Between 1989 and 1995, I thought about floating architecture. In the Cosmologic Space I, II, III Series (I is the Saitama Prefecture Peace Resource Center, II is the plaza including the monument in the Cultural Learning Research Exchange Facility, III is the soccer stadium and park built in the Marshaling Yard Ruins Park in Okayama Prefecture), I attempted to use structure and technology to directly express the concept of floating. I designed the two floating spaces of the Chuya Nakahara Memorial Hall and Shimane Prefecture Art Museum Series in which I tried to capture the concept of floating in a more mental or spiritual way. In Cosmologic Space I, II, and III, I aimed at an expression that would allow one to feel the sensation of slowly floating, such as in an airship of the Zeppelin era or a large propeller-driven boat moving slowly from land. And in my head I drew a type of star ship traveling through outer space. I thought it would be desirable to have something that conveyed the way airships or spaceships are built, fly, and float. As an example of architecture of this type, there is Le Corbusier's concept of pilotis (pilotis [pile work] means disconnecting the building from the ground by raising it up on posts); but I believe this is different from my idea of floating, in which an original structural device is used as a mechanism for floating or raising and also has a conceptual meaning. In the Chuya Nakahara Memorial Hall and Shimane Prefecture Art Museum, I avoided a direct expression of structure, instead I dealt with it as an image after creating a conceptual feeling of floating and space. Bernard Tschumi pointed out that "architecture since the pyramids has gradually become lighter, and in the 20th century this has been accelerated and architecture has become even lighter," suggesting a trend toward light architecture incorporating the materials themselves. There is definitely a trend toward light architecture both in the quality and in the composition of space. However, I believe that the expression of lightness and the feeling of floating in architecture are not necessarily things that are based only on light materials. I do not believe that only materials or spaces that look light at first glance express the feeling of floating. There are buildings which seen heavy even though they are consturcted of light materials. That feeling of lightness is, in brief, based on balance. Moreover, as for making something float, I believe that when we consider what we want to convey, there are various ways to express materials and space. While studying such things, I first conceived of floating as Cosmologic Space (conceptual space based on outer space). I later developed a concept of Cyberspace (co-perceived illusory space or computer space).
Cosmologic Space
Exactly what was the space which represented the cosmos inside the 134.2 meter-diameter globe that the architect Boull仔 designed to show inside the monument to Sir Isaac Newton? The concept of a great space contained within another space has been expressed in a manner that was taken up by both H.G.Wells and B.Fuller, in addition to other science fiction writers of the 20th century. When we enlarge an image of a computer integrated circuit chip, it gradually comes to look like the enlarged picture of a city -- a space that has been reduced down to a nail-size microchip sends a direct pulse to our brains. Cyberspace (computer space) is a shared illusory space that exists in our minds. In Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey" what was it that Captain Bowman discussed with HAL? The light shown in the scene of the bird's-eye view of Los Angeles in 2019 at the beginning of the movie "Blade Runner", the symbolic function of light, and the space in the direction it is headed is what I call Cosmologic Space. It possesses a shape that opposes gravity, it is an expression of 20th century technology, it is endless Cyberspace.
COSMOLOGIC SPACE I 1989〜1990 COSMOLOGIC SPACE II 1990〜1991 COSMOLOGIC SPACE III 1994 Floating Space as Conceptual Space II
1994〜1995
Floating Space as Conceptual Space
Chuya Nakahara, a poet who died at a young age, wrote: "In a forest where there is a park marvelous even for this world, beaming women and children and men were strolling about mysteriously, they were saying words I couldn't hear, they were expressing feelings I couldn't feel. But in that sky a silvery spider's web was shining." Chuya's mind was always insecure. In many of his works, there appear numerous scenes that describe the sun on a hot summer day, steam rising at the end of the earth, the sun glittering, shade, bamboo groves, clouds floating in the sky, an uncanny spider's web (this also floats), and then there is a lonely Chuya. What was it that was floating in his heart? I thought about as I considered the question of what, in the poetic sense, floating is.Also in the case of the Shimane Prefecture Art Museum, when I thought of the position of the building in the location where the sun could be viewed sinking into Lake Shinji and the shape of the sun immediately prior to setting, that overlapped with the image of floating. Moreover, the shape of the glass incline and sky lights that appear to overlap each other, as if birds were flapping their wings in the evening, leaving their reverberations, was a poetic expression of floating. Also, in the traditional festivals of Shimane, there are many things that imitate the form of birds dancing, which led me to believe this embraces some kind of ancient yearning for birds gently floating in flight in the sky. The feeling of flight that was expressed through the Chuya Nakahara Memorial Hall and the Shimane Prefecture Art Museum goes beyond the feeling of floating that is directly expressed through materials, structure, etc., as studied in the series of Cosmologic Spaces; they are poetic feelings that match my personal feelings, which evolved from an image after making historical and philosophical interpretations. Among these, the Chuya Nakahara Memorial Hall is my favorite work; even now I myself consider it to be a masterpiece.
Cosmologic Space I 1989 - 1990
Saitama Prefecture Peace Resource CenterThe tower of this Peace Resource Center consists of an observation space in the form of a globe, plus a slanting elevator and an arm portion formed by a staircase. Many towers have been conceived in the past. Vertical towers such as the Eiffel Tower and slanting towers such as the Lenin Lectern of E.Lissitzky come to mind. If we say that peace is built upon an extremely delicate balance, then I believed a slanted tower more than a vertical tower would tend to present problems. Also, a globe was selected for the shape of the observation platform because it is the form which contains the maximum space using the minimum of outer skin, and because it is a symbol of outer space, peace, and contained space that has been taken up by people such as Ledovx, and Boull仔, etc. The body, which is a single, complete shape, forms the outer space. The four arms float in the air with four rings, and on the inside a microcosmos containing a lecture hall, conference rooms, a library, etc., which have been internalized. This was an attempt to form a large space using technology--Similar to the way space is created in the space shuttle, rather than using typical method for creating architectural space. The shape and balance in which this large space floats on the ground creates a certain thrill in children and adults and will, I hope, make them think of the proper use of technology and the road to peace through by the wonder of technology, as well as the misery of war which is displayed inside. In the foot, in other words the leg portion of the building used for the landing of the peace ship, there is the office, storage space for the collection, the machine room, and the entrance hall. People who have approached through the large canopy from the parking lot move to the second floor level via an escalator. There people can view the cafeteria, the outdoor exhibition space, and the green space that also becomes an outdoor theater, all of which is spread out in front of them. When they go up to the library and lecture hall floor, they can look down on the entire exhibition space from above, and they can feel the inside of the space, which is shaped like an eye. The slanting elevator that one can approach from the entrance hall allows people to experience a different quality of space. War in the 20th century could be called technological fighting. The machinery that is technology, which gives us the dynamic and optimistic society that the first proponents of the machine age and futurists imagined, which gives dreams and hope to mankind, also became the implements that gave rise to war. Thus in order to transmit to the next generation the historical fact that the concept for a new machine can bring both peace and war and that mankind should not use technology improperly, I tried to incorporate technology itself into the space and expression of architecture.
Cosmologic Space II 1990 - 1991
Plaza including the Monument of the Cultural Learning Research Exchange Facility
This project, Cosmologic Space II, is the design of a monument on a college campus. At the time we designed a flattened inverted dome to which we applied tension resistance. As for the parts that comprise the 33 meter diameter dome, we used I-beams in the radial direction, which is the direction of suspension, and round pipes for the circumference direction, which is the direction of compression. The strength of the dome is based on this use of two different type of structural members. The dome is supported at three points along the circumference, and within the structure of the dome we made a floating theater into which we embedded a device that emits light, clouds, and rainbows. We used a water screen that shoots out from the inside of the theater as a screen for projecting various images. This floating theater employs one of two curved surfaces utilizing gravity. The first is a method comprising a three-dimensional shell structure of stone based on the "inverted suspension method" that Antonio Gaudi developed, a representative work of which is the Sagrada Familia, the construction of which is progressing at present. The second is the method used for an extremely long span cable suspension bridges. This monument is based on the structural concept used in the latter.
Floating Space as Conceptual Space I
1994〜1995
Cosmologic Space III 1994
Marshaling Yard Ruins Park in Okayama Prefecture (total plan of the park including the soccer stadium)Stadiums until now have been cut off from the city and from nature (wind, greenery) with isolated walls around their circumference. In this floating stadium plan, we proposed to build a park full of undulations using excavated earth, and then to build the first floor stands in the carved out shape in the park and to raise the second portion so as to make it float. By making the stadium float, it connects to and is a continuation of the landscape, and it makes it possible to bring wind and greenery into the stadium. The floating stadium is a type of environmentally symbiotic building. As for the structure of the stadium, the main frame is made with steel reinforced concrete and the stands are made from reinforced concrete, both using the precasting method. The cantilever of the main stands is based on our concept in which three-dimensional surface arch cantilevers on the circumference efficiently disperse and transmit force to small beam/column groupings. We likewise devised a method of balancing the roof in three dimensions.
Floating Space as Conceptual Space I 1992
Chuya Nakahara Memorial HallChuya's space is cut off from the outside by means of a bamboo grove. The Japanese garden was made so that one feels as much distance as possible from the first part which encloses the monument and the memorial trees and the entrance. There is a thicket of trees so that one will not sense the gently rising knoll, stone paving, and parking lot next to the bamboo grove. In the internal space, where there is a conference room with two light columns at the front and a Chuya exhibition room that floats on Mirror Pond, we took care to vary the scene so that it would conform to the changes and movement of the heart that the world of poetry holds. From the front entrance, the bamboo grove can be seen from an inclined path from the front garden and the undulating ceiling space. The movement lines were made into gently sloping paths, and along the way Mirror Pond and Green Knoll can be seen. The inside of the exhibition room was designed so that daily changes in the weather and seasons could be experienced through shadows from a shoji-like device that allows the light to come through the outside wall.
Floating Space as Conceptual Space II 1994 - 1995
Shimane Prefecture Art MuseumThis project is one in which the concept of "floating" was represented more poetically, without expression through a direct mechanism, as was done in the Chuya Nakahara Memorial Hall. Three large gallery spaces were created running parallel to the lake, designed with ramps and skylights inserted between the exhibition rooms. The spaces between the galleries are enclosed by glass and full of light and are raised off the ground to create a sensation of floating space. Also, in the events that take place in the traditional religious festivals of Shimane Prefecture, there are many things that symbolize birds and wings, and among these there are many that imitate the movement of gently floating up into the sky. When one enters the entrance hall, the slope wrapped in glass reaches out to meet people in the manner that a bird's wings float upward. Also, I think that at night the shape of the glass portion looks like a bird flapping its wings, an expression of a feeling of floating.
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