Hera Van Sande
Ghent, semester 1 2024-25
Exploring Craftsmanship: PRACTICE AS STUDY
Image left: Plan Katsura Villa, Kyoto, Japan.
STRUCTURAL CONTINGENCIES RESEARCH GROUP
Architecture arises from the mutually reinforcing relationship of poetic spatiality and logical structure.
The studio LEARNING FROM JAPAN operates within the Structural Contingencies Research Group, which re-introduces architectural culture and its historical layers as a creative generative power in architectural projects. It proposes a re-reading of built structures and spaces, materials, details and craftmanship through a design attitude that embraces their vulnerability and an attitude of care. Where space is relational and responsive, the human condition is one of connectedness (Gilligan), opening up to the possibility of connecting ethics to aesthetics.
“Tradition is the starting point of creation, not the return point”
(Kazuo Shinohara, 1960)
To shift our boundaries, we dive into a different cultural world – the world of Japan – to rethink, to re-establish, to re-interpret, to re-write our spatial notions.
Image: Katsura Villa by Yasuhiro Ishimoto
SPATIAL POETRY OF THE KATSURA VILLA
“Spirit has triumphed over matter. (…) Space – here the only medium of artistic stimulation – appears to be magically floating”
Walter Gropius, 1960
The Katsura Villa is often considered as the culmination of Japanese traditional architecture. It was built as a villa/retreat in the Western part of Kyoto for imperial families during the Edo period. It is believed that the construction started sometime in the late 16th century, and the current layout was completed by the early 17th century. A plethora of studies and discourse have been written on why the Katsura Villa has come to be viewed as the embodiment of a uniquely Japanese “essence”, as the symbol of “Japan-ness.”
➔ We will focus on an a-historical interpretation, setting aside history in favor of a transcendental reading of the space. We will read and re-read, interpret and re- interpret, draw and redraw what appeals to us, until its our own drawing, our own poetic interpretation.
Image: Katsura Villa, Kyoto, plan
THE ATMOSPHERICAL READING OF MA
MA is the pure, and indeed, essential void between all things. It is the essence of Japanese aesthetic, the DNA of its design principles. Ma is all about space that holds potential.
The Japanese time-space concept of MA is something that relates to all aspects of life. It has been described as a pause in time, an interval or emptiness in space. MA is the fundamental time and space from which life needs to grow. MA can also read as the negative space, as emptiness. It cannot be translated in English.
In 1976 Arata Isozaki held an exhibition in Paris “MA: Space-Time in Japan”, explaining MA to the West as in-between-ness, an ambiguous state of space and time, through nine different atmospheric spatial concepts related to the Japanese culture and religion. We will introduce several Japanese conceptual aspects of space, including those mentioned above, in the studio.
Contemporary ideas and projects will be examined, including works by Kazuo Shinohara, Toyo Ito, Go Hasegawa, Sou Fujimoto, Atelier Bow-Wow, Akihisa Hirata, Ryue Nishizawa, Kazuyo Sejima, Jun’ya Ishigami, Shingo Masuda + Katsuhisa Otsubo and Fuminori Nousaku + Mio Tsuneyama. Their ideas and projects will be used to reflect upon the distinctness of our way of thinking about space.
In Japan, no concept of “space” came into being. Not once has a concept of space like the ones in the West emerged. In the beautiful spaces at Jikō-in, there is no “space”. Katsura Villa, Kinkaku-ji and all the other beautiful and elegant buildings considered to represent Japanese perfection in architecture do not contain any “space” as such. Such beauty as exists is a beauty stemming from the “non-existence of space”
Kazuo Shinohara, The Japanese Conception of Space, 1964.
The Japanese concept of space is about the relationships among people. Space comes into being related to human activity. We will relate to spatial experience.
➔ You will pick out one Japanese spatial concept, do research about it, write a text and present your reading graphically/ atmospherically, also referring to an analogue reading of an contemporary project.
➔ By doing this we will establish a lexicon, a search for an engaging architectural discourse: in words, in images, in plan analysis, focusing on the ambiguous zone between inside and outside, focusing on the in-between-ness.
OUTPUT 1 RESEARCH
‘… between interior and exterior, between artificial and natural, between object and empty space, between truth and falsehood—if we cut open these intermediate zones, give them spatial form and make them into something we can experience, our world will undoubtedly be richer for it.’
Sou Fujimoto
➔ Through the research on Katsura through iterative drawings and/or models, we will first research the systematics in the powerful interconnection of places, inbetween spaces and ambiguity in boundaries, on the Japanese concept of space revolving around spatial layering and the dynamic of movement space. Lectures will be given.
➔ Contribution to the LEXICON ON ARCHITECTURAL LANGUAGE / LANGUAGE IN ARCHITECTURE by interpreting a Japanese spatial/temporal notion (both textual and graphical)
Exact format will be given at a later date.
Image: Katsura Villa, Kyoto, plan
ARCHITECTURAL PROJECT
Through the research every student will define his/her own design approach, tools and methodologies. This will serve as a starting point for a design proposal for a reconversion project in Ghent.
We study and work in Ghent. This gives the opportunity to get deeply immersed into the site and its context.
Ghent is home to many young people, amongst them many students. In 2024 Ghent was the European Youth Capital and many reflections were made. Young people long for ‘A free haven’, where they can feel at home, they long for ‘Community’, where they can meet and be together, they long for ‘playfulness’, spaces where they can watch and be watched, they long for ‘a cocoon’, spaces where they can come to peace with themselves, where they retreat.
You, young people yourself, upcoming architects, can help to find answers to these needs.
We will organize guest lectures, own lectures, read books, think about several topics.
We will focus on inbetween-space:
Between people, between objects, between structure, between city and project, between city and its users, between the project and its urban landscape.
We explore the meaning of landscape within an urban environment in relation to a building. We will look for the qualities of the transition zone of a building with its context. What can the urban landscape mean here? What is the continuity between matter and non-matter? What is the importance of space, of emptiness, of air, of breathing space, of non-built space?
And how can we give young people a place within it?
We are designing a city building 2.0, with a free programme to fill in, serving as a social condenser for young people in the city. An oasis in the centre of Ghent. An inclusive accommodation platform in relation to the city.
We explore the relationship between the human scale, starting from a small scale, and relating it to a bigger programme. We seek the tension between communality and intimacy, between interiority and urbanity, between mass and space. Here, we aim to merge the poetics and logic of building. You are given the freedom to conduct your programmatic and contextual research in a personal way, but the questioning of the small scale unit is equivalent to that of the whole. You act from density, because space is precious. We focus on structure, materiality and detail, we focus on landscape. We challenge you to deal with complex spatial problems in a creative and inventive way, beyond conventional solutions.
Think about transitional spaces – thresholds – inbetween spaces.
–
SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY
In today’s city, climate awareness can no longer be ignored. Although it is only a semester exercise with many degrees of difficulties, we count on developing a sustainable awareness towards dealing with space. This goes beyond greenwashing and pimping with solar panels. It is about an understanding from the beginning to rethink everything in a sustainable way.
Sustainability is about a design attitude on many levels. They can as much apply to the economic, social, environmental and integrative level, by reflecting upon density, mixity, landscape, connectivity….
OUTPUT 2 PROJECT
In pairs: group work for a vision of the site, the attitude towards the surroundings and towards the city, in the form of a limited master plan, by focusing on the spatial quality in intermediate zones.
Individual: Own design with sketches and impressions, plans, sections, facades and models.
Model on the scale of the site Detail model on 1/20.
Everything is being assembled and brought together in a logbook.
At the end of the atelier, a template in indesign will be provided, to achieve a collective publication of the studio work.
ASSESSMENT
Assessment will take into account regular attendance at the studio, with the design process being presented to the teacher on a weekly basis. There will be one mid-review, counting for 30% of the marks.
Furthermore, each assessment will take into account the content (60%), the graphic elaboration (25%) and the oral presentation (15%).
AGENDA
Studio in the Sint-Niklaasstraat, from 9 AM till 5 PM September 25
October 2, 9, 16, 23, 30
November 13, 20, 27
December 4, 11, 18
The mid-term review (internal) will be on October 23. The official submission is on December 18.
Supersalon is foreseen on 6-10 January (format to be decided).
The field trip to visit the Umbrella House by Kazuo Shinohara in Weil am Rhein in Germany is foreseen during the Atelierweek (4-8 November).
This studio will be clustered with the studio “How to be lived: Materialize Immateriality” by Kana Arioka.