The Uncompleted Materiality of the Void

• In different traditional Japanese works of art “the Void” [ku], which is connected to Zen Buddhism, is central. The void is given a changeable shape in the Noh theatre, ink paintings, landscape gardening and architecture, among other things. In crafts, for example, the glazing of the tea bowls in ceramics used in the Japanese tea ceremony has crackled and the shape is often asymmetrical, non-perfect. Here a “hidden beauty” is expressed, something incomplete, and the observer is involved, fills in himself and completes the form. The incomplete evokes a subjective experience of beauty, and the phenomenon has created several Japanese aesthetic notions and concepts of beauty, such as shibui and yugen. This “non-perfect” creates a relation to materials – the involvement of a perceiving subject forms a link between subject and object that dissolves the borders between them and this link is the material and the materiality. Several contemporary Japanese architects are influenced by these ideas from tradition, among others Kengo Kuma and Toyo Ito. Kuma stretches and examines the boundaries for the materiality of materials to create new contexts in unexpected applications of materials, which causes surprising, haptic experiences. Through the stage-setting of this experience of ”non-perfection”, a mental process is started, which connects to the way in Japanese tradition to conceive space as a procedural, changeable experience connected to a perceiving subject – a subjective sense of space. Space is a mental experience, not an object, and in several articles and publications, Kengo Kuma has expressed his aim of forming what he calls “anti-objects”. He has started the Kengo Kuma Laboratory in the University of Tokyo, Department of Architecture, and in the studio, students, doctoral students, researchers and practitioners meet to experiment with materials and evaluate the results of research. In the work of Toyo Ito, architecture and engineering meet. Ito wants to create another relation to materiality than in Modernism. He challenges the materiality of materials in a similar way like Kengo Kuma by designing buildings in collaboration with engineers, among others Mutsuro Sasaki. He experiments with materials, their load and span capacity and structurally. Ito wants to liberate buildings from rigid grids and modular systems and inject materiality to form spatial flow and enhance the physical experience of space and the sensuous connections to material and materiality. Visually, Ito’s and Kuma’s architecture differ by the choice of materials; Ito chooses materials like concrete and glass which is associated with industrial production and Kuma prefers materials connected to craft. However, the point of departure is the same, to use stage-setting as a tool in the design work. Unexpected, incomplete experiences and perceptions are evoked through the materials and links are created between human being and building and this starts a procedural experience of space and materiality. Ito, as well as Kuma, connects to the Japanese tradition where space is a mental, changeable process, and the point of departure for changeability is that there is something incomplete, a void, enclosed in the experience.

Ämnesord

HUMANIORA  -- Konst -- Design (hsv//swe)

HUMANITIES  -- Arts -- Design (hsv//eng)

HUMANIORA  -- Konst -- Arkitektur (hsv//swe)

HUMANITIES  -- Arts -- Architecture (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

Material

materiality

shibui

yugen

Kengo Kuma

Toyo Ito.

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