Interesting interview with a blind writer...

Excerpt from a transcript from an ACB National Radio interview with a blind writer - Rebecca Maxwell - and an architect - Peter-John Cantrill  - about architecture.

In a world were buildings are predominantly judged by what they look like, how does someone without sight measure whether a building is a good one or a bad one?

"I began by remarking to her that if I were to describe a building, my description would start with what it looks like. So how would Rebecca's description start?
Rebecca:
I think I'd start with the floor plan. It's very important to me to be able to internalise the being of that building. I don't just happen from space to space; any building I'm going to familiarise myself with has to be in an internal map, and really, if I were to give you a parallel experience, I could ask you to close your eyes and put yourself in your bedroom at night, and then imagine the layout of your house, and you would have a spatial experience I think.
Interviewer:
How do you get a sense of the floor plan? Does this mean that you have to walk the perimeters?
Rebecca Maxwell:
Probably I wouldn't say the perimeters, because I probably wouldn't circumnavigate every room, but I'd begin with let's say the final column, the skeleton of the building, so it would be the hallways and how spaces radiate from that, and then I'd do the second level of enriching my inner map, and that would mean getting a sense of each of the rooms. And that then goes beyond the floor plan. It also becomes a sense of the three dimensions of the room, and where there are places that let in the outside, that actually brings a space to life. If I can feel the air or the presence of balcony or garden, or whatever.
Interviewer:
Now you talk about getting a more three dimensional sense. Like a lot of people I think given a choice, I prefer high ceilings to low ceilings, because I think they look more elegant; but are you aware of ceiling height when you're in a room?
Rebecca Maxwell:
Oh, very much so. A low ceiling, well I don't know that it's a low ceiling, I feel an oppression that I work out by checking with someone else eventually, that it is connected with a low ceiling, or a disproportion of the space. I can't be geometrically accurate about that, but there are proportions that are comfortable and proportions that aren't, and the ceiling height is an important part.
Alan Saunders:
Is that sense of oppression connected to any of what we think of as the five, perhaps we might call them the five traditional senses: sight, hearing, touch, smell and taste, or is it a separate sense, as it were?
Rebecca Maxwell:
Well if one had to connected it to the five senses, one might say it's the sense of touch, but it's touch without a conventional physical contact. But I believe that there are a lot more senses. We haven't identified them and we don't use them. I think by identifying them we would begin to turn them on, as it were. You see, I think there is a sense of pressure, a sense of balance, a sense of rhythm, a sense of movement, a sense of life, a sense of warmth, even a sense of self, which psychology is beginning to recognise.
...
Interviewer:
... Do you think that architecture can offer a rewarding haptic experience?
Rebecca Maxwell:
I'm glad you used that word in that way; I find myself an only person using it that way. Yes, look I take delight in the shapes of columns and the textures of walls in buildings, and I love to find apses and spaces that have no meaning at all. Yes, I think architecture could delight us more by focusing on other senses indeed.
Interviewer:
I think you like visiting the National Gallery of Victoria, because of the water wall near its main entrance.
Rebecca Maxwell:
I do, I do indeed, and it isn't just that I'm just as embarrassing as you are to other people, play in the water and all that, but the water has a revivifying sense, it feels as though renewal is happening all the time, and respiration is gratified by a different balance in the air.
Interviewer:
You were talking about smoothing through a house and getting a sense of where there's a balcony and so on, where the outside air and sound is admitted; is your sense of the layout of a building altered at all if it's air-conditioned rather than naturally ventilated?
Rebecca Maxwell:
Yes, an air-conditioned building feels dead. It has lost one of its features, one of its distinctions. It becomes all amorphous, too homogenous, and even the size of spaces is lost, yes, an air-conditioned building torments me, actually.
Interviewer:
So what message would you like to deliver to architects, any architects who might be listening, about what they should be aiming to achieve in their work as far as the senses are concerned?
Rebecca Maxwell:
Well I would say the main thing that anyone can do is to give a bit of time to thinking about what senses they may have that they haven't thought of, and just live with them, and then if it's an architect, try and feed that sense, gratify that sense, so that we're not half dead in our sensibilities.
...
Interviewer:
Well I'm joined now by Peter-John Cantrill, who lectures in architecture at the University of Technology, Sydney, and is a Director of the architecture firm, Zanis Associates. Peter-John, welcome to The Comfort Zone, a virtual space that definitely favours the sense of hearing over sight.
...
Peter-John Cantrill:
... we have a wonderful outpouring of knowledge of architecture through the visual media, the print media in particular, and although this is a fantastic thing for architecture, it does have some side effects. And two of the most unfortunate side effects are to do with this concentration on the visual, without the other senses, the first being that you can't, when you open a magazine, smell the building, you can't sense the volume of the space, you can't feel the air moving through it, or the warmth of the sunlight. It's impossible to convey that through photographs only. And this leads architects to concentrate more on the visual, because they know that more and more their clients understand their buildings through media representations of them, rather than visiting them. This also leads to another unfortunate consequence, where more and more often, buildings are discussed through the criticis' understanding simply of their representation. The media is so competitive that the first magazine to publish a building often sells more. So if you can discuss the building before its completion, then you're first involved, so to speak.
The other thing is, the critics can extend this and discuss buildings before they're built and even discuss buildings that will never be built, and so I'm disappointed in a way this tendency towards discussing architecture without ever being there, without even the building being built.
...
Interviewer:
A celebrated American architect, the late Charles Moore, once designed a house that I think Rebecca Maxwell would probably like very much. So tell us about his house for a blind person.
Peter-John Cantrill:
Yes, he did design a house for a blind client in California, and he found this the most delightful building that he had designed as a house. And in describing the house, I saw him describe it, I haven't been to visit it, it was a wonderful description. The house was oriented by a series of rooms containing scented plants, containing water, things that made noise, that gave you a sense of smell. There was within every room things to touch to remind you of the room that you were in, to help you find your way around. I found his description of that that house to be a wondrous thing, it's a place I'd dearly like to visit.
...

... in the late baroque period in particular, and particularly in Germany and Austria, places like that, one judgment of a good architect was that you could walk into the church and just inside the entry, if you stamped your foot or clapped your hand, the whole room would resound like a beautiful bell. … The buildings were judged by their sound, not just their visual experience.
...
Interviewer:
The Swiss architect Peter Zumthor was in this country recently, and he designed, didn't he, a pavilion at the 2000 World Expo that was a very successful multi-century experience?
Peter-John Cantrill:
Yes, a delightful pavilion, the Swiss Pavilion there. It consisted of timber that had been cut and had not yet been dried, that was stacked, and the idea for the pavilion is that that timber would later be reused in buildings. But during the Expo the timber was drying and you could hear the creaking and groaning of the timber as it dried, you could sell the resin and tannin and other things coming out of the timber, the building was open to the elements in many parts, and so as you walked through, you the rain would fall on you, you could hear the sound of the rain hitting the timber and so forth. It's quite a delightful place.
Interviewer:
So it's clear that although most architecture these days seems to be odourless, that doesn't actually have to be the case.
Peter-John Cantrill:
No, and in fact a lot of architecture isn't odourless, it's often the smell of the concrete curing or the chemicals in the paint which you can sometimes be overcome with in a new building. Traditionally, buildings built of more natural materials are imbued with the odour of those materials. But timber itself more often than not today is treated with sealants that seal the smells in, and you can treat timber with more traditional products that allow them to imbue the space with their smell. Some of these products, like you can oil a floor with polyurethane, which is hard-wearing and long-lasting and low maintenance, and kill the smell of the timber. You could oil the floor with a mixture of tung oil and citrus oils and bring out the most delightful smell of the timber for years. It's a difficult choice, because an oiled floor in the traditional way needs a lot more maintenance, and will not wear as evenly as a floor treated in the newer way.
Interviewer:
The place where I store some of my excess stuff is a former wool storage place, and so the floorboards are utterly coated in lanolin, which is a really a lovely smell. Unfortunately I'm told, highly inflammable, but a lovely smell.
Peter-John Cantrill:
It is a wonderful smell, that's certainly true.
Alan Saunders:
Several years ago we had the Finnish architecture theorist, Juhani Pallasmaa, on the show, arguing that to be truly meaningful, architecture should awaken all the senses. And when I said to him that it wasn't immediately clear that there was any connection between architecture and the sense of taste, he begged to differ, and this is what he said:
"Architect: To me, it is, I have experience on a number of occasions that certain qualities of stone, for instance, certain metals, detailing of wood, can be so subtle that you feel it in your mouth, and I'm myself, in my own work, conscious of that possibility. I don't think it is an essential quality of architecture, but I have made the observation that architecture can be subtle enough to even evoke a sensation of taste. Maybe 20 years ago in California was just about to enter a grey, rough stone building by the Green Brothers and when I opened the door, I saw the shining white marble threshhold, and that whiteness of marble juxtaposed with the rough stone almost made me automatically kneel and taste the surface with my tongue."
...
I think the sense of smell and the sense of taste are very closely allied, and quite often the smell of a building, you can sense as taste. I can understand what he's saying.
Interviewer:
What about the sense of touch, Peter? The machine-made materials favoured by contemporary architects tend to eliminate accidental variations and tend towards uniformity, so that doesn't allow for much of a haptic experience, does it?
Peter-John Cantrill:
It certainly reduces that experience to one where your sense of touch is always cold and smooth, and the variety of things that you can touch is much wider than that. So again, more natural materials offer a greater variety of touch sensation: timber or brick and stone and so forth, but they do have difficulties, in that they're not even. People see them as, they see weathering as being a distasteful thing in a way, that things change and develop texture.
Interviewer:
Well that's yes, that is interesting, because weatherboards today don't weather and splinter, paint isn't allowed to flake off walls. So the avenue for tactility is eliminated, isn't it?
Peter-John Cantrill:
Well if that's your attitude, it certainly is, or it's restricted, and you have a certain narrower palette of materials to use for touch. But all these natural materials and others are all still available for use in buildings today.
Interviewer:
Are we just afraid of ageing?
Peter-John Cantrill:
Perhaps we are, but I'm certainly not. I find that when I see a well-weathered building, that's what delights me, and when I see a building that's kind of caught in its moment of conception and destined never to change, I'm a little saddened.
...

Back to the path....

The spice drawer concept, while appealing, has ended up seeming fairly one dimensional in  many ways (for creating an architectural idea from). So have gone back to the path to my studio idea.

I can add in the smells experienced along the path, that is:

House = smells from cooking dinner, entranceway has flower smells
Path = damp earth, fresh ozone smells, mint along the path, also the kaffir lime tree
Closer to the studio/shed = oil stains, chopped pine & tea tree (firewood)
Studio = old coffee, slightly musty

Make a model of the pathway with blocks of wood - different types with different smells, some blocks are painted, some oiled, some have stains that smell eg. coffee, oil, food smells

The Studio Path can be distilled into 3 main concepts

1. The feeling of transition allowing a stronger focus on the surroundings.

When walking this route I am in limbo between my family life and my more solitary self-focused student/worker life. With each step closer to the studio, my mind shifts away from the clutter of the dinner dishes and sounds of The Simpsons or Futurama on TV, and I become aware of the velvety night air with it's unique sounds and smells.

2. Sounds and smells.

A reduction in vision means other senses are not distracted, giving way to a stronger awareness of sounds, smells and feel of the path. The subtler night sky and stars start to glow in the absence of the strong outside lights.
Smells enter your body in a way that visual cues do not.

In order to recreate a specific environment, you have to first define the unique characteristics of those specific smells and sounds.
What is it that makes this unique?
What else creates a similar environment?
For me, the most compelling and enduring memory I have of my childhood is the combination of unique smells and sounds of the mangroves lining my grandmothers riverbank. That strong salty mangrove smell and the strange soundscape produced by the soft mud, lapping water, interspersed with the strange popping sounds.

3. Invisible architecture

When walking back to the house. I focus only on the glowing front entrance in stark contrast to the darkness of the rest of the house which is invisible to me. When walking back to the house I can guess at what my family are doing depending on which windows are lit up.

"Invisible Architecture: Experiencing Places Through the Sense of Smell"

- Anna Barbara, Anthony Perliss

(a review I found: http://www.dogrosetrust.org.uk/bookitem.htm?id=315)

Below are ideas from this book...

Odor is a powerful vehicle for memory and as such penetrates into our deepest recollections.

Tala Klinck (in the book 'Immaterial/Ultramaterial') wants to know how polished marble, urethane-coated wood, and hot laminated steel smell in the buildings of Alvaro Siza. She wonders how the resins, solvents and pigments contained in latex paints, nylon carpets and glues influence our perception of the spaces. Rudolph e-Khoury suggested that the modern surface is the extension of a visual logic of cleanliness and the universal appeal of the white wall in modern architecture is derived from its capacity to translate the absence of odor into an image.

Suskinds' "Perfume":

People cold close their eyes to greatness, to horrors, to beauty, and their ears to melodies ro deceiving words. But they could not escape scent. For scent was a brother of breath. Together with breath in entered human beings, who could not defend themselves against it, not if they wanted to live. And scent entered into their very core, went directly to their hearts, and decided for good and all between affection and contempt, disgust and lust, love and hate. He who ruled scent ruled the hearts of men."
 

Most of us have a preconceived notion that architecture = buildings and the built environment, but if we experience places through the sense of smell, then it is rarely the actual buildings that produce the odour but the activities associated with them. Smells that we encounter are, mainly, produced by the function of the buildings or spaces and by the circumstances relating to them.

An article on Smell & Memory

A thesis on Smell & Architecture

And another on 'the choreography of senses'

Interesting transcript of a blind person and her experience of architecture

Aural Architecture....

Ideas from this post come from reading 'Spaces Speak, are you listening?' by Barry Blesser & Linda-Ruth Salter. See also http://www.blesser.net/spacesSpeak.html

Rather than just focussing on the physical characteristics of a space and our perception of acoustic parameters, sounds aural architecture has more of a focus on our experience of an aural space. There is a large ammount of information on measuring acoustic processes and sensory detection but not so much on the phenomenology of aural space.

Auditory spatial awareness

Auditory spatial awareness is made up of a complex mix of things:

• physical attributes of the space
• auditory perception
• personal history & cultural values

It influences:
(1) our social behaviour by emphasising aural privacey or reinforcing social interactions;
(2) our orientation and navigation through a space;
(3) our aesthetic impressions of a space by adding aural richness or contributing to a feeling of sterility or barreness if there is a lack of acoustic features;
(4) and enhances our experience of music - the space is an extensin of the musical or vocal art form performed within it.

These 4 components of auditory spatial awareness also correspond to the 4 main paramters of aural architecture.

The combination of numerous surfaces, objects and geometries in a complicated environment creates and 'aural architecture'.
'Aural' here refers to the human experience of a sonic process, of listening. So aural architecture refers to the properties of a space that can be experienced by listening. [Listening defined as active attention or reaction to the meaning, emotions and symbolism contained within sound]

An 'aural architect' selects specific aural attributes of a space based on what is desirable in a particular cultural/social environment. That is, they focus on the way people experience the space when listening (cultural acoustics) rather than the way the space changes the physical properties of sound waves (spatial acoustics) that an acoustic architect/engineer would.

Aural architecture and visual architecture have paralllels; when they align, they reinforce each other (eg. cathedral, grand opera hall). But sometimes conflict (eg. expensive restaurant with a reverberating clatter).

Soundscapes & aural architecture

Food metaphor: sonic events = raw ingredients; aural architecture = cooking style; soundscape = resulting dish...
Soundscapes - the sounds themselves are important but for aural architecture, sounds are only required to illuminate it but this disinctive is not always relevant.

Light is needed to illuminate visual architecture, sounds are needed to illuminate aural architecture. Humans produce sound but not light.

Tezuka Workshop Presentations (August)

Invisible Architecture

[spice drawers]

These have been part of my kitchen for years, filled with the spices I use the most.

Each drawer is now infused with spice and the wood cured with constant use.

Smells distract your tastebuds. Of all the senses, smell creates evocative memories in a way that vision and sound cannot.

When I'm cooking, I know where every spice is in these drawers.

But if I forget all I need to do is open the drawer just a fraction and the image and aroma of that spice seeps out, surrounding me with images of meals I've cooked and shared. The traces of which linger like smoke.
As my eyes instinctively close in the presence of these aromas, the kitchen disappears....

My Own Sky

[plants, image?]

The path to my studio contains my own sky...

I walk out to my studio very early in the morning before my family is awake, before the sun rises. Or just after dinner in the evening, after the sun has set.

The path to the studio is curved and the destination is not immediately visible.  Our valley is protected from the city lights and sounds so as I close the front door and turn my back on the house, I become engulfed in the night sky with the sounds and smells of the plants and trees.

This moment, when the house is behind me and the studio is not yet visible, is when I'm in limbo between my life as a mother and my life as an architecture student.

As I make my way along this path, using my memory and the sounds of the trees to stay on track, I'm  immersed in the dark; the distinction between me and the night sky is blurred.

"My Own Sky" - Assignment & the "Zen View'

(1) My own sky is on the path to my studio.

I live in a deep valley in a large block of native bush so our neighbours are trees and birds, but just over the rise is the motoway and the city. There is much less light pollution in our valley so the stars and the moon appear much brighter than even when you are at the top of our long driveway.

The path from our house to the studio is my transition between the chaos of my life as a mother and wife and the chaos of my life as a student.

I usually go out to the studio before my family gets up, very early in the morning and then again after the chaos of dinner, before I put my children to bed.

Both times, it's dark or at least dim.
Both times I'm carrying a cup of tea made exactly how I like it - this slows me down so I can savour the fresh air outside, smelling of dew or damp earth, plants, ozone, and see the stars.

This is my sky, until the moment when the path is suddenly illuminated by the outdoor light of the studio.

This is the example I'll run with

(2) My friend Jenny lived a very ordinary very small flat on the third floor. There was a large window in the living area that looked out to the sea and the sky. The bedroom right next to the living space was very narrow so the bed could only run parallel to the common wall. This wall had a strange small low window between the bedroom and the living area. When you lay in bed you could look out this window and then through the living room window to the sky. The angle was just right, you couldn't see this view if standing, only when lying in bed.

Zen View

See "A Pattern Language" by Christopher Alexander et al., page 642-643 for Pattern 134 "Zen View". This is the basic principle behind example (2), "...the view of the distant sea is so restrained that it stays alive forever...[he also goes on to say] ...put the windows which look onto the view [or sky] at places of transition - along paths, in hallways, in entry ways, on stairs, between rooms."

Invisible Architecture Assignment - Spice Drawers

Invisible - imperceptible, un-noticed, imagined, perceived but not seen

Louis Kahn:

"A great building must begin with the immeasurable, must go through measurable means when it is being designed, and in the end must be unmeasured."

Architecture = shelter, protection from extreme temparatures/rain/snow, a way to alter how you interact with the environment, boundaries - an inside and an outside

Architecture = a device that allows us to connect with the environment

Architecture = shitsurae.

"Through shitsurae, a person can begin to savour a place. This concept involves ways of planning human movement - the more cunning these tricks, the more skilful the architecture. That is, it should be a natural state and people should not be aware of these manipulations."

Good architecture must work with the human being...The house is like a puzzle, where the people living in that house are the missing pieces. The human being is a piece of that puzzle (architecture exists to serve people)

Spice Drawers

A meal:

1. raw ingredients, recipe (if needed)
2. herbs and spices that transform these into something special and unique, allow the food to be savoured, however, the really skilful use of spices will not result in any one being necessarily dominant or those consuming the meal being immediately aware of them, there is a subtly gained with layering of these elements
3. the people that gather to eat this meal

Architecture:

1. environment, raw idea of a building
2. methods & tools to transform these ingredients into architecture + the 'unmeasurable' element that allows us to dwell in this building; the more skilful the designer, the less aware the users of this building might be of being manipulated into moving in a certain way or experiencing a certain atmosphere
3. the people that use the building (dwell in this building)

The spices introduce the variations linking link food with different cultures in the same way that architecture expresses the differences inherent in different cultures and localities.

They represent the unmeasurable element of architecture.
They transform raw ingredients into something special and sometimes indefinable (unmeasurable).
They allow us to enjoy the raw ingredients as architecture allows us to enjoy and appreciate our environment.
The combinations of these can be infinite but they must ultimately meet the condition of providing a particular taste; architecture must ultimately provide shelter.




The spice drawers also represent the element of touch, taste, smell that should be present in architecture in order for us to fully engage with it, in order that it does not become sterile and souless.
The represent the enduring nature of architecture - the imperfections that are produced as a result of constant use, that give it beauty. They hold memories in the way that architecture does.

Do the spices remind you of a place where you shared a meal reminiscent of the aroma of these spices? bringing people together?

Or do the Spice drawers more literally represent architectural form such as Oki Sato's Drawer House?

"Substance & Transience in Japanese Architecture"

- notes taken from 'Matter in a Floating World: Conversations with Leading Japanese Architects & Designers' by Blaine Bronwell (2011)

Japanese design embodies a heightened awareness about the ephemerality of existence and the significance of the present moment. Craftsmen approach their work with an acute interest in perception.

The unmeasurable and the measurable.

Materials

In Japan, material is called 'sozai' which means 'pure' or 'white' matter. Traditionally, materials are consecrated when they are handled or altered and are regarded as a rich source of inspiration. All craftsmen listen to the 'internal voice' of materials, seeking to extract their intrinsic logic in order to make new objects with it.

"my own sky"

looking up
being up - a tower to catch the sky
looking out

no distracting detail, architecture 'disappears' when looking at the sky
reflection of the sky in water, pools

what am I doing when I want to be part of the sky/be in the sky/capture that feeling?

• reading
• relaxing
• shower/bathroom
• a solitary experience

where am I when I feel like a part of the sky/within the air/sky?

• mountain/hill top
• tree top
• roof
• walking out to my studio
• hanging/swinging - swing/hammock/swing bridge
• bridges up high
• elevated walkways

wind
breeze
fresh smell

Design exercise #2: 36 Airedale Street

"I want students to make a invisible architecture with your own sky. Physically it is impossible to make architecture to be invisible, because architecture is a physical existence. The idea will be based on a Japanese concept called Shiturae...If you can lecture about Japanese tea house, it will help them. Great Japanese architectures are like a sharp Japanese cooking knife. It is a tool to slice and cut environment."

Address: 36 Airedale Street, Auckland CBD
Land area: approx. 230 m2, approx. 10.5m x 22.5m with a gentle slope up towards the back of the section (fall of about 2.5m). Two storied buildings flank all sides except the street. Views limited to adjacent buildings.

Exercise: design 3 different plans for a family of 4 (2 adults, 2 teenage children) with 2 cars.

Family profile (my made up one):
mum & dad work in the city, previously lived overseas in a large city so like the city 'buzz'. Children, 2 girls aged 14 and 16 years, with hobbies that include playing some kind of musical instrument (obe/clarinet?/cello?) and sports so need spaces for playing music and storing equipment.
Parent's hobbies including cooking (kitchen is important, also outdoor area for growing herbs etc), reading/books (bookcases), yoga (space for practice), mountain biking (storage), tropical fish....

Research - characteristics of Tezuka houses

Open to the environment but done with care to retain privacy (eg. see 'raised floor house').
Or if not, then views are carefully framed.
Common elements:

• skylights
• open courtyards
• sliding doors/windows which open completely out
• movable furniture which can also change the room 'size' and characteristics
• lighting which is only where needed for human occupation/activity
• ladders
• decks
• mostly, though, a connection to 'nature' in some shape or form - often skylight/rooflight

'shitsurae'

shitsurae = the subtle preparations and placements entailed by traditional activities such as the tea ceremony; installation or arrangement.

shitsurae = to arrange a given object or situation in a way that suits its nature and creates beauty.

Example: ideally the tea bowls used in the Japanese tea ceremony are not made using an industrial process. Rather, they are produced by hand in a process of trial and error so that they fit comfortably and naturally into human hands. Things are edited and revised in Japan many times over; there are countless ways to achieve comfort, and the process takes no small amount of time.

Through shitsurae, a person can begin to savour a place. This concept involves ways of planning human movement - the more cunning these tricks, the more skilful the architecture. That is, it should be a natural state and people should not be aware of these manipulations.

"Architecture exists to serve people. In the same way that a pair of chopsticks unused by people is no more than two rods, architecture that does not coexist with people is no more than boxes."

Despite advances in technology which allows more liberation for architecture, the essence of architecture remains constant.

"Architecture is charged with the mission of transcending eras, from today into the future. Because it transcends time, architecture is permitted to occupy a special position among humanity's various creations... Architecture that cannot coexist with people cannot carry out its greatest mission, the transcending of time."

- taken from essays in 'Takaharu + Yui Tezuka Architecture Catalogue 2'

See also http://www.archdaily.com/290355/twin-megaphones-atelier-tekuto-yasuhiro-yamashita-toshiyuki-fujimori/

The Tea House

The Tea Room

• Abode of Fancy - inasmuch as it is an ephemeral structure built to house a poetic impulse
• Abode of Vacancy - as it is devoid of ornamentation except for what may be placed in it to satisfy some aesthetic need of the moment.
• Abode of the Unsymmetrical - consecrated to the worship of the imperfect, purposely leaving  some thing unfinished for the play of the imagination to complete.

The Book Of Tea - Kakuzo Okakura

 'Teaism'

During the fifteenth century, Japan ennobled 'tea' into a religion of aestheticism: "Teaism."

This was essentially founded on the adoration of the beautiful among the sordid facts of everyday existence, with emphasis on the following:

• purity and harmony, 
• mystery of mutual charity, 
• romanticism of social order

Teaism = "essentially a worship of the Imperfect"

..."The Philosophy of Tea is not mere aestheticism in the ordinary acceptance of the term, for it expresses conjointly with ethics and religion our whole point of view about man and nature.

It is hygiene, for it enforces cleanliness;
It is economics, for it shows comfort in simplicity rather than in the complex and costly;
It is moral geometry, inasmuch as it defines our sense of proportion to the universe.
It represents the true spirit of Eastern democracy by making all its votaries aristocrats in taste.

The long isolation of Japan from the rest of the world, so conducive to introspection, has been highly favourable to the development of Teaism. ... It has permeated the elegance of noble boudoirs, and entered the abode of the humble. Our peasants have learned to arrange flowers, our meanest labourer to offer his salutation to the rocks and waters. In our common parlance we speak of the man "with no tea" in him, when he is insusceptible to the serio-comic interests of the personal drama. Again we stigmatise the untamed aesthete who, regardless of the mundane tragedy, runs riot in the springtide of emancipated emotions, as one "with too much tea" in him.
...
Those who cannot feel the littleness of great things in themselves are apt to overlook the greatness of little things in others...

There is a subtle charm in the taste of tea which makes it irresistible and capable of idealisation. Western humourists were not slow t
o mingle the fragrance of their thought with its aroma. It has not the arrogance of wine, the self- consciousness of coffee, nor the simpering innocence of cocoa. ...
Charles Lamb, a professed devotee, sounded the true note of Teaism when he wrote that the greatest pleasure he knew was to do a good action by stealth, and to have it found out by accident.

For Teaism is the art of concealing beauty that you may discover it, of suggesting what you dare not reveal.

It is the noble secret of laughing at yourself, calmly yet thoroughly, and is thus humour itself,--the smile of philosophy.
All genuine humourists may in this sense be called tea-philosophers,--Thackeray, for instance, and of course, Shakespeare."

Tezuka Research - "What kind of architects are they?"

Interviews

Architecture & People

The client, or person living in the house, is part of the environment - we are trying to use all parts of the environment  in our architecture.
Good architecture must work with the human being...
The house is like a puzzle, where the people living in that house are the missing pieces.
The human being is a piece of that puzzle.

This is a big difference between architecture and sculpture -
 architecture is not an artwork
, it can be but not it's primary role. Art is an expression of that artist alone; the expression of their creativity is the most important thing.
Architecture can change lifestyle. For example, the Roof House.

We want bigger projects so our work can have an impact on more people, but we don't want to give up designing houses because that is the base of understanding people; it is the project that brings us closest to human beings. (2009 - 60-70% of projects were houses)

We shouldn't say what we are capable of, we should instead say 'what can we do for people' - 'what people are capable of within the architecture'.

Architecture & Nature

Good architecture has a good relationship with the outside environment.
We should use the environments - cf. the 'airtight house' which needs mechanical ventilation.

We need architecture for shelter and living but to call nature into the architecture is the key for us to have a better lifestyle.

There are so many ideas in a design - the design is a layer of many ideas but they all point in the same direction.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fP32KYuXhAE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZB-GRac2Y5g
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wL2puYiNqYI
http://youtu.be/xOMrY_YRhMk

Detail journal interview about the Fuji Kindergarten:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xChzAfDwgwg

http://tezuka-arch.com/english/index.html

Reading List
Takaharu + Yui Tezuka Nostalgic Future (Berlin: Jovis, 2009): 72.036.6(52) T356
Takaharu + Yui Tezuka Architecture Catalogue 2 (Tokyo: Toto, 2009): 72.036.6(52) T356 2
Takaharu Tezuka, Takaharu Tezuka Hand Drawn Perspectives (Tokyo, Shokokusha, 2009)
Takaharu + Yui Tezuka Architecture Catalogue (Tokyo: Toto, 2006): 72.036.6(52) T358 1
Takaharu Tezuka, Kimochi no ii ie (Tokyo: Seiryu, 2005)