Retaining Japanese Culture in a Modern Architectural Vocabulary: from Ando to SANAA

The Japanese design aesthetic is distinct from other cultures partly as a result of the country being closed off to the rest of the world for hundreds of years. Initially the Japanese islands were populated by people who came from China and brought their culture, aesthetics, and way of thinking. As the Japanese culture evolved and separated from the dominant Chinese culture, a distinct Japanese take on aesthetics and religion developed. After small trading posts were created by the Portuguese and Dutch, America opened up Japan to the rest of the world in 1853. Japan dramatically changed after that point. The Japanese architectural style practiced today by elite architects is very much a result of centuries in the evolution of Japanese aesthetics.

When I was in architecture school I was infatuated with the architectural design of the Japanese architect Tadao Ando. To me, he localized modern architecture to Japanese culture just as, for example, Luis Barrigan localized modern architecture to Mexican culture. His architecture celebrates nature whether it is natural light filtering through skylights and then raking against a concrete wall, a pool of water that reflects light creating ethereal patterns upon concrete, or vegetation captured from the surrounding landscape and presented as if it is an abstract object on display at a gallery. The sublime concrete walls of Tadao Ando are like the beautiful subtleties in traditional Japanese rice paper and abstract expressionist Rothko paintings. The walls carve out negative space and capture both sunlight and darkness. As Louis Kahn said, "Even a room which must be dark needs at least a crack of light to know how dark it is". For Ando, I think he sees it in the reverse: in order to show light there must also be darkness.

Ando seems to take the native Shinto understanding of God being within all objects especially in the natural elements of water, rocks, trees, etc. and makes it visible in the architecture of his projects. The architecture of Ando also expresses the ideas of Zen Buddhism which has historical roots in Japan. One major tenet of Zen Buddhism is to marry mind and body by removing extraneous thought creating an emptiness to become particularly conscious of oneself. The spaces of Ando buildings have a contemplative emptiness that are animated by natural elements. This is a fundamental different idea compared to traditional architecture of the Western world.

After working on traditional Japanese style homes in the United States, I now find myself in Japan rediscovering why I appreciate the Japanese design aesthetic. The three contemporary architecture firms of the next generation leading the design discussion in Japan are Kengo Kuma and Associates, Sou Fujimoto Architects, and SANAA.

Whereas Tadao Ando uses concrete to express the sublime Japanese aesthetic and to capture space, Kengo Kuma celebrates the long tradition in Japanese architecture of the use of wood and the expression of wood construction in more object like buildings. However, his buildings are most definitely contemporary with minimalist detailing and often large walls of glass allowing the interior observer to contemplate the exterior manicured landscape as one would in a traditional Japanese building. Alternatively, sometimes his designs incorporate a profusion of wood in a non hierarchal method of assembly.

Kuma's design for the Tokyo Olympic Stadium incorporates his signature use of exposed wood. The stadium’s exposed wood structure, rooftop vegetation, and reduced height are all an attempt to blur the line between the 80,000 spectator stadium and the surrounding park like setting. Kuma’s stadium design is in stark contrast to the previous and scrapped design by Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid whose futuristic design was criticized for not being a reflection of the architectural traditions of Japan as well as projected cost over-runs.

Traditional Japanese buildings often have sliding doors and an "engawa" between the interior and the surrounding manicured landscape similar to a narrow deck under a roof eve. There is a blending of interior and exterior spaces which architects of the 20th C in the West such as Frank Lloyd Wright and Mies van der Rohe incorporated in their buildings. The firm of Sou Fujimoto Architects's projects often are at the intersection of building and nature while incorporating distinctly modern aesthetics of simplicity and the use of white surfaces.

In his Serpentine Gallery Pavilion set in a garden on the grounds of a classical style museum in London, the delicate pavilion is both solid and transparent. One can occupy the pavilion interior while also seeing through the lattice like structure to the gardens beyond and can walk the transparent staircase to get a higher view of the picturesque grounds. The picturesque style of gardens of Britain, which can be seen in the famous Stowe Landscape Gardens, have a strong similarity to the non linear gardens studded with follies of Japan. Sou Fujimoto's garden pavilion is both a folly within the museum garden and a white modern styled apparatus used to view the existing gardens along the picturesque path of movement.

In Arbre Blanc, an apartment building in Marseille, France a kaleidoscope of ample sized decks are cantilevered off the trunk of the modern white building. Once completed, the apartment decks will have vegetation furthering the building as tree analogy.

SANAA also takes the white modernist aesthetic and reinterprets it in their native Japan. Often the buildings of SANAA blur the line between inside and outside such as their "River Building" which is set in an 80 acre landscape of grasses and trees at Grace Farms in Connecticut. The building's floor matches the slope of the existing undulating landscape. "River Building" winds it's way in a sinuous curving form expanding and contracting like water finding it's own natural path of movement. "River Building" essentially has one roof elevated between 10' and 14' above floor height by thin piloti. Much of the exterior walls have clear glazing allowing the observer to feel as one with the exterior landscape similar to an occupant within a Japanese tea house peering out to the surrounding Japanese garden.

Many of the architects leading the current architectural design discussion in Japan are succeeding in regionalizing the modern architectural style by using the architectural vocabulary of today while celebrating the culture that makes Japan distinct in the world.

Author: Tom Gastel, architectural illustrator at Nikken Sekkei LTD in Tokyo, Japan.