Space combining features of interior and exterior, at the borderline between architecture and nature, is a theme that appears in a variety of structures from antiquity to the present - from primitive human shelters in caves, through ancient houses with atriums, colonnades and porticoes of ancient temples, to the latest developments. In this context, the oculus of the Roman Pantheon, through which streams of rain sometimes fall inside, is an unsurpassed ideal to which many artists still aspire. Japanese architect Junya Ishigami is trying to add another chapter in this story.
KAIT Plaza is a multifunctional inclusive space
Photo: Bartosz Haduch
Junya (Jun'ya) Ishigami is one of Japan's most acclaimed contemporary architects, still counted among the so-called younger generation, despite celebrating his fiftieth birthday this year. Shortly after graduating from the Department of Architecture and Urban Planning at the National University of Art and Music in Tokyo, he worked at the renowned office of SANAA - Kazuyo Sejima + Ryue Nishizawa - from 2000 to 2004. During that time, he co-created such notable projects as the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art in Kanazawa and the Dior boutique on the fashion world-famous Omotesandō Street in the Japanese capital. Despite some similarities to the work of Sejima and Nishizawa, Ishigami usually manages to go beyond the repetitive patterns in which his former employers are often stuck. Since founding the author's studio in 2004, his career has been strewn with a succession of international successes - from the Golden Lion for his design on the Arsenale at the 2010 Venice Architecture Biennale, to the Obel Award in 2019, to the Frederick Kiesler Award for the entire building. Frederick Kiesler Award for lifetime achievement to date in 2024. The holy grail of architects, founded at the end of the last century by the Pritzker family, seems only a matter of time.
KAIT Plaza's white monolithic form is punctuated by an irregular mosaic of rectangular openings
photo: Bartosz Haduch
Ishigami is a master of intricate, filigree, minimalist structures, as exemplified by the reception building in Vijversburg Park in Leeuwarden (2017, in collaboration with Studio MAKS), the temporary pavilion of the Serpentine Gallery in London (2019), or the Zaishui Art Museum in Rizhao, built on water (2023). Another motif that recurs quite often in Japanese art is the close integration and interpenetration of architecture and nature. Examples of this approach are the landscape establishment Art Biotop Water Garden in the Nasu Mountains (the site operated for only three years - from 2019 to 2023), the Kokage-gumo pavilion in Kundan (2021) or the "hollowed out" underground cafe Maison Owl in Ube (2022). Both of the aforementioned themes, which have been present virtually from the beginning in Ishigami's original work, can also be found in his KAIT Plaza project, completed in 2020 as part of the Kanagawa Institute of Technology (KAIT) campus.
roof projection
© Junya Ishigami + associates
On the grounds of this university, the Japanese architect previously designed the one-story glass pavilion KAIT Workshop (2008), whose distinguishing feature is a "forest" of more than three hundred white narrow columns twisted in different directions. This was the young architect's first realization, and it also had sentimental significance for him - he was just born and raised in Kanagawa Prefecture. After the success of this small building, the university authorities again invited Ishigami to work with them. Right next to the KAIT Workshop, a multifunctional integrative space for students was to be built in the center of the university campus, for outdoor events, presentations, concerts, workshops, exhibitions or academic year inaugurations. Initially, the idea was to realize an open square combined with a garden and landscaping, so it came as quite a surprise that Ishigami decided to almost completely roof over this imposed spatial and functional program. In a rather specific local context, however, this has its justification.
The white form of KAIT Plaza provides a contrast to the rather chaotic and heterogeneous development of the university campus
photo: Bartosz Haduch
In the central part of Japan's largest island of Honsiu, where weather conditions and annual temperature amplitudes are quite varied, such a solution works well in hot weather as well as in rain or snow. The facility is also designed to accommodate more extreme weather events, such as typhoons and earthquakes, not uncommon at this latitude. In the face of increasingly rapid climate change, the scheme for at least partially covered public space may be one of the issues of the future, not only in terms of urban planning and architecture.
The openings in the side walls are glazed, while the open roof perforations allow for fuller contact with the environment and nature - including precipitation
photo: Bartosz Haduch
The form of the new KAIT Plaza building - both the floor and the canopy - follows the existing slight slope of the site. Its organic, curved shape may bring to mind a synthetic spatial interpretation of a famous woodcut created in the region - "The Great Wave in Kanagawa" (1831) by Katsushika Hokusai. Inside, the floor seamlessly rises to the edges of the block, creating the illusion of space without beginning or end and immersion in a quasi-natural topography of more than 4,000 square meters. The white walls and roof are interspersed with rectangular openings - only the sides are glazed, while the upper ones are left open, allowing full integration with nature - including precipitation. This monolithic form contrasts with the rather chaotic immediate surroundings - educational buildings of varying scales, sports fields and rows of cherry blossoms emblematic of Japan in spring. Interestingly, in the initial phase of the project, the shell of the building was to be a lightweight openwork pergola for creeping plants. However, the final version of the outer structure was made of composite steel plates only 12 millimeters thick. Ishigami has previously tested similar solutions in furniture projects - including a monumental table with a thin top 3 millimeters thick, 9.5 meters long and weighing 700 kilograms! In the case of KAIT Plaza, the scale of structural complexity was even greater, as no intermediate supports were planned for the interior of the building, and the roof span here reaches as much as 90 meters. The design also had to take into account changes in the height of the openwork canopy of up to 30 centimeters, due to thermal expansion and contraction of the steel elements. Considering the rather low suspension of the ceiling - between 220 and 280 centimeters above the floor - this was quite a challenge. The stability of the entire structure is provided by 83 piles and 54 ground anchors, which were set on a concrete foundation beam. The ribs were installed as pressure rings at a distance of 3 meters from the outer perimeter of the roof sheet in order to reduce the stresses exerted on the vertical partitions along the perimeter of the building. In this complex structural system, only the 25-centimeter-thick exterior walls are at least a little closer to standard solutions.
KAIT Plaza is a "pilgrimage" destination for architecture enthusiasts, photography, film and social media
Photo: Bartosz Haduch
The 59 rectangular holes in the outer shell frame snippets of the surroundings, creating a rather abstract mosaic of images surrounded by white passe-partout. Most of them are views of the ever-changing sky, which may evoke the Skyspaces series of spatial installations by American artist James Turrell. Inside KAIT Plaza one can also observe an interesting optical phenomenon - when the sky is cloudy, the light reflections appearing under the roof openings are delicate and fuzzy, while in full sunlight they reflect the composition of the upper perforations in the form of a geometric arrangement of shining rectangles. During hot weather, students sometimes bask on such illuminated planes, and during precipitation, puddles or regular snow patches appear on the floor.
However, gray porous industrial flooring allows quick absorption of water, and it is also easy to keep clean, so it is vain to look for signs of changing weather conditions - discoloration or stains. The situation is slightly different with the roof, especially in the slowly graying depressions at the roof openings.
The solutions described here prove that this entire building is one big experiment - functional, formal, structural and material, but also a form of creative dialogue between Ishigami and his former mentors Sejima and Nishizawa (references to their earlier projects - the Rolex Learning Center in Lausanne and the Teshima Art Museum are quite clear in this case). KAIT Plaza is a space where the boundaries between inside and outside, building and square, vertical and horizontal are blurred, and the sense of scale is also somewhat lost - only the appearance of people here facilitates perception and orientation (interestingly, the sloping floor also enforces to some extent the way of movement - movement or rest). It's a place of isolation and a kind of "alienation", how different from the chaotic context - near and far. It is also a perfect illustration of the Japanese concept of Ma defining emptiness, which in this case can be filled in many different ways. It's a space that encourages contemplation of cyclical phenomena associated with nature - changes in weather, seasons of the day or year, the passage of time, the passing of time.... - issues that have fascinated people for centuries.
KAIT Plaza
Photo: Bartosz Haduch
Not all visitors have such lofty goals, however. After all, this realization is also evidence of the progressive instagramming of the modern world - including architecture. Many visitors, sometimes coming from distant corners of the world, arrive at the site solely to take a series of striking photos or videos, which later land on countless social media profiles. Given the number of these publications, the facility probably "functions" more often in the virtual world than in the real world, where it is made available to visitors from outside the university for only a few days a month, and only by advance reservation. Short-term, immediate, one-time impressions and the undeniable "photogenic" nature of this space supersede permanence and usability in this case, so we are actually left with a rather relative and subjective category - beauty - out of the Vitruvian triad. This, in turn, provokes further questions about the differences between architecture and art, and this is already the subject of another age-old discourse without definitive and unequivocal solutions.
Bartosz Haduch
Michal HADUCH
more: A&B 12/2024 - THIRD SITES,
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