Sou Fujimoto: Nature Room

The Japanese architect expands on his workshop at the Domaine de Boisbuchet, where through a series of minimal, striking installations, Fujimoto proposes a conceptualisation of the new relationship between Nature and Architecture.

Japanese architect Sou Fujimoto proposes a workshop to the students of the Domaine de Boisbuchet with the goal of conceptualizing the new relationship in between Nature and Architecture. On its last day, Grégoire Basdevant joined set out to discover some hidden parts of the Domain, while talking with the Japanese architect.

Grégoire Basdevant: On what intentions is this workshop based?
Sou Fujimoto: The intention of the workshop is to improve the quality of Nature, to create something new for the simple comprehension of nature and various types of structures.
The whole Domaine de Boisbuchet has been built over the years with layers of interventions — architectural or in the landscape itself. I initiated this workshop with the comments form the students, on how they would appropriate the space of the Domaine. Then we worked on the reinterpretation of some basic elements of architecture and tried to insert them in a natural environment.

You would insert these white structures in the forest…
I chose white to mark our interventions in the Nature. I chose frames as it the beginning of architecture. Frames and Windows are participating to define a space and create an intervention. There should be a nice contrast between this flatness, these geometric lines and the surrounding nature.
We created a very mysterious cube in the forest. This is quite beautiful. I don't know if it's an object, a space or a three-dimensional frame, a three-dimensional window. It's different from what you've seen it creates some forms of contrast. It looks like a virtual reality piece.
I'm very interested in the ambiguity in between the inside and outside. In Japan there's a famous word, Ma which you would translate as "in between things". But Ma has various meanings...

You have resort to English to define your concept. On the other hand many Japanese words are closer to a semantic field that a sharp and limited meaning. It seems that English is your tool to cut inside these more evasive concepts.
I'm using Japanese to create, to express the ambiguity of a situation. As you said, many Japanese words are more the definition of a field. And sometimes these fields are quite difficult to express. By putting several of these fields on the top of each other, you happen to create some kind of atmosphere. In some occasions it's rather nice to have some kind of layers, to layer various fields, to create a more ambiguous than specific meaning as a whole. There are so many words to express what's in between things, but sometimes I like to make it clearer. Then in that case I use some more simple English text.
English is quite easy to create such contrast — to combine Nature and Room together. I can find a certain freedom in english. For years, I've been using the concept of Primitive Future. It's probably not correct in english, but I like to connect Primitive and Future together in order to create some kind of atmosphere.

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