Wednesday, May 7, 2008

Japanese Architecture

I came to a simple epiphany today.
Japanese architecture is sought after and we find it interesting notwithstanding its simplicity because it seeks multiplicity and complexity in simplest form.
In fact, Japanese architecture is not interested in form but rather in various spatial qualities that can be created by the least amount of intervention.
Most rigorous process of design ultimately and ironically produces something minimal and seems effortless. Unlike Western paradigm, where complex formal analysis and process yields architecture of equal formal and programmatic complexity, Japanese paradigm is content with disjunction between intricacies of process and simplicity of "product." Much like its culture of ambiguity and hyperbole, Japanese architectural world embraces space over form, and simultaneously looking as if a purely formal product.
The apparent dislocation between what we see at first impression as a minimal matter, in fact has multifarious spatial consequences as eye travels with time. I think unconsciously we detect the traces of spaces melting into one another through fenestrations, inside-outside, columns, slabs, stairs, doors, walls... all nascent qualities that constitutes "Architecture" of new ambiguity.

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