Translating Nature to Architecture
This doubleheader post presents a complete video (above) of a lecture by Sou Fujimoto and an interview (below) with Fujimoto by Neeraj Bhatia.
The Japanese architect came to Houston to accept the second annual Spotlight: The Rice Design Alliance Prize. The award recognizes an exceptionally gifted architect in the early phase of their professional career.
Neeraj Bhatia is a Wortham Fellow and Professor at the Rice School of Architecture. He interviewed Sou Fujimoto before his lecture on September 7th. (If you cannot view the video, try watching it on YouTube here.)
Neeraj Bhatia: What are your impressions of Houston?
Sou Fujimoto: I’m not sure how Houston is, because I only saw it by car.
NB: That is half of the experience.
SF: I was surprised to see so many rich trees on the street. In Japan we don’t have such trees almost covering the street. It was really impressive, the growing trees, powerful trees. Compared to Tokyo, Houston is completely different. Tokyo has tiny, crowded houses. The streets are winding. I was born in Hokkaido, a northern island that is rather newly developed. In that area, towns are built on a grid. We use a car to go everywhere.
NB: Do you think your work is specific to the Japanese context?
SF: I hope our ideas could be fundamental to the human body and experience. Most of our works are in Japan. We are doing a small project in Europe, one art museum in Shanghai, and one very small thing in Los Angeles. I don’t want to limit our projects to a very narrow Japanese situation, but to encounter more and more various situations, to take inspiration from the context.
NB: In your projects, the occupants are often the final designers. There is an “openness” in that occupants have to find ways to use and transform the space, to incorporate their own functions, which repositions the role of the architect to design a field of conditions where a range of possibilities can occur. How do you design for this type of openness and indeterminacy of use?
SF: That is a very important point. In a sense, we design very clear form and shape. But at the same time, that architecture or that space is not forcing people to do something, but allows people to do various kinds of things. I like to say it is a design of relationships. We can make a frame. But how to use the frame is more open to the people or to the public. How to design open but clear frames is a very exciting point. It is not just one beautiful room. It could have different viewpoints or hint for people to behave in a different way. As an architect, I like to propose a very clear frame of the space. But that space is not the dominant thing. It’s like designing a forest. The forest has a strong impression and image. But at the same time, how to use the forest is very open.
NB: I like the forest analogy; the forest to me implies a field of gradients and experience. I see this tension in your work between the clear form of the exterior of the project and the gradation on the interior. What are the characteristics of architecture that you deem necessary to be clear or legible, and conversely, which parts of projects are you comfortable keeping indeterminate?
SF: We can make one architecture, which is very clear, but at the same time has gradient situations as well. Architecture, finally, should have strong existence, not blurring of space. But the experience of people is more gradient, more blurring things. We can propose strong, clear form but that can create gradient situations. The gradation concept comes from traditional Japanese architecture. In Japan, we have inside and outside, and between inside and outside. We have sliding doors to create in-between space. That kind of thing I am very interested in, how to translate such traditional things into contemporary architecture is an exciting point. Not just using such really flexible things like sliding doors or paper doors, but using static, fixed form that at the same time enables us to feel gradient situations. Sounds contradiction but nice co-existence.
NB: It reminds me of another Japanese precedent, the megastructural and metabolist projects from the 1960s, that set up a clear frame or infrastructure allowing gradients of experiences and flexibility within. When I look at Fumihiko Maki’s Shinjuku Project and your Center for Disturbed Children, there are co-relations in the plan figure in the way you employ the unit as a clustering mechanism. Do you see your work as a continuation or as a critique of this other Japanese project?
SF: I have some kind of continuation from the metabolist work, but at the same time I am doing a completely different strategy. As you said, the metabolists used a huge megastructure, then the small units change and change. That huge megastructure is a basic static system. I’m rather interested in mutual relation systems, not one big column, one big trunk, such kind of hierarchical systems. The approaches are very different, but at the same time there is similarity. How to translate nature to architecture—that starting point is similar but the method is opposite.
Site plan for Residential Treatment Center for Emotionally Disturbed Children in Hokkaido
Shinjuku station site plan
NB: In some of your smaller scale projects—House N, House O, for instance —there is an idea of gradation or blurring within the scale of the house, the thesis plays itself out in the house as an individual unit. In some of the larger projects —Tokyo apartments, Center for Disturbed Children—you employ the unit and are concerned with how it clusters and creates in-between spaces that are indeterminate. The recent library competition you won in Sweden seems to employ one of the concepts from your house projects at a larger scale. Do you think some of the ideas in your work could be translated to the scale of the city? Is there a system at work that is scaleless from the intimacy of the house to the grandeur of the urban block?
SF: I hope there is one simple idea that could be a small house and operate on a more urban scale. In the case of House N, we have a box in box in box system. That system is in a sense scaleless. We can think of a bigger box over the site of the private house, including the two or three or four houses, or one area of the urban system. That kind of scaleless system is very exciting to me. If you use the one box unit, like the children’s hospital, it is not scaleless, it has some specific scales determined by each box. We have two different strategies, one is scaleless and gradient, another one is to use rather specific scaled units to create a scaleless whole.
Model for House N
NB: Would you like to work on larger scale projects?
SF: Treating both small and larger scales is more comfortable for me. Thinking about small scales could inspire me to experiment more and more. To treat larger scales, we have to deal with complicated situations. Sometimes a complicated situation inspires me to develop different ideas that does not come from small simple scales.
Musashino Art University Library model
NB: Some of your work has an amazing balance between determined and indeterminate spaces. How do you teach that to students? Does that require the architect to be more precise or less precise?
SF: That is a very difficult, big question. In my office, the process is very simple. In the case of the Tokyo Apartments, the idea to stack the houses was just a starting point. Then we tried many variations, of course the balance of the shapes, meeting the regulations. Gradually, gradually the idea grew better. After five or six months, I would say it matured. How to judge this is good or this is bad finally depends on my sense of architecture. That is a very important point. I hope students, young students, get their own sense of architecture. I cannot explain it, but it is very important. It’s nice to travel around, to see masterpieces, to see Mies’ architecture [gestures towards MFAH]. The proportion, the volumes, the materials, very pure, amazing space. So gradually we will learn. So I’m still in the process of learning.
NB: Speaking of seeing the masterpieces, what buildings had you seen as a student, as an architect, or before being an architect that changed your perception and helped you orient yourself as an architect.
SF: Many, many. One is Le Corbusier’s Unite in Marseilles. That is amazing, that very square buildings can move and impress people. I learned how geometry and scale is very important. And of course Mies van der Rohe’s New National Gallery, just one space, but impressive. I don’t know why, but it is really amazing. Of course Louis Kahn’s Kimbell, how light and material can create something beyond light and material and just space. And I was shocked by Frank Gehry’s MIT building. That was the first Frank Gehry building I visited, four or five years ago. I felt very comfortable in that space and I didn’t know why. I stayed there for one hour. It is like an artificial jungle, something between nature and architecture, really complicated, very artificial. At that time I thought this is something different from the modern architecture masterpieces. I like to, not recreate or copy, I like to find out why this is possible, why these strange comfortable feelings are possible.
NB: You have described your work as formless form. What do you mean by that?
SF: It is very difficult to explain. The architectural form could be very strict or very clear, at the same time it could create a gradient blurring situation. Form is not just form. There is some kind of duality or contradiction. I like to express such unexplainable situations with “formless form.” Our children’s hospital has a very clear form, but it looks irregular, just random things. In the modern age, the form was like a great system or regular repetition; it is a very clear form. In the 21st century, what looks like a chaotic or irregular situation is a form.
Residential Treatment Center for Emotionally Disturbed Children in Hokkaido
NB: What books do you recommend or consider essential?
SF: One book that influenced me was about Einstein’s theory of space and time. Of course I don’t understand deeply that kind of theory, but that was my first experience perceiving space as space. That was very influential because space could be distorted or the density of the space could be changed. Another one was a theory of science, Order from Chaos, explaining orderless order. It helped me see something beyond Corbusier just after my school days. Roland Barthes’ Empire of Science is about Japanese culture. Of course I am Japanese so I am interested in different viewpoints on traditional Japanese culture. French people understand deeply or sometimes misunderstand. An unexpected viewpoint to our culture is very exciting.
NB: Where do you think the role of the architect in the next century is best positioned?
SF: Based on very fundamental things, architects will make space for people to live or stay or spend time. That includes private houses, public space, and huge infrastructures. We have to deal with the climate problems, but not just climate problems. Inspired by such problems, we have to think of new fundamental spaces for people. The basic point is not changing, but we have new problems and new viewpoints.
NB: You refer to your work as primitive futures. What role do you ascribe to technology in the work of your office? How do you use technology in your design process?
SF: I like to use all the current technologies in the architectural process. We are collaborating with very nice structural engineers who use computer programs to create very complicated structures. I like to introduce various kinds of technologies to realize our primitive feelings to new architecture. Technology is not just a method but nice inspiration to get to a different viewpoint.
NB: You’ve also described your work as situated between the paradigm of the cave and the nest. Is there a post-cave paradigm emerging in your work or larger-scale projects?
SF: Yeah, yeah. Recently we had the opportunity to do a much larger project than private houses. Thinking about houses, the cave or nest is a nice analogy. When we do the library, I feel the forest is more suitable to describe. In the analogy of the forest, I think I am getting more different layers. It is a kind of field of informations, not only the iPad, more primitive informations, some of them feel not useful for specific functions, but all of them are here to create a space. In some different usage, some kind of useless informations could be a useful thing. The forest is a very nice analogy to describe such kind of a cave-like space, not only a cave-like space, but the complexity, the richness of the space for people. So recently I am interested in a forest-like space more and more.
NB: Thank you very much.
SF: Very tough questions.
NB: You had great answers.
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