Sou Fujimoto

This diminutive but insightful book features one of Japan?s most sought-after architects, Sou Fujimoto. It comprises an interview with the architect by Noriko Takiguchi in which subjects range from specific projects, dealing with clients, and how current trends in architecture relate to his work, to the pros and cons of working alone versus being open to ideas from others and collaboration. The in-depth conversation also covers how, despite starting out with a strictly small aesthetic, commissions from around the world have spurred him to adapt a larger scale, building on the confidence he had since being a student that architectural design was his true calling.

Sincere by Design. The Architecture of Sou Fujimoto

Toyoo Itō

Julian Worrall

Sou Fujimoto belongs to a new generation of young Japanese architects whose work has aroused enormous interest at the international level. After winning numerous prizes in both Japan and the rest of the world, Fujimoto has become a major presence on the Japanese architectural scene. Unlike his contemporaries, Sou Fujimoto has not been trained through working in the office of any of the architects of wide experience and international renown-instead, after graduating from Tokyo University in 1994 he preferred to think about and test his personal ideas on architecture in small projects that have enabled him to develop a tremendously personal and distinctive architectural approach. His projects are the result of a sophisticated conceptual elaboration that subverts established models, one mainly based on two major concerns: what it means to dwell in a space in the 21st century and how that space is materialised without following any formal a priori. Accordingly, innovation in Fujimoto's work does not proceed from a wish to generate disruptive forms, but from understanding the relationships between people and spaces in a different way, from taking complexity on board as an essential ingredient in his thinking and in his work, or from valuing intermediary space and nature. Fujimoto manipulates these ideas, which reveal his preoccupation with the essence of dwelling, and transforms them into a new architecture of great spatial richness. This number of 2G brings together the most emblematic buildings and projects by Sou Fujimoto, outstanding among which are the Children's Centre for Psychiatric Rehabilitation (Hokkaido), the Final Wooden House (Kumamoto), the Primitive Future House 2008 (Basel), the Apartment building (Tokyo), House Before House (Tochigi), House H (Tokyo), and the Library for Musashino Art University, (Tokyo). The two introductions to the monograph, written by Toyo Ito and Julian Worrall, provide us with the basic keys for understanding the richness of the Japanese architect's projects.

Soe Fujimoto

2G 50 Sou Fujimoto International Architectural Review

The works of Sou Fujimoto resist any form of conventional categorization. This young Japanese architect stands for unconventional buildings that cannot be described by standard criteria and definitions such as inside/outside or public/private. Clear divisions such as between floor levels and rooms are shattered by his complex ground plans and interlocking structures which--in a reference to the idea of the cave--he describes as "primitive future." With this approach he creates forms that are committed to a playful interaction between user and space. Alongside private residences, such as the well-known N House, his library for Musashino Art University has achieved particular recognition. In addition he was represented at the 2010 Venice Biennale with a design for a house. In his personal sketchbook Sou Fujimoto offers insights into his design process. Through the sketches, drawings, and notes readers can trace how his complex concepts are made manifest and develop on paper. SOU FUJIMOTO, born in Hokkaido, Japan, in 1971, established his architectural practice Sou Fujimoto Architects in 2000. In 2008, he was World Architecture Festival winner in the Private House category, and was awarded a RIBA International Fellowship in 2012. Recently he completed the new library and museum for the Musashino Art University in Tokyo.

Sketchbook

'It is a really fundamental question how architecture is different from nature, or how architecture could be part of nature, or how they could be merged...what are the boundaries between nature and artificial things.' (Sou Fujimoto)Fujimoto is the youngest architect to accept the invitation to design a temporary structure for the Serpentine Gallery in London's Kensington Gardens.Widely acknowledged as one of the most important architects coming to prominence worldwide, Sou Fujimoto is the leading light of an exciting generation of artists who are re-inventing our relationship with the built environment.Inspired by organic structures, such as the forest, the nest and the cave, his signature buildings inhabit a space between nature and artificiality.Occupying the lawn in front of the Serpentine Gallery, Fujimoto's delicate, latticed structure of steel poles has a lightweight and semi-transparent appearance that allows it to blend, cloud-like, into the landscape and against the classical backdrop of the Gallery's colonnaded East wing.Published on the occasion of the Serpentine Gallery Pavilion commission, London, 4 June - 20 October 2013.

Sou Fujimoto

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