JAPAN POROUS MANIFOLD BY RYUMEI FUJIKI + YUKIKO SATO

This temporary installation of a Japanese tea room is an award-winning art-installation project that features a distinctive porous manifold which ‘breathes’ in tandem with the activity within the room.

Detail of the ‘breathing pleats’, that respond kinetically to the movement of people inside the tea room

View from the top

During the exhibition period, a workshop for children was held on how to make Japanese sweets

Lighted up at night

PRINCIPAL USE Tea room

DIMENSIONS 2,730mm cube

DESIGN FIRM F.A.D.S + Fujiki Studio, KOU::ARC

PRINCIPALS Ryumei Fujiki, Yukiko Sato

TEAM MEMBERS Yu Ohno, Seiya Ueki, Kento Watanabe, Yuta Kimura, Shun Takimoto

PHOTOGRAPHY Masahiro Hoshida, Fujiki Studio, KOU::ARC

The tea room is a ten-foot square hut with a nested structure with a two-tatami space within. It was designed and constructed by the architects using a combination of spruce CLT panels and plastic materials processed using digital fabrication technology, and exhibited at the Echigo-tsumari Art Triennale 2018 in Japan. In this exhibition, various architects were asked to respond to the theme of how to overcome the concept of homogeneous spaces that is dominant in the 20th century. The architects for this project responded with a distorted homogeneous space, creating irregularities by the random pattern of the skeleton, and proposed an ‘art-tecture’ that features many holes that open and close as necessary to communicate with the outside, akin to a living thing.

This work was exhibited under the ‘Hojoki Shiki in 2018: The Universe of Ten Foot Square Huts by Architects and Artists’ exhibition, which ran from July 29th to September 17th as part of the Echigo-tsumari Art Triennale.

As one enters inside the tea room, it begins to ‘feel’ you and ‘breathes’ like a living thing – with the many holes called breathing pleats opening and closing according to the movement of people.

Modern office building made in the 20th century was separated from the external environment by a closed curtain wall. Then, using the lighting and air conditioning equipment, the idea is to control so that all places are homogenous with a constant artificial environment. This however, consumes enourmous energy. The concept of this hut embraces the external environment through the breathing pleats, creating a space that is responsive to the external as well as the internal environment.

The tea room’s location at the exhibition

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