Noma Bar: Birds Eye View

Commissioned by the Momofuku Ando Foundation in Japan to create a view house within the wooded landscape at Komoro, Noma Bar translated his illustrations into architectural form.

Noma Bar, Birds Eye View, Komoro, Japan
Illustrator Noma Bar was commissioned by the Momofuku Ando Foundation in Japan to create a view house within the wooded landscape of the Momofuku Ando Center at Komoro Japan. Being the first none Japanese artist to be asked to participate, the project offered Bar the unique opportunity to translate his illustrations into architectural form.
A team of 20 Japanese carpenters constructed the viewing house, with the structure itself forming the shape of a bird, playfully working in three dimensions as Bar’s conceptually driven illustrations do on paper. For the illustrator it was important to retain the visual storytelling of his work, an architectural form translated into the environment in which the visitor interacts with the structure, both visually and as a functioning viewing house.
Noma Bar, Birds Eye View, Komoro, Japan
Noma Bar, Birds Eye View, Komoro, Japan

Birds Eye View is located in a high point amongst a wooden area; with visitors at first encountering giant leaf shapes made from wood whose profile form the shape of a bird. Bar’s source of inspiration for the work came from the chance finding of 2 leafs on the floor, their position reminding him of the shape of a bird in profile. A moment of visual chance, the work takes this concept into architecture, revealing the bird shape only from one point of view, adding depth to the visual playfulness, allowing the reveal only as the public explores the location.

From another approach you only see the leaf shapes gradually transform into stairs entering an interior space. Once inside the platform itself you discover a beautiful Birds Eye View of Mount Asama, an active volcano in central Japan seen across the landscape.

Standing 9 metres in height the bird structure is discovered amongst the trees, harmoniously using a single tree trunk as support for the view house, reminding you of how Bar usually constructs illustration with simple geometric shapes, using an economy of form to allow the audience a sense of discovery and storytelling.

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