of naito hiroshi's m' house struck me immediately. despite the rigid geometry of its' profile, m' house evoked within me memories of warmth and comfort. as a child i would spend weeks at my grandfather's house in les sables. i can still remember the coolnes of the concrete in the morning as i pressed my hand down on the walls surrounding his vegetable garden. that coolness turned to warmth and even scalding heat as the sun rose higher and the lizards retired to the damp recesses of the garden. even in my youth the concrete was beginning to crumble, plants piercing through its cracks. concrete has always had this duality for me, soft and hard.
m' house seems to capture this duality. its' bold geometry and raw facade belies a space of comforting and almost ecclesiastical character. its a place to escape the heat and bask in the presence of plants breaking through the strong plane of the roof line. sheltered from the city but not enclosed. i really want to sit and write in that living room.
please, take a look at the work of naito architect and associates... and again, the empire of signs by barthes.
posted by nicolas allinder
"in this analogy, the bands across the site were like the floors of the tower, each program different and autonomous, but modified and 'polluted' through the proximity of all others. their existence was as unstable as any regime would want to make them."
|
|
|
Thursday, 20 August 09 - 10:12 PM (GMT -06:00) By ro / lu in white out |
| ||
if koolhaas had his way, the parc de la villette would be a complete mess, a muddled and confused landscape. his proposal involved a striated landscape with each band representing a particular ecosystem. a desert landscape would unfurl adjacent to a pine forest; it would be "density without architecture, a culture of 'invisible' congestion" manifesting the frenetic nature of the modern metropolis - basically, an uncomfortable place for a picnic.
it feels as though fall is approaching way to fast here in minneapolis. which reminds me that picnics are great. some people take them very seriously, bringing along wicker baskets and plush blankets. they sip wine from glasses and eat delicious home cooked meals pulled from tupperware. it's a very civilized experience in nature, one that n maeda atelier aimed to explore with their latest creation picnic, the blending of the inside and outside.
walking through picnic would feel a bit like walking through koolhaas's proposal. it's a striated home, striped with bands of water and plantings acting as a blending of nature and architecture. unlike koolhaas's proposal, however, picnic creates a visual density with architecture, a culture of barely visible congestion. the mountains, resting at a safe distance, fill the view of this relatively sterile home. it would be a great to see nature run wild through the house, instead of being controlled and constricted. i waver between loving the inventiveness of picnic and feeling utterly overwhelmed - a pickle n maeda's put me in before.
n maeda atelier's work is truly unique, intriguing, and maturing. can't wait to see what they come up with next.
posted by nicolas allinder
"the streets of this city have no names. there is of course a written address, but it has only a postal value, it refers to a plan (by districts and by blocks, in no way geometric), knowledge of which is accessible to the postman, not to the visitor...
|
|
|
Thursday, 13 August 09 - 10:55 PM (GMT -06:00) By ro / lu in white out |
| ||
... the largest city in the world is practically unclassified, the spaces which compose it in detail are unnamed. domiciliary obliteration seems inconvenient to those (like us) who have been used to asserting that the most rational (a principle by virtue of which the best urban toponymy would be that of numbered streets, as in the united states or in kyoto, a chinese city). tokyo meanwhile reminds us that the rational is merely one system among others. for there to be a mastery of the real (in this case, the reality of addresses), it suffices that there be a system, even if this system is apparently illogical, uselessly complicated, curiously disparate: a good bricolage can not only work for a very long time, as we know: it can also satisfy millions of inhabitants inured, furthermore, to all the perfection of technological civilization."
there is no distinction between the buildings that compose kama house, a single family compound designed by komada architect's office. though the buildings appear distinctly modern, even miesian, the architectural rhythm flows in a completely different way - much like when the de stijl movement embraced the diagonal. hidenobu jinnai spoke of the geography of tokyo, "here, the essence remains invisible if the basic spatial structure, with its organic ties to nature and the universe, is not understood." kama house is designed with a fluid and organic intention; constantly morphing as you step from one space to another and shift from inside to out. the origins of this compound's design will remain invisible, but it doesn't matter much to me. kama house feels arcane yet comforting.
"this city can be known only by an activity of an ethnographic kind: you must orient yourself in it not by book, by address, but by walking, by sight, by habit, by experience; here every discovery is intense and fragile, it can be repeated or recovered only by memory of the trace it has left in you: to visit a place for the first time is thereby to begin to write it: the address not being written, it must establish its own writing."
check out the zama house of komada architect's office and the empire of signs by roland barthes, both oddly zen.
"if you pull your camera back and look at human beings in a different scale you will observe simply that in summer people prefer to wear short pants. at night people like to drink and make merry. in other words, human beings are not so different..."
|
|
|
Thursday, 06 August 09 - 10:46 PM (GMT -06:00) By ro / lu in white out |
| ||
...but how they do is different according to culture, time and region."
in tokyo, you can find surgical masks specifically for flying; they're labeled "high tech breath moisteners". this shouldn't come as a surprise. simply look at the way atelier bow wow's yoshiharu tsukamoto describes (translated by kuu architects) the environment and behavior: "creatures or animals make the environments around them naturally. similarly he wants architecture to have this liveliness. in tokyo, different people create different fragmented elements, which then becomes the special environment." so it shouldn't be surprising, given the sheer variety of homes constructed in japan, that level architects built middle meguro house, a home with a slide inside, specifically for kids.
mariko terada believes the japanese love "newness and change." she remarked in totalscape that japan's urban scenery is constantly changing, even at the small scale. just go to a grocery store and watch the products change from week to week, "beer, juice, cookies, magazines, every category of disposable consumer goods is constantly being replenished with new, better, or simply different items." it seems buildings themselves are also seen more or less as a disposable consumer good. as jinnai hidenobu noted during his wandering travels through the chaotic tokyo streets, it is difficult to find a hundred year old building in tokyo. japan has been pushing for more and more regional context and individuality since the modernist period of "dreary, decontextualized uniformity." today, the japanese are more interested in a "pluralistic sense of values," or slides in houses.
the broad variety and sometimes outrageousness of many houses being built symbolizes a return to idealistic individualism that toyo ito felt disappeared in the 70's. i'd like to think that today's generation of architects have a great amount of hope for the future. middle meguro house by level architects stands as a prime example. either that or it reflects the same sentiment as a parade in a fellini movie.
i recommend looking into the work of level architects and the feasibility of building a slide in your own home.
posted by nicolas allinder
"altogether, the castle, which dominates the modern city of himeji, looks impregnable, yet its upper parts in gleaming white with grey-green roofs, manifest considerable elegance."
|
|
|
Thursday, 30 July 09 - 10:27 PM (GMT -06:00) By ro / lu in white out |
| ||
if you're going to build a castle, make it sturdy enough to survive attacks; or, so decided the 16th century japanese. they started building castles, like himeji castle, with stone rather than wood. then again, at the time japan was in the midst of civil war and the arrival of the cannon forced a change in architecture. today the owners of himeji observatory house may just fear the dissolution of society due to the economic downturn. that might explain why, despite the absence of a double moat or earth ramparts, himeji observatory house appears impregnable. much like its ancient counterpart to the northwest, himeji castle, kino architect's himeji observatory house saves the more elegant gestures for the top - isolated from society.
you may begin to wonder what the cold facade, so domineering in stature, protects. maybe it's the home of a recluse politician or ceo, peering down on everyone else. otherwise, its a historian trying to keep a constant eye on the shimmering upper stories of himeji castle - he lives in the present, but always keeps a watchful eye on the past. that might explain the old kitchen table, which seems to fit in so well within the confines of the new modern castle. it's funny how well old ideas fits within the new.
i recommend keeping an eye on the great work of kino architects.
posted by nicolas allinder
"human memory is a marvelous but fallacious instrument... the memories which lie within us are not carved in stone; not only do they tend to become erased as the years go by, but often they change, or even grow, by incorporating extraneous features."
|
|
|
Thursday, 16 July 09 - 09:29 PM (GMT -06:00) By ro / lu in white out |
| ||
i've never been here, but i feel like i have. the memorial to chigasaki city has the dream-like tone of a murakami book. maybe it's a hazy confusion, the sort i experienced when watching hiroshima mon amour - a movie about many things, including oblivion and the loss of memory. primo levi expanded on this saying, "for the young people of the 1980's, they [the events of world war two] are matters associated with their grandfathers: distant, blurred, 'historical'. these young people are besieged by today's problems, different, urgent: the nuclear threat, unemployment, the depletion of resources, the demographic explosions, frenentically innovative technologies to which they must adjust." and in a way, we continue to deal with the repercussions from our inherited past - like nuclear threats. that's why architects like maya lin can create the vietnam memorial or hiroyuki shinozaki can create this stunning memorial for chigasaki city.
maybe it's just the documentation, but this ominous eye, foreign yet fitting, resonated inside me. this must be a sign that primo was right when he rejected the notion of incommunicability - the word itself a mouthful. there is something eerie and yet intriguing about this monument. the dark inner eye is palliated by a filigreed egg shell. there is comthing uncomfortably beautiful about this memorial, the way harold edgerton's photographs of a nuclear bomb are both aesthetically beautiful and conceptually horrifying. or the opening scene of hiroshima mon amour: two lovers, tangled in each other's naked bodies, are slowly dusted by a sheet of either snow or radioactive dust. it's hard to say which. whatever it is about this place, i'm enthralled with memorial for chigasaki city.
i highly recommend looking into the memorial for chigasaki city and if you haven't already, check out issey miyake's article, a flash of memory, in the new york times.
posted by nicolas allinder
"tradition is very important but i'm not sticking to the details of tradition, i like to pick up the philosophy of the tradition... respect of the environment... we always try to combine environment and architecture. architecture becomes very quiet."
|
|
|
Thursday, 09 July 09 - 09:54 PM (GMT -06:00) By ro / lu in white out |
| ||
they will probably tear down the nagasin capsule towers. the head of demolition will oversee operations from his portable office that, from the exterior will look remarkably like house in nagoya2. metabolists envisioned cities of capsule towers emerging out of the ocean or floating in the air. massive structures stood out on the landscape; giant floating double helixes and skyscrapers rising out of the water. rather than place architecture in the environment, suppose design office took the environment and placed it in the architecture. and oddly, as kengo kuma noted, the architecture becomes very quiet.
but makoto tanijiri of suppose design office didn't want nature to roam freely in this tiny two story home (less than 500 square feet). he encased a lot of it, an interesting gesture i've explored before. maybe it's an attempt to keep the living space clean and insects out of the food. i'm not sure, though it doesn't bother me much.
house in nagoya2's humble and bland exterior belies the provocative interior - filled with life and light. i highly recommend looking into the work of suppose design office.
posted by nicolas allinder
"since we are not about to impose the remove-your-clothes-and-change rule on our guests, we tend to not entertain strangers that often. our interior world stays much cleaner that way."
|
|
|
Thursday, 02 July 09 - 09:36 PM (GMT -06:00) By ro / lu in white out |
| ||
what are you willing to give up for your home? house kw, along with many other white outs, test our daily rituals. i remember reading a while back a comment about schemata architecture office's very severe 63.02 (referring of course to the axis the house is cut on). the commenter said, "if it has a bathroom, i could live there with my ipod and a microwave owen." his typo. these houses must also be tested by their environments - i've often wondered how the white facades hold up in a city with tons of exhaust and fumes.
s. takeoka atelier's house kw is certainly not the most severe white out. but i don't think you could put just any old furniture in this house.
i recommend looking into s. takeoka atelier's work and reading soil in the city (via south willard) which inspired this post and used the term white out...
posted by nicolas allinder
"why do architects continue to insist on the autonomous character of not only houses but architecture in general? my answer is that the creation of architecture is not about plans or elevations - it is not about physical shapes...
|
|
|
Thursday, 25 June 09 - 10:08 PM (GMT -06:00) By ro / lu in white out |
| ||
...the subject of architecture is invisible space - something like a hologram generated by the relationship between what is being observed and the observer. i am always preoccupied by the question of borders delimiting space or of territory. when i think about architecture, i do not perceive it in terms of its exterior form, as i might with sculpture. my concern continues to be with not shapes but borders and territories. that is what architecture is to me."
unlike ken yokogawa, i still don't know what architecture is to me. but i do like the concept of a subconscious response to space. there is an elegant balance to this space; it reads almost like music.
there is something to be said about a nice clean image. yet, there is something equally enticing about a hazy image as well. i wouldn't want to see s. nagai house any other way. i know very little about this home in yokohama, but given yesterday's bender of de stijl and suprematism, this house seemed like a pretty good follow up.
i recommend exploring the work and writings (if you don't take it too seriously) of ken yokogawa.
posted by nicolas allinder
"an ephemeral structure built to house a poetic impulse... devoid of ornamentation except what may be placed in it to satisfy some aesthetic need of the moment... purposely leaving some thing unfinished for the play of the imagination to complete"
|
|
|
Thursday, 18 June 09 - 10:46 PM (GMT -06:00) By ro / lu in white out |
| ||
over the course of his career, gunnar asplund designed very peculiar structures - which were at first neoclassical in style, then uniquely modern. villa snellman, a perfect example of his quirky modernism, manipulated traditional swedish architectural motifs. in villa snellman, asplund disrupted the rhythm of the fenestration. his reasoning seemed largely derived from the internal conditions of the house, rather than the exterior, resulting in circumstances like a main entrance and secondary entrance adjacent to one another. tomaoki uno's "the good fortune root (it comes and the [tsu] is dense) thousand year house" (thanks babelfish!) explores the same concepts - playfully updating tradition.
uno's thousand year house reflects its namesake well: it's a relic. this silent, monastic home tucked in to a hillside seems like the perfect rustic escape - and yet, it has all the qualities of modern home. it could almost be a modern monastery to nature.
i recommend checking out asplund, tomaoki uno and le corbusier's monastery of sainte-marie de la tourette (just because!)
posted by nicolas allinder
"but the most interesting thing is," mityok continued dolefully and a little despondently, "there was no door there. the hatch is painted on the outside, but on the inside it's solid wall, with gauges and stuff."
|
|
|
Thursday, 11 June 09 - 11:01 PM (GMT -06:00) By ro / lu in white out |
| ||
raw persimmon's owner just might be a russian constructivist expat living out his final days atop a developed hillside in japan. i'll call him omon. omon must have chosen this home, what appears to be an old conservatory now turned condo, for its strong defining lines. raw persimmon has a very striking exterior indeed; it exudes an odd sort of triumphance, projecting itself out to the towns people below. yet, like the soviet space program this house's exterior, puffing it's chest out, is filled with nothing.
i was at first dissapointed with the interior. it seemed too plain. the view was stunning, but it had the commonalities associated with most homes. raw persimmon's interior should have been, well, more raw. there are of course occasional spaces and conditions befitting of that cosmic exterior, however, it feels overall like any other dwelling. not necessarily a bad thing, yet not the sort of space omon the constructivist would be toiling away in inventing the next rusakov club. i've since grown to enjoy raw persimmon, inside and out.
i could almost imagine this home sitting at the edge of town. those passing by look up and wonder - who lives in there? the owner, not omon but rather a regular japanese man, would be sitting on his tattered brown plaid couch wondering, "what should i eat for dessert tonight? raw persimmon?"
i recommend looking into on designs work. inspiring to say the least.
posted by nicolas allinder
nic the intern presents white out | mr + mrs mori
|
|
|
Thursday, 21 May 09 - 11:10 PM (GMT -06:00) By ro / lu in white out |
| ||
white out's an ongoing series of posts drawn from a presentation that our winter intern nicolas allinder gave about his research into recent modern residential japanese architecture.
about a year ago, my grandfather was trying to find the way back to our trail in the back country of bretagne. he was using an outdated map and didn’t realize that the path no longer existed. we ended up stumbling through cow pastures and eventually wound up in an abandoned town. i walked through the small compound of buildings trying to recreate a past i could never know. old worn chairs rested near the moss covered roofs. after talking to matt about an upcoming post, i was reminded of this story when coming upon the amazing house for mr. and mrs. mori by masaki mori, shin yokoo and takeshi yamagishi.
there is so much mystery to seeing an image and reading a paragraph of oddly eloquent translated japanese, like the following: “this building is a kind of module that updates the previous scenery, and could be a software that won't function by itself. in nature, there are some enjoyments, which is to observe by a telescope, to look into by a microscope, and to adjust the magnification between them. it awakes with small bird's twittering in the morning, and eyes catch the wild bird coming to pick up the insect. looking the herb planted outside from the kitchen, and enjoying a meal with the familiy having the conversation of the flower blooming in the bank. taking a nap sitting on a sofa while looking at mountains in the distance, and falling asleep hearing the sound of insects at night. it is exactly the life that you can feel nature around you.”
there’s a story being told here and i can almost grasp it. stumbling on the house for mr. and mrs. mori feels a bit like seeing images of angkor wat. i wonder how this place will hold up over time. i wonder what life is like here. at moments it looks like a set of abandoned shipping containers and at other times it seems like a home completely in tune with its surroundings, framing and enveloping nature.
i highly recommend looking into the work of shin yokoo and takeshi yamagishi (aka datar architects).
posted by nicolas allinder
how could i resist?
please enjoy the long weekend everyone.
posted by matt olson
nic the intern presents white out - kengo kuma
|
|
|
Thursday, 14 May 09 - 11:37 PM (GMT -06:00) By ro / lu in white out |
| ||
white out's an ongoing series of posts drawn from a presentation that our winter intern nicolas allinder gave about his research into recent modern residential japanese architecture.
nothing exists in a vacuum. i recently found myself wanting to write about kengo kuma's oribe tea house, an homage to the 16th century tea ceremony master of hideyoshi, when I saw another of his houses on a daily dose of architecture.
last week i wrote about nishizawa’s interest in architecture as reflection of culture. nishizawa has this great quote about the way that despite being a highly regulated society, japan’s “cities seem very disorganized.” this seems like a beautiful concept to me, the regulations imposed by differing traditional values still manages to breed variety.
kuma’s oribe tea house looks nothing like traditional japanese tea huts, which are constructed using thatch, mud plaster and paper. tea hut design is driven by a desire for harmony, respect, purity and tranquility. furuta oribe, kuma’s muse, is well known for his irregular pottery and there is some speculation that oribe’s pottery design was influenced by foreign textiles (making oribe unpopular when japan became obstinately isolationist). today, kuma has revived these spirits and imbued them with a new modern context. there is that typical modern lightness to the structure. the ribbed structure also evokes the desire to create intimacy while retaining a connection to the surroundings off the tea house. kuma’s aggressive and stunning tea house therefore has many traditional roots and perfectly manifests oribe’s style.
i highly recommend looking into kuma's tea houses. the tea house at the kunst in Frankfurt is an excellent example of a new advancement on the old concept of bubbletecture.
have a great weekend.
posted by nicolas allinder
... More items are available in our News Archive
