our friend niizeki said when they talk about their work to media, what they talk about is always the concreteness of the working process, the actual situations that led to this or that decision and their way of working. instead, most western media wanting to feature their work keep asking them to articulate their “design philosophy” or “concepts”: a flash card that names what the work is about in shorthand, a quick “architecture is …”.

niizeki’s studio is on the fourth floor of  a small building in kichijoji, a bohemian tokyo district famous for its contemporary art and culture scene. this is a typical architecture office space in japan, but for “international” standard convention, may be somewhat unusual. the stairs are only 680mm wide, but this is just enough for all purposes. there is no lift. its a slow walk up. the door opens outwards into the stair landing. you enter the meeting space.

the office seems small, but enough to make good works. tall shelves close off working and pantry areas.

 the view of the window from this space is to the wall of the next building a meter away.

in this neat little studio, they make smaller models, careful pencil hand-drawn renderings and large CAD drawings. precision of detailing, perfectly proportioned spaces, materiality, tactility, and poetically lighted spatial experiences are very important to them.

often they would make 1:1 scale details to study the intricate junctions.

in this contemporary world of visual, graphical, media-based design, their works might seem anachronistic, from another time.

but their care, seriousness, heaviness, slowness, and introversion (for most of their spaces do not have views out into the world, but onto courtyards or other walls), bring an interesting freshness into this fast and flashy world. what makes them contemporary is their interest in how the concreteness of architectural practice can produce an experiential architecture that is just enough for our times.