yoshiharu tsukamoto on pet architecture the micro-urbanism of atelier Bow-Wow
micro - urbanism | tokyo by steve chodoriwsky
scale interruption echoes body space
a conversation about small things conducted in March 2010 at the Tsukamoto Laboratory, Tokyo Institute of Technology Department of Architecture
Much of your work focuses on a serious consideration of small space as bona fide space—not as something nostalgic or cute, but rather as a contemporary fact, something both useful and enjoyable. What are your thoughts on this? I think smallness can be a very strong tool for directing a design. For me, the very important thing is to handle the differences that emerge in every level of architectural composition and articulation. So if you want to make even a simple composition between rooms, some differences already emerge. Each room is just a room, but once they’re connected, their relationships create great differences—where you go in, or where you look— — it becomes complicated very quickly – It starts to be full of difference through these things. I think that, currently, the architectural discussion in Japan is based on how to deal with these small differences: how much you rationalise inevitable differences, how much you avoid or accentuate given differences from the outside environment, like site conditions or sunlight. If you start to be conscious of these changes, you need to break down levels of understanding into smaller elements and dimensions. For example, if you are aware of the temperature, this part of the room is really different from over there near the window. The light condition also changes. This is my interest with smallness—how to open up these kinds of different investigations, to understand the different qualities of space.
I’m interested in the connection between your small-scale preoccupations and your larger scale urban research. Do you feel that there are appropriate, effective ways to shift from the small scale to larger scales, or vice versa? In terms of scale, the biggest programs can also be embedded in the small scale. This idea always encourages me to be brave or proud to be working at a very small scale. I like to deal with large issues through a scale that can be really handled, because you need a good ear to hear the echo between a very small thing and a big issue. I really like to make this comparison. Showing the sound of the echo between this and that can be sometimes very enigmatic, sometimes elegant . . . . . . and sometimes humourous. In a recent essay you wrote that, when designing a small house in Tokyo, it’s impossible to have an effect on the city and so ‘it is allowed to be dreamlike—an object of our imagination’. I’ve always felt that your small work are somewhat fleeting, maybe even suitably incomplete. They’re not microcosms of grand concepts – you seem more concerned with articulating this echo relationship . . . I learned this from Jean-Luc Godard, when he was criticised by French journalists for not going to Vietnam to shoot a film; instead, he stayed in Paris. And Godard said, it’s not necessary for a film to go to Vietnam, but the more important thing is to let Vietnam pour into the film. This is an issue of echo. I like very much this attitude to the world, that you cannot be representative of the whole world, but you can create an echo with it.
House + Atelier Bow-Wow
A Project
[architects] Atelier Bow-Wow [location] Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo [site area] 109.03sqm [building area] 59.76sqm [total floor area] 211.27sqm [structure] reinforced concrete and steel frame [photo] Atelier Bow-Wow
[architects] Atelier Bow-Wow [location] Tokyo [photo] Atelier Bow-Wow
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On Site review 23 Small Things
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