Itsuko Hasegawa ltsuko Hasegawa A t e l i e r

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Itsuko Hasegawa is a fast-rising star of Japanese architec­
ture. Her office of 25 persons, Itsuko Hasegawa Atelier in
Tokyo, has been responsible for a number of important
projects in Japan.4
For Hasegawa, architectural conceptualization in­
volves the reconstruction of her ideas into a form that meets
specific architectural conditions. It is not my way to press
my personal ideas into a design. Rather, I always try to
express the actual conditions which underlie the design
in the construction of my conceptual ideas. The drawings
she produces when first conceptualizing a design are devel­
oped in response to what she sees as the local conditions
that define the specific project. That is why she feels that
my projects have a great deal of variation in expression
and appearance. In the first stage of design, Hasegawa
prefers to work with images and words. These words,
either as short sentences or as key words, derive from her
drawings and at times appear on her sketches as well. At
the first stage of my work, I usually create words as well
as sketches. Both come from the conceptual image I have
in my mind. These I transmit to my staff. After she obtains
the client’s consent for the basic design, Hasegawa develops
a book of words and drawings for the program, which will
guide the planning and design of the project. This, along
with the working drawings, she uses as part of her final
presentation to the client.
The basic conceptual sketches are used by the staff
for further investigations. These in turn are used by Hase­
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gawa and the staff as the basis for discussions between them.
These discussions and the drawings that are produced as a
result become both a drawn and a written record of the
investigations that make up the development of the design.
From these discussions and sketches, the staff pro­
ceeds to develop the design through the use of computer
graphics. Recently, the office has begun to use computer
graphics for the basic drawings of a design as well as for
development drawings.
All the drawing notwithstanding, Hasegawa be­
lieves that the model is the best medium with which to
guide the client through the design’s development. The
model provides the most realistic image to the client and
provides them an easy way to understand the design.
While models are used mostly for client presentations, Ha­
segawa and the staff sometimes use models for themselves
as well, to record and evaluate changes in a design. The
models are made in the office during the design develop­
ment phase and at the same time that the working drawings
are being produced.
Drawing, though, remains most important, and the
most critical drawings are the plans. For Hasegawa, they
show the real lifestyle or functional aspects that will be
found within a project. Secondary to plans, sections are
needed to illustrate the volume of the spaces, and elevations
are used to describe the nature of the face of the building.
Unlike other architects, who often see the elevation
as the most important and useful drawing to use when
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 dealing with the client, Hasegawa feels that, except for a
few knowledgeable clients who are able to read architectural
drawings, the elevations as well as the other drawings she
and the staff do would mostly mislead. As a result, draw
ings are used, most of the time, solely within the office.
The one critical exception to the internal use of
drawings for Hasegawa is the use they are put to when
communicating with the engineers who work on her proj
ects. With them, she says, I use the basic drawings in order
to explain to the engineers what our ideas are about the
fundamental structural and mechanical systems. This is
because, in my architectural way of thinking, the struc
tural system for the building is very important. So we
need to communicate and share the fundamental design
concept for the project with the engineer in the clearest
and most complete way possible. Hasegawa begins her
discussion with the engineers at the earliest stages of design.
While Hasegawa uses plans, sections, and elevations
in her work, she usually does not use perspectives or ax
onometrics during the design process, because they give us
images that are too different from the real and are not
really valuable in realizing the project. I don't trust their
images. If Hasegawa does not find perspectives and axono
metrics useful during the design process, she does find the
use of computer graphics very exciting. Computer graph­
ics, she believes, push us away from ourselves. They are
an exciting way to stimulate and accelerate the devel­
opment of a design. By translating all the information of
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the design into a digital form, we can share this infor­
mation on computer screens in real time and thus we are
better able to discuss the problem of the design process.
As a result, the office works better as a group.
When Hasegawa designs a large public building that
requires the involvement of a large group, she uses words
as well as drawings to communicate her ideas. In such
projects, there are a great number of individuals involved
with the project who are not architects, and it is therefore
important to transmit one’s ideas through words so that
people will understand what the architect is doing. In a
way, Hasegawa feels that she must be able to construct, in
these instances, an architectural work through words.
After finishing a design, Hasegawa uses everything
from plans to details when publishing it in architectural
journals and books. [Because] I positively adopt new and
advanced products as building materials, I feel it requires
that I make information about these products widely
available. I think it is valuable to announce them and do
this through publication. Sharing information is generally
important to Hasegawa. In many cases, even with clients,
she will provide plans of the project and give them as much
information as possible in drawings, models, and words.
Sometimes she will sketch while talking with the client.
She feels this is particularly important in Japan
where, unlike the United States, there are few fixed plans
for houses and each client wants a house that is specifically
his or her own. Because designing a house is about design-

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ing the lifestyle of the client, Hasegawa feels that plans are
of critical importance in the process of design and
communication.
With her staff, she likes to communicate through
all sorts of drawings. When she first started working, she
could do much of the work herself. Now, the design is
fixed through meetings and discussions with the staff. At
these meetings, she is receptive to the suggestions or ideas
of her staff.
With consultants like engineers, she usually presents
the basic drawings like plans, sections, elevations, and even
sketches from the advanced stage of conception just after
she finishes the fundamental design concept. Then she ex­
plains her ideas in the drawings to them and discusses their
contributions to the project.
Early on in her career, she used to discuss her work
and the work of others by discussing their and her draw­
ings. Today she is too busy to undertake these critical dis­
cussions. When foreigners visit, though, Hasegawa is more
than willing to show them her new projects and share with
them whatever they want to see of her drawings.
Overall, for Hasegawa, the drawing, properly used,
is one tool (along with words and models) that is critical to
her design, and to the way she feels it is necessary both to
understand a design and to communicate it to others.
The use to which Hasegawa puts drawing and the
types of drawing that she uses become clear when looking
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at the design for the Sumida Culture Center. What one
notices is that the drawings are essentially of two types: (1)
what we might call the “fundamental” or conceptual draw­
ings, which are sketchlike and relatively abstract, and (2)
the working drawing, which serves as the basis for both
design development and realization.
The design for the Sumida Cultural Center, located
in Tokyo, was awarded to Hasegawa in a competition she
won in October 1990. The building is designed to house
community-based cultural events; construction was to be­
gin in 1993.
The first or “fundamental” sketches (figures 89-92)
for what would eventually become the final competition
drawing and model (figures 93 and 94) are typical of Hase
gawa’s approach to design conception. Done both in color
and black and white, they are also filled with words. Images
and words are used both as a mnemonic for herself and as
the basis for design development by Hasegawa as well as
her collaborators in the office (figure 95).
Although she does draw a lot, she also uses various
kinds of models for both presentation and design analysis.
Some are actual three-dimensional models (figure 96), while
some are models produced on computers (figure 97). The
first model illustrated here was done in order to get per­
mission to change the design of the roof, permission which
was refused; the second was produced for the final review
of the design by the office and the client.
As the design moves from conception to develop-
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ment, both hand-drawn and CAD drawings are used. Fig­

ure 98 is a detail done by hand by Hiroshi Nishimura during
design development and looks at details of the roof design.
A drawing produced to analyze the connections between
the various buildings (figure 99) during the last phases of
design development was also done by hand.
However, development drawings to look at and
analyze the floor plans, in this case plans for the ground
floor (figure 100), the fourth floor (figure 101), and the fifth
floor (figure 102), were produced through the use of CAD.
So, too, the drawing for a study of the final elevation of
the five-story building (figure 103).
While Hasegawa does most of the drawing in her
office, at times she does use the work of others like engi­
neers for specific studies and analyses of particular details.
An example is the study of the structural members of the
roof done during design development (figure 104).
When the design is developed, the office does its
own working drawings by hand (figure 105) rather than
computer.
Using hand-drawn images, computer-drawn im­
ages, three-dimensional models, computer-generated mod­
els, and words, Hasegawa produces some of the most
exciting new architecture in Japan today. At base, though,
drawing is still her primary instrument both to conceptual­
ize and to communicate her initial design ideas. Drawing is
a crucial, even central act for Hasegawa, helping to define
her practice and her architecture.
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