Artist
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Architect

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Welcome to OKAYAMA.
Welcome to A & A.

Enter

Stay in art,
Play in our local.

We are pleased to welcome you to Okayama and the world of A&A.

Interweaving art and architecture by assigning an artist and an architect for each project, A&A is a medium for expressing each locale.

Stay and soak yourself in each artistic and architectural expression. Once your step out of our houses, we will guide you to experience the city like a local.

stay at...

JONATHAN HASEGAWA

  • JONATHAN MONK

  • GO HASEGAWA & ASSOCIATES

An extraordinary space.
Feel time pass through beautiful gradations of
shadows casted and lights shed.

more...

Artist

JONATHAN MONK

Born in 1969, Leicester, U.K. Lives and works in Berlin, Germany. Graduated from Glasgow School of Art, Scotland in 1991, Leicester Polytechnique, U.K. in 1988. Jonathan Monk has developed his unique style of creation, Incorporating the method of appropriation, under his consistent policy that no one can make anything which can be called perfectly ‘original’. He is known for his style that deals with the generating process of art, where the appropriation of an art produces another work of art. Monk’s works are the historical art quotation, questioning ‘how art can be art’. He has exhibited in various locations, including Musee d’Art moderne de la Ville de Paris (Paris), and Pinakothek der Moderne (München) and more.

Architect

GO HASEGAWA & ASSOCIATES

Representative of Go Hasegawa and Associates.
Born in Saitama Prefecture in 1977. Graduated from Tokyo Institute of Technology with a master’s degree from the same university. Established Go Hasegawa and Associates in 2005 after working at Taira Nishizawa Architects. Received numerous awards including the SD Review Kashima Award and the 2008 New Architecture Award. Completed the PhD in Engineering, Tokyo Institute of Technology Postgraduate School in 2015 .
Has been a visiting professor at Harvard Design School, University of California Los Angeles, and Mendrisio Architectural Academy. Main writings include “Thinking, Making Architecture, Living” (LIXIL Publishing, 2011) and “a + u 556″(Publishing from a & u Co., Ltd., 2017).
https://ghaa.co.jp/
LIAM FUJI

  • LIAM GILLICK

  • MOUNT FUJI ARCHITECTS STUDIO

A serene labyrinth.
Wander into mathematical
formulas and intertwined staircases.

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Artist

LIAM GILLICK

Liam Gillick is an artist based in New York. His work exposes the dysfunctional aspects of a modernist legacy in terms of abstraction and architecture when framed within a globalized, neo-liberal consensus, and extends into structural rethinking of the exhibition as a form. Gillick’s work has been included in numerous important exhibitions including documenta and the Venice, Berlin and Istanbul Biennales – representing Germany in 2009 in Venice. Solo museum exhibitions have taken place at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, the Museum of Modern Art in New York and Tate in London. Gillick’s work is held in many important public collections including the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Guggenheim Museum in New York and Bilbao and the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Architect

MOUNT FUJI ARCHITECTS STUDIO

MOUNT FUJI ARCHITECTS STUDIO is a Tokyo-based design studio established by Masahiro and MAO Harada in 2004. Focused mainly on architectural design, they work on multi-scale designs from traditional products to reconstruction planning after the Tohoku Earthquake. Sourced from “Awareness of natural science” such as structure, material, construction and living environment, the “Unprecedented rational design” creates special strength of their works. Its physical prominence in additions to the concept is highly acclaimed worldwide, and awarded both domestically and internationally many times.

They have accomplished every types of architectural projects such as private residence , villa , housing, educational building , public building, hotel. They won many domestic and international awards such as LEAF AWARDS 1st Prize (2010 and 2014), JIA Grand Prix 2017, JIA Young Architects Award, BCS Award, AACA Yoshinobu Ashiwara Prize, SD Review Grand Prix, RECORD HOUSES 2010, Design Vanguard 2009, and Mt. Fuji World Heritage Center Public Competition 2nd Prize.


http://www.fuji-studio.jp/
OKAYAMA CITY

The land of sunshine.
At the entryway for the Setouchi inland sea, Okayama's rich culture and history have set the area to become one of the top art scenes in Japan. Within walking distance, you will run into modern art on display or find multiple museums with diverse genres. Within a short drive or a train ride, there is the famous art Island Naoshima or the historic town of Kurashiki.
The immediate surrounding area will never bore you offering a range of casual dining to michelin awarded restaurants, bars, castles, gardens, and parks.

ABOUT A&A

The Ishikawa Foundation is pleased to introduce “A&A,” a project with aims of promoting the art and culture of Okayama while also serving to revitalize the local community.

Over the next 20 years, new art and architecture lodgings designed by select pairs of internationally acclaimed contemporary artists and Japanese architects will be created in and around the historical/cultural zones of Okayama City. Encouraging visitors to experience art through staying in these extraordinary new houses, the project seeks to promote the city as an attractive place to stay and enjoy engaging with various forms of art. The A&A welcomes Taro Nasu (Owner of TARO NASU) as Project Director, architect Jun Aoki (Jun Aoki & Assoiciates) as Advisor, and Yasuharu Ishikawa (President of Ishikawa Foundation) as its Producer.

Okayama serves as a gateway to Setouchi, and is also the setting for the “Okayama Art Summit” that aims to take place once every three years. It is a rare area in Japan rich in cultural resources, situated near the various islands of Setouchi including Naoshima that is internationally recognized as an art site, and also close to the Ohara Museum of Art in Kurashiki. It is also a place that is home to many examples of famous architecture such as the Okayama Prefectural Government Building and Hayashibara Museum of Art designed by Kunio Maekawa, who remains an important figure in the context of modern Japanese architecture.

In order for these lodgings to be experienced as “artworks,” they are each designed as an individual lodging for one group of guests per night. The project hopes to increase the number of repeated visitors to Okayama, encouraging people to learn more about the city’s appeal by staying there rather than simply passing though it on their travels.

TEAM

  • YASUHARU ISHIKAWA

    Producer

    President of ISHIKAWA FOUNDATION

    Yasuharu Ishikawa is Founder and Chairman of Ishikawa Foundation which focuses mainly on conceptual art since 2014. The foundation is also engaged in other efforts to promote business and culture in his hometown, Okayama. Held in Okayama City once every three years, the Okayama Art Summit is an international exhibition of contemporary art; Ishikawa has been continue to be in charge of its Executive Producer from the first edition 2016.

    www.ishikawafoundation.org

  • TARO NASU

    Project Director

    TARO NASU, Owner

    Born in 1966, Okayama, Japan. Graduated from Waseda University in 1990. After several years experience at Tenmaya in Okayama, in 1998, established a contemporary art gallery TARO NASU in Tokyo. In 2016, established an art consulting company Art & Public Co., Ltd. Over the years, has dedicated himself to spread the contemporary art through various activities by TARO NASU and Art & Public, often collaborated with domestic and foreign public sectors, museums and institutions. Appointed to an art advisory at “Imagineering OKAYAMA ART PROJECT” in 2014, and also has been serving as General Director of Okayama Art Summit since 2016.

    www.taronasugallery.com

  • JUN AOKI

    Advisor

    President of Jun Aoki & Associates
    Director of Kyoko City KYOCERA Museum of Arts
    Professor of Tokyo University of Arts

    Born in Yokohama 1956. Graduated from the University of Tokyo in 1982. After working for Arata Isozaki & Associates, founded Jun Aoki & Associates in 1991. Received Architectural Institute of Japan Annual Award (1999) and Minister of Education’s Art Encouragement Prize (2005). His main works include: Mamihara Bridge, Fukushima Lagoon Museum, Louis Vuitton Omotesando, Aomori Museum of Art, Omiyamae Gymnasium, among others.

    www.aokijun.com

MESSAGE

Over the years I have been thinking about what would be the possibilities of public art and limitations of installing artworks outside.

What is necessary in order for artworks taken outside of the white cube context and placed in the street to maintain both their meaning and presence?
How does this meaning and presence relate to the concept of function?
Does it mean anything to raise this question itself in the first place?

The A&A Project was an idea that was conceived in the process of exploring such questions.
It is a vast sculpture by an artist, and architecture by an architect at the same time –
something that could be a subject for viewing and also a functional object that could be experienced.
We wanted to build small accommodation facilities that harbored such qualities,
dispersing them throughout various locations in Okayama city like installing public artworks.

Taro Nasu, Project Director

Artist-comment

The idea of working with a Japanese architect on a new building was very exciting for me.

But I did not want to simply be the artist within this collaboration – I wanted to be or at least act as an architect… I think or hope I’ve done that. Every part of the project developed from last… ideas moved slowly and occasionally very quickly forwards and each one left a small or large mark.

The collaboration with Go worked beautifully and we easily agreed on a form and slowly a function.

We are still developing even when we’re finished…

Jonathan Monk

Architect-comment

Jonathan Hasegawa is a hotel where guests can enjoy the experience of ‘staying in the city’ of Okayama. Located in an area surrounded by various cultural facilities including museums, it also offers views overlooking Korakuen –one of the three great gardens of Japan– across the Asahi River.

This hotel was designed so as to imitate the shape of the private houses that had originally occupied its place. Two buildings that separately stood on the site are reproduced, with a new building inserted in-between. These three buildings come together to form a single guest room.

The bedroom has a calm atmosphere with its low ceiling, while there is a porch-like entrance that is integrated with the garden, and a bathroom reminiscent of an observatory with panoramic views of Korakuen gardens.

Guests are able to experience the city while staying in the hotel and going to and fro between these three spaces with completely different personalities, from feeling the natural light shining through the gaps between the roofs, to climbing up and down the stairs and looking up at the window across the roof from a low position / overlooking the city from a high position, and sitting back in the gaps between the buildings to relax and feel the bustle of the city.

The building has been designed in collaboration with Berlin-based artist Jonathan Monk. Monk is known for producing works through imitating the creations of existing artists as well as social matters, and further reinterpreting their value and originality. Drawing inspiration from this approach, this hotel is made so as to reinterpret the preexisting shape of the city, proposing a means of accommodation that enables each guest to discover new appeals that the city of Okayama has to offer.

The bedroom has a calm atmosphere with its low ceiling, while there is a porch-like entrance that is integrated with the garden, and a bathroom reminiscent of an observatory with panoramic views of Korakuen gardens.

Go Hasegawa
GO HASEGAWA AND ASSOCIATES

Floor plan

Artist-comment

Syukuro “Suki” Manabe was born in Shikokuchuo, Ehime Prefecture in 1931 so he witnessed the horrors of The Second World War. His generation understood the threat to the entire planet from man’s activities. Working in a context of a great generation of climatologists, his contribution to the science of climate change is extraordinary and extremely important for contemporary understanding and analysis of what is taking place. I am interested in emphasizing the scientific basis of this problem. I discovered Manabe when I started looking for early papers on climate analysis. He did most of his later work at Princeton in the USA following his studies at the University of Tokyo. I attempted to read his early papers and found it was possible to follow what he was doing even if I didn’t understand the mathematics.

With his colleagues, he was trying to create a better way to model global climate at every point from the ground to the stratosphere. Manabe wanted to create better mathematical tools to understand this process and that’s what his papers from 1964 and 1967 do. Our house in Okayama is a tribute to him and a public acknowledgment of his brilliance.

The equations are elegant and functional. I want people to think about the science of climate change and not just vague appeals to do the right thing. I want them to understand that the science and maths behind our analysis of climate is more than 50 years old. It is not a political issue and can be examined and understood via the pure science of mathematics.

Collaborating with Mt. Fuji architects has been in the form of what sociologists call “parallel play”. They have developed the form and detail of the building in discussion with me and I have added some equations from the work of Suki Manabe to the facade. The architecture is both simple and complex at the same time – an echo of Manabe’s thinking. The equations on the facade are in the universal language of mathematics – a language without borders. Taken together the aim is to create a place to think, sleep and live – the house is not a sculpture. The house is a house made by an architect and an artist thinking together about local context and global questions simultaneously.

Liam Gillick

Architect-comment

I find myself interested in concept of “wandering.”

Architecture is indeed a representative of that which exists unambiguously with a clear logic and structure, and by no means should harbor any traces of “doubt or wonder.” Nevertheless, I feel that the fundamental inconvenience of sorts caused by this lack of doubtfulness has recently become increasingly noticeable.

For example, the dangers of large-scale architectural projects that continue to progress without a cloud of doubt amidst ever-changing circumstances, is now something that society recognizes to be a problem. It has also been pointed out from numerous perspectives that a solid and self-contained architectural system excludes the diversity of various cultures, as well as the unpredictable ways in which people of the future may engage with architecture.

I wish to reintroduce the concept of “doubt” in architecture. Designs are not self-contained when one plans with various doubts in their mind, and instead begin to open out onto the world. Since it is not self-contained, it enables those in the surroundings to become involved in this ring of doubt. Through sharing our doubts together, society comes to be reorganized based on individual’s thoughts and concerns. It would be wonderful if this were to happen…

Liam Gillick’s mammoth texts both serve to undermine and encourage us to think about social convictions (/blind acceptance), and are a so-called trigger for doubt. My intention was to incorporate architectural elements of “doubt” that would work together with this into the process and the output of the design.

To be specific, we prepared a frame using CLT, large pieces of laminated wood produced in Okayama, which are assembled in a square-grid formation. By stacking these frames in three layers while each shifting their position, what is conceived is a “space for wandering” that comprises a complex three-dimensional circulation network. I hope guests will be able to recall sensations of “wandering and being lost” that they may have not experienced for long since childhood, and embrace the various sensations of the worlds that come to emerge in such instances.

Masahiro Harada
MOUNT FUJI ARCHITECTS STUDIO

Floor plan

Concept drawings