‘Even buildings one had taken for substantial had a trick of disappearing overnight. One morning, we woke to find the house next door reduced to nothing but a heap of sticks and a pile of newspapers neatly tied with string, left out for the garbage collector.’
So wrote Angela Carter in A Souvenir From Japan. She was fascinated with the ephemerally of things in Tokyo, which she described as a city of ‘constantly changing appearances, all marvellous but none tangible.’
This phenomenon that so fascinated the British author might be accounted for by the fact that the Japanese conceive space in a more flexible way. The uniquely Japanese spacial concept of ‘ma’ emphasises the void space between things in both art and life. Based on the idea of experiential space as opposed to three-dimensional space, the word ‘ma’ suggests interval and it considers space in relation to time.
Since the Middle Ages, tatami straw mats (measuring 1.8×0.9m) have been used in Japan to cover the floor of a room, thereby denoting the size and dimensions of the space; and along with the interior divisions of the home, such as paper screens, they can be moved at will so the space and light can constantly adapt.
A similar flexibility is found in the public domain too – the street in Japan is a temporary space defined by activity, where makeshift shops and restaurants are built along the sidewalk so they transform from day to day, and can disappear completely overnight.
Mirroring these ideas in their design theory and cutting edge architecture, Yoshiharu Tsukamoto and Momoyo Kaijima of Alelier Bow-wow seek to explore the social use and function of space within urban environments.
Their buildings are often devoid of internal dividers so rooms are separated only by staggered levels and staircases, remaining connected and visible to each other. Space exists as a continuum; as you navigate your way around the rooms change in gradual and flexible ways, without strong dividers between them.
Referring to their work as ‘da-me’ (‘no good’) architecture, Atelier Bow-wow focus on disregarded city spaces and coined the phrase ‘pet architecture’ for the miniature ad hoc buildings that are squeezed into leftover and forgotten gaps of space in the densely developed areas of Tokyo (catalogued by them in their book Pet Architecture).
While they weren’t initially familiar with the French philosopher Henri Lefebvre’s theories of the social production of space, they say they have since been introduced to his ideas and feel a strong affinity to them.
For their Recycling Tokyo project they proposed the concept of recycling be applied to spaces and cities in the same way it is applied to products. They looked at Tokyo as being comprised of various pieces – such as car parks, buildings and alleyways – and suggested imaginative re-uses of them (like turning buildings into sundials or cutting footbridges in half to make observation points). Encouraging multi-purpose architecture and space, they seek to reveal new possibilities for the city; ones that would usually be overlooked.
Watch Yoshiharu Tsukamoto talking about Atelier Bow-wow’s innovative use of space for their custom built ‘micro house’ here and see some other examples of their work below.
[...] said my last post was a tad verbose, so here’s one with as few words as possible. A look back at the [...]
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