Artist
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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