Sou Fujimoto - What appears to be a housing development nearing completion, Japan 2013. Via, photos (C) Kazunori Fujimoto.
SUBTILITAS
fineness of texture, logic, detail; slenderness, exactness, acuteness; sharpness : precision
Sou Fujimoto - Children’s center for psychiatric rehabilitation, Hokkaido 2006 (top), and the dormitory for the mentally disabled, Hokkaido 2003 (bottom). Via.
Sou Fujimoto - House N, Oyta 2007. A home within a home within a home; three porous layers define the envelope, creating a gradual transition from public to private as one enters the core. Via, 2.
“…life in this house resembles to living among the clouds. A distinct boundary is nowhere to be found, except for a gradual change in the domain. One might say that an ideal architecture is an outdoor space that feels like the indoors and an indoor space that feels like the outdoors. In a nested structure, the inside is invariably the outside, and vice versa. My intention was to make an architecture that is not about space nor about form, but simply about expressing the riches of what are `between` houses and streets… I imagined that the city and the house are no different from one another in the essence, but are just different approaches to a continuum of a single subject, or different expressions of the same thing- an undulation of a primordial space where humans dwell.”
“I am interested in the space-like quality of something already there, which people can then adapt to their own needs, rather than proposing a space with only one fixed purpose. The three-dimensional spatial composition of House OM, and the experience of moving through, around, in and out the house resemble an artificial cave-like experience. The house definitely feels less limited than a conventional residence! The residents can use it as they want.”
Sou Fujimoto on his recently completed House OM, Yokohama 2010. Fujimoto is the subject of the latest issue of El Croquis. Interview above from Abitare.
The recently completed Tokyo apartments by Sou Fujimoto. I had been looking forward to the completion of this project since seeing the models a few years ago, and now that it’s complete I have mixed feelings. While there have been plenty of projects that work with the abstraction of the archetypal home (even some that stack similarly), Fujimoto’s stack of small houses is designed to act as a microcosm for urban life; each small house is one of about three rooms per unit, and accessing each is accomplished by a series of exterior and interior ladders. Getting to one’s apartment, or even another room within one’s unit, thus requires climbing up and around the structure, past the windows of your neighbors, and through the rooms in your house. It might not be a situation for many, but like some projects covered here before, it’s representative of a gradually shifting perception of privacy and boundaries in contemporary dwelling; a life more focused on connections then destinations. It will be interesting to see how the residents occupy the space over time.
