May 14, 2013 · category blog · by km
Last week we saw an old Shanghainese couple with their domestic environment an extension of their passion. Here are the amazing Vogels:
（上記の記事より）
ダンナさまは若き日にアーティストを目指すも断念、その後は郵便局でお仕事。奥さまは図書館の司書さん。彼らの趣味はアートを集めること。アートが好きだから。公務員でありそれほど裕福でもない彼らが収集できるのは若手の有名でない作家たちのもの。週末にはせっせとそれらのスタジオに出かけて気にいったものを購入するのが彼らのライフワーク。ルールは３つだけ。購入できる範囲の値段であること。タクシーか地下鉄で運べること。彼らのワンベッドルームアパートに飾れること。いつしか彼らのアパートは彼らの好きなアートで溢れるようになる。そんな奇行でNYで有名になった彼らのもとには、その後有高値がつくようになったアートを買い求める人達からの連絡が入るようになる。でも、売らない。もちろん売らない。リタイア後、全てをNYの国立博物館に寄付する事を決める。もちろん無償で。現在は貴重品となったものを含む2400個に及ぶ全アートを運びこむのに何週間もかかったそう。その後もダンナさまが亡くなるまで、彼らのライフワークは続く。旅行にも出かけず、高級レストランにも行かず、50年もの間同じワンベッドルームで過ごした、Herb VogelさんとDorothyさんのお話。
May 8, 2013 · category blog · by km
This is the flat of a Shanghainese couple who has a shop on Dong Tai Lu antique street. Home is also part showroom part store. Theirs is a life lived among and vitally with these objects of the past. Which light to turn on? Where to sit? Which cup to use?
上海の骨董品街、東台路にアンティーク家具の店を持つ50代オーナーカップルのマンション。彼らは実際にここで暮らしている。「収納する場所を借りるより、この方が自分達で使えていいでしょ。もともと使えば使うほど値段の上がるものだしね。」ごく一般的な高層マンションの一室に普通に「置かれている」アンティークたち。一点数万円、数十万円、中には数百万を超すもの達を彼らは日常的に使うことができる。彼らにしてももともと小さい頃に普通に使っていたもの、という気楽さがある。贅沢なのか、そうでも無いのか良くわからない。
April 10, 2013 · category blog · by km
In the north of Suzhou there are two brothers who are still making timber boats in the traditional way. Their family have been making boats for five generations.
蘇州の北に少し行った所の木製ボートで有名な村で、今でも伝統的なボートを作る兄弟に会った。彼らの家族は５世代に渡ってここでボートを作っているそう。
Their hands and faces accumulated with the hard long years of crafting boats.
彼らの手や顔からは職人としてタフに働いて来た様子がうかがえる。
To get to their yard, you take a boat to the other side of the river. You see timber logs for the boats still being seasoned in the water, having come from somewhere upstream.
彼らの作業場に行く為に川を渡った。上流から持ち込まれた木材が水につけ込んであるのが見える。
The smells of sawdust fill the yard, interspersed with sounds of knocking and sanding.
木材を加工する音、木粉の匂い。
In their kitchen the leftover bits of timber are used as fuel. After some lunch, they will go back to their boat-making. We have an image that this is the way they have been living for a long long time.
キッチンでは廃材を燃料として使用している、ランチ後、彼らはまた作業に戻る。何年も何年も繰り返してきた作業、生活。
In their living room, they proudly show us the plaque which the government conferred them a few years ago as China’s intangible cultural heritage.
客間では国から数年前に与えられたという、非物質文化遺産の証書を少し自慢げに見せてくれた。
We asked, who will carry on their craft? After much evasion they replied, two of their nephews. For how much longer?
誰がこの仕事を引き続くのかと聞くと、２人の甥っ子だとの答え。でも今の中国で？果たしてどのくらいの間？
Our client commissioned them to build a flat-bottomed boat, 11 meters long. The upper half will be completed by an interior contractor. Back in the office we began to design the rest of the boat with 3D drawings and a cardboard model. It was easy, too easy.
長くそしてシビアな値交渉の後、連れて行ってくれたクライアントが11メートルの平底のボートを注文した。上の部分は別の家具工場で製作するらしい。オフィスに戻って3Dソフトや模型を使って設計を始めた。やけに簡単なのです、私達の部分。簡単過ぎるのです、本当は。
March 29, 2013 · category blog · by km
Things that contemporary architecture in Japan lost:
Fractured notes to the interview by Yoshio Futagawa with SANAA
- No discourse
There are not many architecture movements or discourses (such as deconstuctivism) these days. Each architect works individually and separately without interaction. People used to be interested in something more fundamental, more unchanging, so they tried to gather to discuss about architecture. When we saw the last Venice Biennale with the theme of “Common Ground”, we thought that we architects have now lost common ground indeed.
- Sense of time in architecture
We realised that we have only been interested in ’space’ not ‘time’ when we worked on the Louvre project. We are now interested in ‘time.’
China is a culture of ‘noun’ which seems more logical, constructive and theoretical. Japan and Korea in contrast are more fluid and dynamic and we can call it a culture of ‘verb’ or ‘adjective.’
Architecture can perhaps realise a world that does not have to be divided into space and time. We have been focusing on a rather compositional approach in order to realise our intentions. But we are beginning to think that composition is not enough.
Traditional Japanese architecture is timber structure and sensitive to four seasons. This is very different from the monumental and stable character of Western architecture. The sense of eternity in European cities is something we do not have in Japan.
For Louvre in Lens, we spent a lot time making studies. A lot of them may not be very necessary. But after it was built, it still feels different from a kind of straightforward architecture that is made from the first idea.
Idea is very important, like an engine, to start architecture creation. But if things are only made out of ideas, then it would be very superficial. So it is very important to resist making architecture from your first idea. We have to try to overcome it and of course this takes a long time.
Schemes for competitions in that sense can be problematic because ideas have to be easy to understand in order to win a competition. After you have won a competition the idea would be the base for the design but it could also be a snare. You have to break through it.
- Popularisation of architecture
Because people start to use the computer to design more, designing something becomes faster, easier and more straightforward. For any kind of art, this could be problem, since anybody can design things.
With something like Facebook, anybody can evaluate things instantly. On the one hand this is wonderful, but for architecture and possibly all other arts, it is a problem. It used to be that when you go to a theatre you have to sit there for one hour, and because of that, you can actually have a diffferent opinion from that which you had with your first glance. With the internet you can move instantly to a different page if you think something is not interesting.
Before the internet, in order to study something you have to spend a lot of time. Time or space is something more solid or big, something that you cannot deal with. But on another hand, because you have spent time, you can kind of experience something bigger. You can experience something bigger than you yourself can experience. Now in the current situation you can fast forward and pick the parts that you like. Quite lightly you can decide things.
Japanese architecture now is idea-based, diagram-based, and rather light-hearted. It rather reflects the current situation in Japan. Japan is quite advanced in this sense.
Before 311, Japan was rather numb about time; wallowing in a kind of post history with no feeling of crisis. After 311, Japanese architects start to have a sense of crisis. But so far we cannot see any big difference. We really have to think hard to move on to new times.
Compared with Sendai Mediatheque, 21st Century Museum is more museum-like. In our Rolex Learning Centre, students just come to the building without any purpose. It is always very crowded. The building is not just a library or cafe, it works as something else.
Under this post-311 situation, the kind of load or pressure could produce something new. But we also worry that this something new that gets built could be something that looks like it fits the situation, but which actually may not be so well thought out. We have a fear that after ten years we may realise that these buildings were not good enough.
It is scary that only easy-to-understand ideas can win competitions (for these buildings in the northeast disaster area). On the other hand if you are able to see things in a long span, we may look back and say that that was that period. Not so strange after all; like how we look back at the Ice Age.
So now is a difficult time, but we all live in a kind of balance. Mainstream society can live well now in the current way, but we could lose some important things if we continue to live like this. Although we may not know what we are doing now, with hope we must go on. In twenty or thirty years’ time, we hope we can kind of say that, ah … that was what this period was about …
March 26, 2013 · category blog · by ss
フード
個々の食材、スパイスの味がわからなくなる位に混ざっていて、そこから新しく生まれた味が絶品。色々なものが混ぜてあるので、必然的に色はどれも茶色っぽいが、味はそれぞれに異なる。広東、福建、潮州などの中華系とマレー系、インド系、など様々な人々がふれあうのと同時に更新されてより複雑化されていった料理。島国にっぽんの素材をそのままとか、素材を活かしてと言った料理とは対極にあるかも。
マーケット
オープンエアのカジュアルなマーケットにて。お肉はお肉屋さんで、野菜は野菜屋さんで、ナッツ類はナッツ屋さんで。専門店なので各品のバリエーションが多い。多人種国家ゆえの食文化の多様化にも対応している。果物、野菜等の多品種は気候が好条件として作用しているはず。
アーキテクチャ
コロニアル建築とモダニズム建築が良い。それからメタボリズムの影響を受けた建築も。反面、新しい建築は臆する事もなくコマーシャル感全開。
ネイチャー
ブギーブラウンという古い墓地。満員になったので新規受け付けはしていないと言うが、満員さが全く分からないほどの緑化。そのトロピカルな生命力により、日本の墓地にありがちな厳かな感じや、おどろおどろしさが全くない。多種多様の植物が絡まっていたり、パラサイト植物のお互いによりかかっているのを見て、自然に帰すという意味での埋葬をする場所として、いいあり方のように思う。
ちなみにここもマレーシアへと繋がる新しく建設される高速道路によって、消滅する日が近いとのこと。
シンガポール
本来地理上、歴史上、ここではモノや人が多様で、うまいバランスを探りつつ、それらをブレンドしてきたはず。ただ現在は、その自然や人がいかに自由で伸びやかかということを、あまりにも活かしきれていないよう。活かしきれてないどころか、消費のメッカ、ステレオタイプの生産地みたいになりつつある。
