sou fujimoto

was born in hokkaido, japan, on august 4th, 1971.

in 1994 he graduated from the department of
architecture
in the faculty of engineering at the university of tokyo.
he established his own architectural practice in tokyo in
2000.
sou fujimoto is a lecturer at kyoto university since 2007.
house before house
House N / Sou Fujimoto
A home for two plus a dog. The house itself is comprised of three shells
of progressive size nested inside one another. The outermost shell covers
the entire premises, creating a covered, semi-indoor garden. Second shell
encloses a limited space inside the covered outdoor space. Third shell cre-
ates a smaller interior space. Residents build their life inside this gradation
of domain.
I have always had doubts about streets and houses being separated by a single wall, and wondered that a gradation of rich domain
accompanied by various senses of distance between streets and houses might be a possibility, such as: a place inside the house
that is fairly near the street; a place that is a bit far from the street, and a place far off the street, in secure privacy.
That is why life in this house resembles to living among the clouds. A distinct
boundary is nowhere to be found, except for a gradual change in the do-
main. One might say that an ideal architecture is an outdoor space that feels
like the indoors and an indoor space that feels like the outdoors. In a nested
structure, the inside is invariably the outside, and vice versa. My intention was
to make an architecture that is not about space nor about form, but simply
about expressing the riches of what are `between` houses and streets.
Three nested shells eventually mean infnite nesting because the whole
world is made up of infnite nesting. And here are only three of them that
are given barely visible shape. I imagined that the city and the house are no
different from one another in the essence, but are just different approaches to
a continuum of a single subject, or different expressions of the same thing- an
undulation of a primordial space where humans dwell. This is a presentation
of an ultimate house in which everything from the origins of the world to a
specifc house is conceived together under a single method.
fnal wooden house
Lumber is extremely versatile. In an ordinary wooden architecture, lumber is effectively differen-
tiated according to functions in various localities precisely because it is so versatile. Columns,
beams, foundations, exterior walls, interior walls, ceilings, foorings, insulations, furnishings,
stairs, window frames, meaning all. However, I thought if lumber is indeed so versatile then why
not create architecture by one rule that fulflls all of these functions. I envisioned the creation of
new spatiality that preserves primitive conditions of a harmonious entity before various functions
and roles differentiated.
I thought of making an ultimate wooden architecture. It was conceived by just mindlessly stacking 350mm square.
There are no separations of foor, wall, and ceiling here. A place that one thought was a foor becomes a chair, a ceiling, a wall
from various positions. The foor levels are relative and spatiality is perceived differently according to ones position. Here,
people are distributed three-dimensionally in the space. This is a place like an amorphous landscape with a new experience of
various senses of distances. Inhabitants discover, rather than being prescribed, various functionalities in these convolutions.
There are no separations of foor, wall, and ceiling here. A place that one thought was a foor becomes a chair, a ceiling, a wall
from various positions. The foor levels are relative and spatiality is perceived differently according to ones position. Here,
people are distributed three-dimensionally in the space. This is a place like an amorphous landscape with a new experience of
various senses of distances. Inhabitants discover, rather than being prescribed, various functionalities in these convolutions.
This bungalow no longer fts the category of wooden architecture. If wooden architecture is merely something made from wood,
then wood itself surpasses the architectural procedures to directly become a place where people live in this bungalow. It is
of an existence akin to primitive conditions before architecture. Rather than just a new architecture, this is a new origin, a new
existence.