The reciprocal architecture of Sou Fujimoto
May 5, 2010 Author: Karen Hinojosa Tutor: Marina Lathouri MDA UNAV
The architecture of Sou Fujimoto is pushing the boundaries on how we understand space. His bold experimental works are an exploration of the possibilities he sees in the way architecture could enrich human relationships (and the city).
Not an object, but a field of relationships.
“Separation is another Word for evil; it is also another Word for deceit. All that exists is a magnificent interweaving, vast and reciprocal.� -Michel Houellebecq (Atomised)
Searching for the elements of a connected architecture
On a crowded subway car in the midst of summer in Madrid, I was suddenly very aware of the fact that nowadays it’s easier than ever to be connected, yet we are deeply isolated. Even in a crowd as tightly packed as that one, each individual constructed its own isolation bubble with very identifiable elements: a book, an ipod or a mobile phone. While remaining part of a crowd, each person was disconnected from the reality of the metro car and connected to some other reality: a social network, a phone call home. The limits of their disconnection were diffuse, yet clearly present. Such elements of isolation are as easily identifiable in architecture, too. Architecture is constructed with limits. It is not just the limit, but it emerges once there is a demarcation, a will to separate an area of the outside that is to become an inside. The limit of architecture is not just a physical thing, a border, a façade. It is an in-between space, an interface, a connection bridging two distinct localities. It is not just a middle ground; it is what holds both extremes together. A door exists as a closing element, it is a divider. The doorway is a connecting element, the door a disconnecting one. The elements of an architecture of disconnection are very present in a western understanding of space. In an eastern sense, even though there is more of an open space, the shoji screen is still present. Yet for Sou Fujimoto, the need for privacy is solved by angling walls or creating nooks were people can retreat, without the space being physically closed.
It is more about providing a kind of flexible platform for the users. By casting aside strict conventions, Sou proposes an architecture that carefully calibrates compression and looseness to create spatial richness. In more ways than one, this manner of approaching architecture is more inclusive, because instead of dividing it into a duality it recognizes both extremes and the gradated area between them. The importance of this ‘in-between’ has been a recurring topic over the last century in architecture. Architects like Aldo van Eyck have explored the importance of the threshold and the in-between. But while van Eyck’s approach was more sociological, Sou is interested in the way this middle ground could produce new forms of inhabitation. The architecture of Sou Fujimoto is both provocative and evocative. He often talks about it as primitive spaces that recall images of enclosure and raw identity. Singling this state of architecture prior to division, he calls this a “primal unified condition”1. The will to unify space by an ambiguity of inside and outside, public and private is a common thread in his work. Yet this blank quality, this indistinctness is for him an opportunity for appropriation, for the creative use of space. He believes architecture should dictate less and support more. Rethinking the house, he foregoes Kahn’s definition of room in favor of locale, a place of inhabitation. When the person plays the primordial role in the definition of space, architecture becomes collaboration between architect and user,
a collaboration in which both are creators, instead of a giver and a receiver. His critical view of modern architecture as nests, that is, places that are designed to be inhabited, opposes his idea of the cave, a locale that is discovered within its contours. Most of Fujimoto’s works explore the relationship between architecture and people, architecture and the city. The way each of the individual parts relate to each other, and the moments of connection and tension between them is more important than the resulting overall form. The innovative character of this architecture could very well be traced back to works by other avant-garde artists. Dan Graham and James Turrell have studied the dichotomy of inside/outside as well, pushing the boundaries of perception. Their works of art involve the spectator actively, provoking an interpretation of space. But painting, sculpture and architecture typically result in an object that constitutes the work. In dealing with time, space, the artist and the spectator or user, perhaps the closer analogy one could find would be performance art.
Fig 1. Not an object, but a field of relationships. Diagrams for Ordos 100, a house in Mongolia. Courtesy of Sou Fujimoto Architects.
Fig 2. Dan Graham's "Rooftop Urban Park Project: Two Way Mirror Cylinder Inside Cube, " at Dia's former Chelsea space. Source: Marilynn K. Yee/The New York Times.
In a performance piece of Dennis Oppenheimer in May 1970 (fig. 3), he suspended his body between two masonry walls, creating a human bridge that echoed the Brooklyn and Manhattan bridges on either side of him. This is the true character of Sou Fujimoto’s architecture. In a way, his architecture seeks to bridge gaps, to broaden in-between spaces enough so that people can connect in them.
Fig 3. Dennis Oppenheimer May 1970, Performance, Pier between Brooklyn and Manhattan bridges and abandoned sump in Long Island, New York. Source: adrianaeysler.com
Sou’s Spatial Strategies: techniques to achieve connectivity The threshold The threshold is an area of domesticity: where domestic and city coalesce. It is both a part of the house and a part of the city. It is also a place of discovery, a place of revelation. In the architecture of Sou Fujimoto, the threshold is treated as place more than a demarcation limit. Its thickness is not just that of the physical element of an access, that is, the width of an opening, but also the space beyond it. In House N, for example, the whole area of the garage and garden could be interpreted as threshold, as a buffer and a communication zone between the city and the house (fig. 4).
Fig 4. Plan of House N, courtesy of Sou Fujimoto Architects, edited by the author.
This area is a result of his search for an ideal architecture that could reproduce the qualities of an outdoors space within its walls. The vegetation states that this space is a garden, yet it is not surrounded by walls in a fence-like manner. The height of the walls, and even more so, the roof, even though it is full of voids, transform this into a space that is decisively part of an inside. The traditional Japanese way of sensing space is compatible with this approach to design. Neighborhoods and public spaces are understood more as invisible entities than as concrete images. In the spatiality of urban Japanese cities “demarcation remains vague and in flux –here is the origin of an imagination that countenances an undifferentiated, intuitive space going well beyond any mere mechanistic articulation”2.
Fig 5. Model of House N. The enclosed garden is a negotiating element between domestic and public. The threshold of the house expands to accommodate functions that could belong both to an inside or an outside i.e. reading, eating, getting together with neighbors.
The threshold becomes then a place where the edges of two existing realities meet. For Fujimoto, the need to bridge this two opposing concepts (interior/exterior, private/public, domestic/city) cannot be narrowed down to a borderline, but rather a border zone.
The stair Stairs are very obviously elements of connection. As a circulation medium, they relate one floor level to another, one space to another. In Fujimoto’s House H in Tokyo, space is tightly packed inside a container that maximizes communications, and the movement is always upward. Like Adolf Loos in the Moller house of 1928, the promenade through the house is done in an upward spiral. In this same manner House H is traversed through the stairs that connect each of the different levels. They are an architectonic element that is very much about experience, about sequence. Stairs are also a media to achieve gradation. The entrance hall is the first interior space one reaches when entering House H, yet it is not a closed space. Stairs are an element that involves the user, they absorb the person in a dynamic of with each step getting a different perspective, and progressing from the public scale of the city to the private scale of the house. They are a transitional element, a gradation, a part of the house that is neither first floor nor second story. “Stairs give a sense of openness”3 says Fujimoto. In several of his projects stairs play an important role. In the case of Final Wooden House, stairs become wall, floor, and furniture. Inspired by Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye or the Villa La Roche-Jeanneret
Fig. 6. Entrance Hall, House H. Parting from a three dimensional approach to design that is as influenced by Adolf Loos’ Raumplan and Le Corbusier’s rich spatiality, Fujimoto devises a box that outlines the possibility of interlacing actions. Photo courtesy of Sou Fujimoto Architects. Credit: Iwan Baan.
Fig. 7. Section, House H. Courtesy of Sou Fujimoto Architects.
where there is a way up and a way down, Fujimoto tried to reproduce that quality in the interior of House H. Since a way up and down was not possible due to the compact site, he uses “fake stairs”. Even though in plans and sections the stairs seem almost excessive, the photographs reveal a spaciousness that may not have been possible otherwise. The opening At first glance it may seem that the architecture of Sou Fujimoto is very open, very free. One may be tempted to talk about open plans and free flow. In reality, the flow though the house is enriched by a superposition of different possibilities. An architecture without doors allows for rooms that flow and fuse into one another. The degree of interaction between people is controlled by them, and not by stark physical barriers. By layering limits and perforating them, views and routes are multiplied within a project.
Fig. 8 Window detail. Source: Flickr.com/ Amy Hay Mew Hwang.
House N is perhaps the clearest example of his use of openings to blur the boundaries between inside and outside. The walls are filled with voids and nested inside others, like a matrushka doll. "This house has no real exterior, and no real interior," says Fujimoto. "The whole area is just ‘inbetween'. In this concept there is no city, there is no house, just gradations of ‘betweenness'."4 But a house has to protect from rain and cold, and in the end openings have to be closed. The manner in which these closings are detailed is also telling of the relationship between indoors and outdoors. In house N (fig 8) it is the innermost part of the house that has glazed windows. Thus, the exterior
Fig 9. Window detail in final wooden house. The glass is placed in a diagonal way, reflecting onto the other and again diffusing the distinctive line between inside and outside. Source: flickr.com / Jeff Baines.
openings are left bare, open windows to the city. In final wooden house (fig. 9) the glass is placed in a diagonal way, reflecting onto the other and again diffusing the distinctive line between inside and outside.
Concluding thoughts The architecture of Sou Fujimoto is boldly experimental, yet profoundly coherent. His discourse is very clearly translated into his built works. Steering clear of empty formalisms or imagery, he strives to communicate, both with his writings and his built oeuvre, a direct message: a house can be open to new uses and interpretations, to a reality where the primordial role is played by people. The goal of these elements of connection is to generate new modes of experience whose possibilities might be explored.
Fig 10. House N. Different sized openings, some with glazing, some without. The light and shadow play was meant to recreate the passage of clouds. Photo courtesy of Sou Fujimoto Architects. Credit: Iwan Baan.
“I want to make an architecture where space is relationships” -Sou Fujimoto.
By limiting the elements of his architecture, he creates works of a clean minimal aesthetic yet a complex order based on the relationships between spaces and not on form. While his houses are not for everyone, they propose an alternative mode of inhabiting, and provide clues to an understanding of exposed and open domestic space that could enrich social relationships. The open quality of his interior spaces seems conducive, at least potentially, to promoting social interactions. Amidst the alienation and individuality so present in today’s society, his architecture seems an exhortation to tear down the barriers that separate us -and establish contact.
fig 11. House H, Photo courtesy of Sou Fujimoto Architects. Credit: Iwan Baan.
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(Ito, Worral and Fujimoto, 2G No.50 Sou Fujimoto) (Isozaki) 3 (Nuijsink, The incredible lighness of living) 4 (Worrall) 2