BOOKS
TAKUMI OTA
TAKUMI OTA
CANADIAN ARCHITECT 04/22
48
ALMOST, NOT: THE ARCHITECTURE OF ATELIER NISHIKATA By Leslie Van Duzer (ORO Editions, 2021) REVIEW Mira Locher
What sleight of hand is required to create a richly comprehensive book, when the subject is just four small projects? Meticulous writing, excellent documentation, and a magician’s mindset. In Almost, Not: The Architecture of Atelier Nishikata, author Leslie Van Duzer is as adroit with the written word as a magician is with deceptive banter. The Vancouver-based architecture professor (and former director of UBC ’s SALA) draws on her background as an educator and onetime magician’s assistant to conjure up a book aptly described as “a hybrid between an architectural monograph and a magic instruction book.” Starting from the evocative cover, Van Duzer’s precise yet poetic text and book designer Pablo Mandel’s rhythmical graphic layout draw us in and lead us through each project. Almost, Not. The title itself sets the scene with a bit of mystery— almost, not what? It invokes images of thwarted expectations and upended suppositions. But it also summons visions of surprise and astonishment as assumptions are turned upside-down. In the context of the book, Van Duzer defines “almost” as “a delightfully destabilizing oscillation between certainty and uncertainty, curiosity and astonishment, past and present experience, delaying any automated consumption.” In Almost, Not, the author delivers this delight not only through the precision of the text and the thoroughness
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of the documentation: she also reveals the designers’ techniques for developing their architectural tricks—like turning a column into a closet, or a cupboard into a door. The book introduces the work of Atelier Nishikata, an architecture firm little known outside of Japan. Since 2000, partners Reiko Nishio and Hirohito Ono have crafted their practice with care, rigor, and intention. Their goal is not to deceive but rather to create architecture that “transcends its physical boundaries and its visual image when it fully engages the body and its spatial imagination.” Despite the limited number of built projects, the ideas, methods, and designs of Atelier Nishikata offer plenty for us to contemplate. Almost, Not is composed of three parts. First, we are introduced to the firm’s approach to design and the processes and techniques they employ to create the desired “experiential complexity” of their projects. The author compares the architects’ methods to those of magicians and lets us in on various techniques that both use to create the desired effects of their constructions. For example, repetition-variation is used to produce the effect of déjà vu, or category-jumping creates the effect of detour. Van Duzer also reminds us of other artists and architects who also have employed similar techniques. Descriptions and documentation of the four projects comprise the body of the book. All are small private residential buildings or renovations, and all involve the trickery of transformation, whether it is converting four rooms into five, or using a material typically found on the roof as an exterior wall finish. Each “almost-ordinary” project tests our assumptions about familiar elements and spatial configurations. Is a cabinet really a cabinet when it opens to reveal a window? Yes, but
2022-03-18 2:39 PM
