Engineering and Tradition_DOMUS JUNIO 2013

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Japan: Rebuilding communities

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Author

Joseph Grima

Photography

Yasushi Ichikawa, junya.ishigami +associates

Published

10 June 2013

Location

Tokyo

Sections

Architecture, Stories

Keywords

DOMUS 969, James Turrell, junya.ishigami

+associates, Kanagawa Institute of Technology

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Walk into Junya Ishigamis new office in the Roppongi

neighbourhood of Tokyo, and the first thing youll notice

between the model-laden desks and workstations is a large,

Engineering and traditionA foray into the office of Junya Ishigami in Tokyo reveals new aspects of his design philosophy, intent

on creating architectural experiences poised between engineering challenges and simple gestures

Architecture / Joseph Grima
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gaping hole in the concrete floor slab. I peer down into the

basement: a sea of models from past projects are haphazardly

piled in stacks as far as the eye can see. Ishigamis collaborators

(relatively few, considering the offices prodigious model output)

seem to have become so accustomed to the abnormality of a

gaping void in the office floor as to no longer notice it, and seem

mildly baffled by my surprise. Like all exceptionally true

visionaries, Ishigami operates by creating a powerful reality-distortion field, and the hole in the floor is perhaps the least

exceptional thing his collaborators must learn to metabolise.

Each project is an opportunity to question the basic assumptions

of every aspect of architectural practice: from engineering to

furniture and from climate control to circulation, Ishigami

envisions a condition or an experience, then stretches

architecture to the limits of impossibility to realise it. Much as

with the James Turrells Skyspaceinstallations, in which

extraordinary lengths are taken to isolate the simplest ofexperiencesthe act of observing the sky change colour for

Ishigami the experience is the architecture, and the envelope is

simply a device that triggers the experience. As a result, there is

an utter indifference to the effort required to produce this

experience: Ishigamis architecture runs the spectrum from near-

impossible engineering challenges to simple gestures of

displacement.

Top: In Ishigamis studio, work progressing on the models of homes for the elderly. The structures vary according to their original geographic location

and the technique used by the carpenters who made them. Each has its own characteristics, which are exploited to aid the future inhabitants sense of

orientation. Photo by junya.ishigami+assoc iates. Above: Project for a residential centre for the elderly. The study models highlight an exercise in
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Turrell


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working on variations of traditional housing typologies. Photo by Yasushi Ichikawa

The distinction between three projects currently

underway in the office provides a clear demonstration of this

contrast. On the same campus of the Kanagawa Institute of

Technology where in 2008 Ishigami completed the workshop

building (see Domus 913, 2008) that first brought him

worldwide recognition for its open plan interrupted only by the

slenderest of columns, an even more ambitious endeavour is inthe making. Like the partition-free workshop building, it

confounds all existing labels for university-building typologies.

Ishigami calls it a cafeteria combined with a semi-outdoor

multipurpose space, and the awkwardness of this rather

inelegant description only serves, when one is confronted by the

model, to underscore just how extreme the projects ambition is.

On the one hand, the building is the simplest of gestures: a single

room, and one with a rather low ceiling at that 2,3 metres, lowenough to be able to raise an arm and brush your hand against it.

Project for the cafeteria on the campus of the Kanagawa Institute of Technology. The pavilion is developed horizontally on a single floor, with a surface

of about 110 x 70 m, and covered by a thin steel roof that floats at a height of approximately 2,3 m. Photo by Yasushi Ichikawa

On the other, it is one of the most phenomenal

engineering challenges to have ever faced a university cafeteria,

because this room is the size of a football pitch, and not a single


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column supports the roof throughout the entire span. This roof is

a single, thin (nine-millimetre) sheet of tensioned steel,

perforated by unsealed rectangular openings that allow light and

elements to enter the space, creating a semi-enclosed garden.

Above, a thin layer of soil transforms the roof itself into a

landscape of grass and vegetation. It is simultaneously

megastructural and intimate, effortless as a gesture and

bewildering in its scale, and like Ishigamis previous works it hasa deeply human dimension: as the steel roof plate expands and

contracts with changes in temperature, the ceiling height varies

by as much as 80 centimetres, as though the building were alive

and breathing.

Project for the cafeteria on the campus of the Kanagawa Institute of Technology. Photo by Yasushi Ichikawa

Commissioned to design a home for elderly patients

suffering from dementia, Ishigami again side-stepped the

conventional route towards building-making. The brief specified

the need for an architectural environment that the residents

would easily be able to recognise, facilitating the process of

identifying their own residence through the uniquecharacteristics of each space. The proposed strategy employs a

technique known in Japanese asHikiya, or moving a house from

one location to another without disassembling its structure: in

place of a single building, the centre is composed of a multitude


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of wooden houses collected from villages throughout Japan. In

fact, its very much like a small village compressed onto the site

of a single building: the individual elements fit neatly into one

architectural structure thanks to the tatami mat grid that governs

most traditional Japanese domestic architecture.

Project for the cafeteria on the campus of the Kanagawa Institute of Technology. Photo by Yasushi Ichikawa

Each unit possesses a distinctive character defined by the

building frames proportions, which vary depending on the

location and time period, as well as the technique of the

carpenters who built the house and the way it was inhabited. A

unique, recognisable identity is embedded in this wooden

skeletal framework and its original roof, but the complex is given

a unitary identity by abstracting the vernacular architecture

through the substitution of the cladding with metal and glass.

The objective, according to Ishigami, is to create a new type of

hybrid space that could not have been conceived either by

contemporary architecture or classical architecture alone. Its a

deeply empathetic architectural solution that hybridises

architecture and urbanism into a space which is new yet

culturally familiar to its residents.


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The house designed for a young couple demonstrates that for Ishigami the act of making architecture has the same value as the act of creating a

landscape. Photo by junya.ishigami+associates

Much of Ishigamis work is permeated by this deep

empathy for the humdrum exercise of living everyday life. In a

suburb of Tokyo (a landscape comprised of a repetition ofnothing but ready-built houses that continue endlessly), the

office recently completed a residence for a young couple that

injects a microcosm of nature into the deeply artificial

environment of the city. One could describe it as an exercise in

the act of not creating an architectural image: unlike most other

examples of recent domestic architecture in Japan, the exterior is

understated to the point of anonymity, almost perfectly

camouflaged into its mundane and rather harsh urbansurroundings. On the interior, however, the act of making

architecture is subsumed by the desire to create a landscape a

point that is driven home clearly by the exposed soil in the corner

of the living room, from which a small forest of trees springs into


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the double-height space. Looking out onto the street, one

realises that the interior space of this residence somehow feels

more like an outdoor space than the regular, strictly aligned

cityscape outside.

House designed for a young couple in Tokyo. Photo by junya.ishigami+assoc iates

What sets Ishigami apart from others of his generation is

the simplicity of the gestures through which his architecture is

produced, irrespective of the complexity required to execute

them. His architecture is uncompromising but deeply human,

driven by the desire to transform simple gestures of everyday lifeinto architectural experiences, and to turn the everyday into

something bewildering but beautiful. Perhaps the hole in the

floor of his office is a quiet reminder of how threatening

architecture can be, and how easy it is to be swallowed by it.

Joseph Grima (@joseph_grima)
https://twitter.com/joseph_grima


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House designed for a young couple in Tokyo. Photo by junya.ishigami+assoc iates


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Author

Joseph Grima

Photography

Yasushi Ichikawa, junya.ishigami +associates

Sections

Architecture, Stories

Keywords

DOMUS 969, James Turrell, junya.ishigami

+associates, Kanagawa Institute of Technology

Location

Tokyo

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Senior citizen's housing. Ground floor plan
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Engineering and Tradition_DOMUS JUNIO 2013