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Feature | OPENERS' Picks: Emerging Japanese Architects PART II

DESIGN / FEATURES

February 3, 2015

Feature | OPENERS' Picks: Emerging Japanese Architects PART II

Environmental issues, energy policy in relation to the economy and convenient living, food safety—our lives are compelled to confront the "post-3/11" era on all fronts. Following the tsunami damage and energy crisis brought on by the Great East Japan Earthquake, I feel we are being urged to re-evaluate the nature of community and its value, particularly in our "living spaces": long-familiar homes, our own houses, towns, and cities.

It goes without saying that architecture and urban design are influenced by the state of society, but perhaps never before has their value been so fundamentally shaken, their very existence threatened.
In this second installment of our feature on Japan's young architects, we ask how they have engaged with architecture to date and inquire about their approaches in the "post-earthquake" era, based on their individual stances toward their craft.

From post-war reconstruction and high economic growth, through an era of saturation, the bursting of the bubble, and the generation of apathy, to today's information age, Japan faces a long road to recovery after experiencing an unprecedented disaster that everyone had feared.

By understanding what young architects, who possess the capacity to envision the future of this country, are thinking and how they are acting in the post-3/11 world, we can glimpse a facet of the vision surrounding our lives. We hope this feature serves as such an opportunity.

Junya Ishigami

2011 was a year of immense upheaval, shaking the foundations of what we had always taken for granted. Never before had we so acutely realized how powerless and fragile human lives and daily activities are in the face of nature. Junya Ishigami is an architect who continually conceives of architecture with new scales, from the intimate to the vast, from the scale of a building to that of the universe. What does life after the earthquake mean? What is the reality of future living?
—We spoke with Junya Ishigami about his thoughts and architectural considerations in the post-earthquake period.

ARAKI + SASAKI ARCHITECTS

For most people, architecture has long been something to buy, not to build. The goal often becomes having a famous architect design a house, with the original purpose—how one wants to live with whom in a particular place—taking a backseat. ARAKI + SASAKI ARCHITECTS, a group comprising Genki Araki, Takayuki Sasaki, and Tamaho Sasaki, is an architectural collective whose design philosophy centers on self-build as a design study, valuing hands-on work and thinking over purely intellectual design. We asked them about their methods, as they are willing to reveal their design process to users and aim for architecture devoid of rhetoric.

Yoshikazu Nanjo

Architecture envelops cities and permeates every corner of our lives, much like blood and flesh flowing within our bodies. Yet, how many people have systematically studied and comprehensively considered the role of architecture in society or the image of the architect as its creator? Sociologist Yoshikazu Nanjo examines both cities and architecture from a unique perspective, grounded in history. What is needed now is an entity that bridges society and architecture, possessing a broad perspective that transcends time and place. We spoke with sociologist Yoshikazu Nanjo about the image of the architect that is currently in demand.

Yasutaka Yoshimura

Contemplating the state of society and living is intrinsically linked to considering the current condition of architecture. Architect Yasutaka Yoshimura aims to change the way architecture exists within society. This is surely connected to the idea that architecture should be more considerate of society and people. Faced with the profound impact of the earthquake, architecture and cities revealed their fragile and ephemeral nature. We asked Yoshimura about his approach to architecture, focusing on his post-earthquake endeavors, while emphasizing the creation of new value through originality shared with others.

Ryuji Nakamura

The repetition of ordinary forms becomes a chair, an object, a space no one has ever seen before. The works created by Ryuji Nakamura extend their scale and concepts by moving between the inside and outside of the established frameworks of architecture and objects. These works, which are realized through a rigorous consideration of independence, hint at an image of future cities where we relate to each other while maintaining our own autonomy. From his childhood, when he would gaze with unflagging interest at the changing houses along his route to and from school, to his present focus on architecture on a grand scale, Nakamura's perspective on scenery and space has remained unwavering.

Tsunehisa Nagasaka

New value and the value of old things. Nagasaka's creations embody both, existing in a state of raw beauty and earnestness that belongs to neither. Renovations of apartments and houses, and tables reborn by filling cracks with epoxy resin—these projects possess a refreshing quality that harks back to the origins of making and designing. Looking at a subject from a different perspective allows us to discover its preceding forms and chart a course toward the future. Considering the world after 3/11, we asked Tsunehisa Nagasaka, who views the values of contemporary society, fluctuating between before and after the event, through a unique lens of architecture and urbanism.