The auditorium was unbelievably crowded tonight, reflecting the great European enthusiasm for Japanese architecture these days. How has this increased interest been perceived in Japan?
I’m very happy to see so many people interested in Japanese architecture. I really don’t know why our architecture is of such interest to so many people in Europe, but its popularity is certainly down to the work of architects like Toyo Ito and Kazujo Sejima of SANAA. They’ve opened a big door for us – the next generation. I feel it’s my responsibility to hold that door open.
Do you think there is anything characteristically Japanese about your architecture or in your approach to building?
My work is very much about in between things. This ambiguity is very Japanese. I want to create work between nature and architecture, building something that is beyond both. But I have a very open understanding of Japanese tradition, and like to be influenced by architecture from anywhere.
Japanese and European architecture aren’t completely separated anyway – all architecture is developed for people to live in and use. I am enjoying the challenge of combining traditions now in Bielefeld, Germany where we’re about to start building an extension to Philip Johnson’s Kunsthalle, a really interesting building. I want to keep exploring what is possible within and through architecture in different climates and cultures.
Born in Hokkaido in 1971, Sou Fujimoto graduated from the University of Tokyo in 1994, and established his own office, Sou Fujimoto Architects, in 2000. Noted for delicate, light structures and permeable enclosures, Fujimoto has so far completed the majority of his buildings in Japan, with commissions ranging from the domestic, such as Final Wooden House, T House and House N, to the institutional, such as the Musashino Art Museum and Library at Musashino Art University. In 2013, he was selected to design the temporary Serpentine Gallery pavilion in London and the extension to the Kunsthalle Bielefeld in Germany.
Your idea of the city as a forest, and of introducing small patches of greenery into it like clearings, comes out of looking at the urban fabric of Tokyo. Does this metaphor for a city translate to somewhere like Berlin?
Compared to Asian cities, the major infrastructional elements of European cities like Berlin or Paris are very large and complex, which does not allow for the same type of penetration of nature. But human activity still centres around smaller scale spaces like cafés. In every culture it is the elements based on human scale that create the urban fabric.
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