2G N.50
Sou Fujimoto
 Sou Fujimoto, Toyo Ito, Julian Worrall (texts)

Sou Fujimoto belongs to a new generation of young Japanese architects whose work has aroused enormous interest at the international level. After winning numerous prizes in both Japan and the rest of the world, Fujimoto has become a major presence on the Japanese architectural scene.

Unlike his contemporaries, Sou Fujimoto has not been trained through working in the office of any of the architects of wide experience and international renown-instead, after graduating from Tokyo University in 1994 he preferred to think about and test his personal ideas on architecture in small projects that have enabled him to develop a tremendously personal and distinctive architectural approach. His projects are the result of a sophisticated conceptual elaboration that subverts established models, one mainly based on two major concerns: what it means to dwell in a space in the 21st century and how that space is materialised without following any formal a priori.

Accordingly, innovation in Fujimoto's work does not proceed from a wish to generate disruptive forms, but from understanding the relationships between people and spaces in a different way, from taking complexity on board as an essential ingredient in his thinking and in his work, or from valuing intermediary space and nature.

Fujimoto manipulates these ideas, which reveal his preoccupation with the essence of dwelling, and transforms them into a new architecture of great spatial richness.

This number of 2G brings together the most emblematic buildings and projects by Sou Fujimoto, outstanding among which are the Children's Centre for Psychiatric Rehabilitation (Hokkaido), the Final Wooden House (Kumamoto), the Primitive Future House 2008 (Basel), the Apartment building (Tokyo), House Before House (Tochigi), House H (Tokyo), and the Library for Musashino Art University, (Tokyo). The two introductions to the monograph, written by Toyo Ito and Julian Worrall, provide us with the basic keys for understanding the richness of the Japanese architect's projects.


30 x 23 cm
144 pp páginas ilustradas en color
texto: english/español
Publicación trimestral
ISBN: 978-84-252-2293-1

imprimir ficha añadir a sus libros favoritos
precio: 28.37 €
Otros números:




>  nota de prensa en PDF (412.68k)
>  cubierta JPG en alta resolución (669.56k)


Table of contents:

Introductions
Theoretical and sensorial architecture: Sou Fujimoto’s radical experiments by Toyo Ito
The significance of Sou Fujimoto by Julian Worrall

Works and projects
Atelier House, Hokkaido
Children’s Centre for Psychiatric Rehabilitation, Hokkaido
7/2 House, Hokkaido
House Om, Yokohama
House NA, Tokyo
House O, Chiba
Garden-House, Tochigi
Final Wooden House, Kumamoto
House N, Oita
Primitive Future House 2008, Basel
Tokyo Apartment, Tokyo
1,000 m2 House, Ordos
House Before House, Tochigi
House H, Tokyo
Library, Musashino Art University, Tokyo
Benetton building, Teheran
Library, Oslo
Rafráfa Tower, Dubai

Biography

nexus
Primitive future by Sou Fujimoto


Excerpt from the first introduction:

'Theoretical and sensorial architecture: Sou Fujimoto’s radical experiments

by Toyo Ito

Sou Fujimoto belongs to the youngest generation of architects in Japan, but his works are already being conveyed to the wider world. That is because, even in those projects small enough to fit in the palm of your hand, his works always question the essential meaning of architecture: what is architecture? How should architecture relate to nature? For him, talking about architecture is synonymous with talking about the world.

The works of Japan’s younger generation of architects are generally white and abstract, comprising as few elements as possible. They appear to be pursuing the world of abstract spaces implied by Mies’s ‘less is more,’ and they hope to be evaluated in terms of their minimalist beauty. However, rather than the results of contemplative study, most of these works should be described as the results of the pursuit of technical skill. For Japanese people Sukiya-style traditional wooden architecture is intended to attain a pure beauty through the scouring away of elements. So such refinement is comparatively easy for us to achieve. Moreover, our inheritance of the superior building techniques necessary for its implementation undoubtedly contains great power.

However, I think that there is absolutely no future for architecture in the extension of 20th century-style pure abstraction. Instead, the obsessive flatness and coolness of that kind of minimal refinement just leads to the loss of vivacious human sensibilities, and produces ever more homogeneous, uninflected people. In fact, such homogenisation deeply permeates people living in large cities.

On the face of it, Sou Fujimoto’s architecture is also an extension of the pure white cube, and appears to belong to minimalist abstraction. However, the experience of his works reveals that they go off in a completely different direction. He is investigating the way architecture should be in order to restore vivacious human sensibilities. You could say that all his experiments are directed toward the recovery of mutual human relationships, and the restoration of primitive relationships between people and nature.

It was when I saw his small residence, House T (2005), that I sensed he had such intentions. This single-storey house displays a weak expression with few openings in the outer surfaces, and gives an impression of calm-or rather, of ambiguous edges. But concealed behind the ambiguous expression of the exterior is an incredible interior space, which I could have never anticipated.

The approximately 90 m2 interior has an austere appearance in which most parts are partitioned by nothing more than single sheets of 12 mm-thick plywood. These walls radiate from the exterior wall toward the centre, subdividing the space for a four-person family. However, rather than being shut off, each room has an ambiguous continuity. While in a half-open state, each room is continuous with the other spaces. In this kind of spatial subdivision there is no privacy between family members, and I imagine it was a victory over anxiety about mutual sightlines. But the angles and lengths of the walls turned in all directions have indeed been delicately considered, and the mutual sense of proximity between each room is both near and far. That is to say, the relationships with regard to the distances between people have been subtly controlled by the superlative sensitivity of the designer. Assuming a four-person family living within a mere 90 m2, if each person was provided with a closed private room, I can’t avoid feeling that every room would be terribly cramped. Conversely, opening it into a single space would impose a completely unsettling lifestyle.

Located in the interval between these two solutions, the proposal presented by Fujimoto is extremely sensorial and simultaneously theoretical. While feeling the sense of security and of holding your breath in the animalistic proximity of one family inhabiting one space, the sense of tension in this lifestyle has an ambiguity that would never arise from the lucidity of modernism, a result that is made possible by beginning to exploit the entire sensorial body. I could not help feeling a fresh sense of astonishment at what might be called an animalistic sharpness in Fujimoto’s sensitivity, which has transformed the separation of adjacent rooms by single sheets of plywood from frugality into plenitude.

The delight of seeing architecture lies in those spatial experiences that cannot be anticipated in advance from drawings and photographs. Differing from the conscious comprehension of architecture, this is the moment that another architecture is manifested and sensed with the entire body. However, that is not to say that such moments are frequent when visiting architecture. They are rather rare. Fujimoto’s architecture is one of the few examples that always appeal to the whole of the body.

The timber bungalow, Final Wooden House (2008), completed in 2008 in the mountains of Kumamoto Prefecture, is one such example. An 8 m cube consisting of nothing but stacked 35 cm-square wooden blocks, it could be called a minimum space for human habitation. Rather than being made by stacking, perhaps it is better to say that a minimal interior space has been obtained by scooping out wooden blocks from inside the cube. That is because the interior space is a continuous spiral that twists upward from the entrance, with the floor, wall, roof and, needless to say, all the architectural components such as stairs and furniture assembled from same-sized pieces of wood. The openings are nothing more than areas where this wood is missing. To put it another way, this is a cave made by scooping out pieces of wood. It is no more than the act of reducing a house to its most primitive state by erasing the architectural components.

This small house has been established in order to experience a primitive lifestyle within nature, together with family and friends, far removed from the city. Given such an opportunity, undoubtedly he wants to return people to the original hut by means of a cave-like space almost without furniture, stairs, and floors. Accordingly, this experiment is extremely theoretical and conceptual.

On the other hand, however, this experiment involves risks. Even in the mountains, people who have become accustomed to our controlled modern society will demand the same living spaces as in a safe, functional metropolis. He might have decided to take up the challenge of the obsessive homogeneity of the modern dwelling. Under these harsh conditions, that this project just barely becomes a living space is again surely due to his exquisite sensitivity. The internal space is certainly cramped to the utmost. You cannot move unless you twist your body. But even here, by superbly establishing the limits of proximity between people, he has succeeded in enriching this small space. (...)'

Copyright of the text: the authors
Copyright of the edition: Editorial Gustavo Gili SL