TREE CHANGER
The structure of plant forms is the inspiration for this architect’s cultivation of beautiful, organic and highly innovative buildings.
WHEN IT COMES TO THE WORK of Japanese architect Sou Fujimoto, I was an early adopter. In 2013, I saw his house design for Solo Projects in Spain based on the concept of a ‘geometric forest’ with untreated timbers forming an open latticework structure. That same year, I was one of thousands of visitors to his Serpentine Pavilion in London’s Kensington Gardens.
His appointment marked a shift in the commissioning of the globally significant pavilion to one that embraced a new generation of architects. Julia Peyton-Jones, then director of the Serpentine Gallery, recalls the sense of risk in choosing someone without the “easy acclaim outside the profession”, as part of the funding was predicated on the subsequent sale of the pavilion. It is with a note of pride that she reports it was the most visited exhibition of design anywhere in the world that year. It is easy to understand why. The cloud-like form Fujimoto designed and had simply constructed in a gridded, white-steel framework took on an ethereal quality. Dense in parts and transparent in others, it looked digital while revealing its natural surrounds and that of the adjacent gallery. The concept was always, according to the architect, “that geometry and constructed forms could meld into the natural and the human”.
This was something he had explored for a young couple in a more domestic setting in the renowned NA House (2011) in Tokyo. The block of land was tiny at six by nine metres but the introduction of a series of 21 platforms, located at various heights, brings an expansiveness. Originally challengingly open to the street (there are now curtains) Fujimoto’s idea was that the floor plates could accommodate various activities, with “fragments of life floating around you, a bag, some books”, allowing the owners to become “nomads in their own home”.
The analogy of the tree is never far away. Even when the structure is gridded rather than organic, the concept is that of nature. With the NA House, for example, he references the sense of living in the branches of a tree. “To hear one’s voice from across and above, hopping over to another branch, a discussion taking place across branches by members from separate branches. These are some of the moments of richness encountered through such spatially dense living,” says Fujimoto.
Selected as one of the keynote speakers for the second year of Dr Gene Sherman’s SCCI (Sherman Centre for Cultural Ideas) Architecture Hub in Sydney in October 2019, Fujimoto chose to expand on these very themes in a talk titled, ‘Between Architecture and Nature’. “It is about making human life actively connected with the life of the building and with the life of the natural elements associated with it,” he says. “The care of architecture and the care of greenery is part of human life.” An example of this philosophy delivered on a large and uncompromising scale is the recently completed apartment building in Montpellier, southern France. “From the beginning there was a desire for a landmark project and we came up with a unique building that is like a pinecone or a head of broccoli,” Fujimoto explains.
Poetically named L’Arbre Blanc (White Tree) the 17-storey building is defined by its balconies projecting from the living room, the largest of which extends to five by eight metres. In some instances there are external stairways which connect two balconies belonging to the same apartment. “I knew that it needed to be special, to represent the city, the climate and the traditions in this part of the world to live outside and so the exterior spaces become the backdrop to life,” says Fujimoto.
In what must be considered something of an architectural coup Sou Fujimoto Architects, along with their L’Arbre Blanc collaborators, Paris practice Oxo Architectes founded by Manal Rachdi, have won a Reinvent Paris commission with their Mille Arbres (Thousand Trees) scheme. The site, which is at present a carpark and bus station, will be replaced by “a floating village in the middle of a forest in Paris”, as the proposal stated. White and ethereal with heavy planting, as the name suggests, the ninestorey building will house 127 apartments, a 250-room hotel, restaurants, a children’s centre and a new bus station.
Whether it is a contemporary vertical village in Paris or the master planning of the heritage Tsuda College outside Tokyo, Fujimoto says he searches for the same sense of clarity: “With the college we are reorganising history and rethinking the needs for education. Everything has an existing context and our strategy is to create a wonderful link to the new and a clear path to the future.” sou-fujimoto.net