Case study: House N-Sou Fujimoto Architects

Reading: The Shape of Energy – Sean Llaly

WEATHERS Installation proposal

What is Energy? Could you really say it has a visual form? Or is it perceived by our senses? Many ideas rush through our head when it comes to the shape, construction or space of energy . “In physics, energy is a property of objects, transferable among them via fundamental interaction, which can be converted in form but not created or destroyed.” Humans have a multitude of senses; Sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch are the five traditionally recognized, using these will are able to approach to the shape of energy.  But what’s our roll in architecture? Sean Llaly explains how we as architects have used for thousands of years physical material boundaries; such as stone, steel, or glass, but are they able to transform this type of work? How can we use the shape of energy as an architectural material to build with?

“They become a set of building materials known as material energies that give the architect access to the new type of boundary edges that move from points, lines, and surfaces to gradients of intensities and fallouts” with these phrase we can approach to the future of architecture.  Imagine living in an era where you can switch on ad off boundaries that divide or form spaces, are we willing to transform our way of living to make this type of fantasy come to life? It a question we as architects are users of space have to answer.

“The shape of architecture is determined by the extent to which the physical boundaries of a defined territory are held at any particular moment.”In this point the importance of the boundaries became crucial; do we increment our starting energy point so that our boundary remains intact or grows and our external elements don’t overcome the shape in with energy shows itself. We can be able to transform in a grater life span and a diverse for of living and controlling our own space. “ Shape succession creates an architecture that is more agile and has innate ability to be upgraded.

The House N in certain way it’s a new way of conceiving space. Could it be possible to fell on the street but you are really in you own house and backyard, people walking can just walk in and have certain access to you first layer or boundary house? Its something amazing for our world and the way our cities work. Basically we have to come to a point as architects to be able to project interaction in space.  For my future subject i would like to investigate more about parametricism and the evolution of time in our “future architecture” are we going to change all of our way life? “an architectural environments poses an inbuilt kinetic capacity that allows those environments to reconfigure and adapt in response to prevalent occupational patterns”.

Future house

Considering the relational logics as starting point and its approach as a critical tool in advanced architecture, several points in common with these ideas can be found in the analyzed project, Studio House F451:

1. Environmental relation: using energy efficiency systems, passive solutions in the heating system, green roof, rainwater harvesting, etc;
2. Positional relation: the volume of the house first emerges from the ground, then aligned with the ground and finally detached;
3. Metaphoric relation: if we see the configuration of the spaces, all of them go toward the central hallway, simulating a branch of a tree.
4. Disturbing relation: in this case the approach is not in relation with nature, but with the fact that the typical character of the house has been disturbed by addition of an atelier and a garage in the program.

According to these ideas, we can say that the project is an example of advanced architecture, because the designers thought about the relations between the three environments: natural, cultural and informational.

By putting in context the year of publication which is 1955, we can realize that the author is making a critique of the idea of the garden of the modern movement. This garden is merely contemplative space in which any activity is not developed. Starting from this idea, the author proposes to make this space (the garden) like one additional room of the house, using it for doing activities, furnishing it, living in it. Subsequently, the author makes use of one of the most basic building resources inspired by the ruins of Pompeii, the wall. The use of the wall in this space (the garden) seems to represent an important part of the proposal of the author, it can give a human scale to a space, to maintain a microclimate, to create shadows, to provide privacy, to act as a container; the wall is the mediator between the nature and us, etc. Now the question is what is the relevance of the text today? We can now find examples where these ideas are already implemented, like in the House N of Sou Fujimoto, and we can realize that 59 years later these ideas remain strong and are still subject of discussion.

Finally, one of the topics that interest me to develop is, since the appearance of the technique in human existence ( the technique understood as the capacity to reason then to make, to produce, that capacity that makes us different from the animals, etc. ), how it has been used only for the benefit of human beings themselves. As an example, we can take the discovery of the steam engine and how this resulted in a whole Industrial Revolution in which mass production became the main target, leaving out many aspects of the human being, but especially the nature and environment, these processes have always been polarized interests causing a lack of balance in the forces that are present in human life. Nowadays search for this balance is still present in discussions about what is the future of both the architecture and everything that is connected with it. Only now this technique has been developed in technology and the question is how to use it to search for this balance.