Tsuyoshi Tane
FLORENCE 2023
Madeleine Craven:
Since you have studied and experienced many different places around the world, do you find it hard to immerse yourself in a new culture and how does it affect your work in those places? It is pretty much similar. Until I was 19 years old I lived in Japan and was born in Tokyo, one of the largest cities in the world. I decided not to stay in Tokyo for my school, I decided to go to Hokkaido, which is in the northern part of Japan and rather bigger in nature and more important than human life, so you need to adapt to accommodate nature when there is so much snow in the winter, you have to stay calm. When the weather is great and the sky is bigger it feels like mother nature is an important part of your life. So this experience made me change my life from where I was born in Tokyo, to the city life, to nature. I got the opportunity to go abroad to Sweden when I was 20 and it was a great experience and different. I never thought I would have the opportunity or ever thought about living outside of Japan, or leaving your own country, or to speak another language. This experience led me to think more about the encounter of people or places where you can learn more about it and explore the difference of culture and how it is important to learn from each other, not only through yourself but through contact with other people through this exchange. Understanding how that is important within our generation led me to change my way of life from where I came from but also how I appreciate it. In ATTA, we are constantly having a mix of 8/9 nationalities where multiple nationalities do not come from one country, but study abroad in other countries so they know how important the exchange of backgrounds is to better understand each other and that becomes a place for my way of life.
7 AN INTERVIEW WITH TYSUYOSHI TANE EXPERIENCE
Back (From Left to Right): Jamie Spangler, Harris Cheifetz, Aaron Muth, Professor Marco Brizzi, Tsuyoshi Tane
Front (From Left to Right): Gunnar Norberg, Luke Chamberlain, Tyler Mahoney, Cassidy Delfine, Julia Stark
Cassidy Delfine:
Is it intimidating to create and work on new projects with the success that you have had in the past with projects such as the Estonian National Museum?
From when you start designing architecture you never know: “Is this project good?” Sometimes it can even be stressful because not everything comes from you. Architecture is not only something you design, it becomes a collective effort from everybody trying to put something on our planet in order to make a change. You need to keep going to no compromise, but that is the process of being an architect.
Payton Anzaldi:
After starting your own architecture firm in 2006, how did you know you were ready to begin on your own? Were you scared to start this journey or did you feel prepared with what you already knew? I was neither prepared nor scared. It just happened this way. It happened in the sense that we wanted to challenge ourselves by participating in a competition. The first one that we won was kind of an accident. I dealt with it. There was no other choice, just do it and try it. It worked out in a good way. Of course I had already worked for a different firm, but for only two years. One year in Denmark and one year in London and then I got to start my own company. There is no way for you to be ready. If you are scared to do it, you just have to try and things will go by themselves.
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EXPERIENCE
“Architecture is not only something you design, it becomes a collective effort from everybody trying to put something on our planet in order to make a change.”
11 AN INTERVIEW WITH TYSUYOSHI TANE
EXPERIENCE
Estonian National Museum (DGT.) Tartu, Estonia. Photo: Takuji Shimmura
Estonian National Museum (DGT.) Tartu, Estonia. Photo: Propapanda
Aaron Muth:
In your interview with Domus, you mention how you design places rather than spaces, ultimately avoiding the word ‘space’ in your manifesto, which intrigued me as we are often taught to design for spaces instead. How does your definition of place affect the space of a building and inversely, does space affect the defined place?
The reason is that today our kind of construction knowledge as architectural technology is quite advanced. The construction industry corroborates the power we have to design a space or building. In this way, the architect tends to think of the space as a very important product to make the design. However, by experimenting in this journey of living in different countries and places, this idea of space comes from modernity. Where the modern life, modern space, modern implication, is a very generic type of space and has become universal. It’s very convenient, it’s very accepting of people who want to use the spaces. The more I appreciate or am inspired by the architecture there is this notion of the place. There is this sense of a place where there is intimacy. You can not really place this place that has been built in that estate for years and years. For me, it becomes important for architecture to
15 AN INTERVIEW WITH TYSUYOSHI TANE
IDEOLOGY
“The architect tends to think of the space as a very important product to make the design. However, by experimenting in this journey of living in different countries and places, this idea of space comes from modernity.”
be built in one place in the world that can not be remade or replaced. Sometimes buildings need to be replaced but somehow it is lacking this very important sensitivity of a complete notion of a place that has disappeared. Today more and more, we destroy the importance of the place and rebuild to generate this kind of big building or development. Losing more places and creating more spaces. To me this is the more critical part of architects to not just keep this discussion of production of spaces, but architects creating a place for people.
Molly Zwack: Going off of that, your “Archeology of the Future” was formed around drawing inspiration from a place’s memories. However, with the impacts of climate change erasing a place’s physical ground and memory, both past and presentwe see it with the sinking of Venice or the continual flooding of New Orleans - I was just wondering how you can apply your ideology to preserve and celebrate that rich memory of a place when it’s constantly under attack from the forces of nature?
The idea came up from this kind of critical understanding of modernity, where we tend to go only one direction: to build and to construct more and more.
Our human desire became so large that we went too far. History built such a long, important continuity that has been cut because of this new change or new building, or new life, just cut off from the past. So, my interest is to think of this kind of memory of a place as the beginning of the designing of architecture that we’re trying to excavate. Normally, when we are given a site, we just start designing something: the building program, the architecture, but, before, we prepare to really excavate as much as we can, to look for this long memory and history backwards as far as we can. And that can be corrective memory to be able to create our project. It is this way that we can learn much more about how to use the energy, or how to use the material, how to most accommodate the society and to not just keep wasting the energy, but to learn how humanity can be built today and can not just be gentrified.
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17 AN INTERVIEW WITH TYSUYOSHI TANE IDEOLOGY
“Today more and more, we destroy the importance of the place and rebuild to generate this kind of big building or development. Losing more places and creating more spaces.”
Adaptive reuse of architecture and materials have a lot of advantages to architecture and in the design of buildings. What is your opinion on the adaptive reuse of materials, and how would it change our future by keeping a building’s history alive?
We are in a generation to construct for the future, but in a sustainable way. Our profession as an architect needs to think about the future and not only how to build or preserve it, but not change anything. For this kind of even larger opportunity and deeper knowledge required for the architect, the given choice of materials
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Dustin Moore:
IDEOLOGY
Hirosaki Museum of Contemporary Art (Atelier Tsuyoshi Tane Architects) Hirosaki, Japan. Photo: Daici Ano
are very important to be aware of in how and what to choose. What is essentially in it not for initial terms but for long terms are the material and marketing products and because of this today our industry is taking so much power that the choice of the material is such a limited choice by the architect if not careful. Such as metal, glass, concrete, it’s like fast food, so easy you can take them to the chef. Plastic is so easy to use because it’s easy to consume. However, it is damaging to our future generations without a choice and so the way we choose must be responsible for them. That’s how I see materials: that they are very important to choose and how they make architecture different.
19 AN INTERVIEW WITH TYSUYOSHI TANE
IDEOLOGY
Hirosaki Museum of Contemporary Art (Atelier Tsuyoshi Tane Architects) Hirosaki, Japan. Photo: Daici Ano
Julia Stark: You stated that your staff avoids referencing the modern period because you avoid using prefabricated materials and like to think about how your projects would be built before the industrial era. How would you suggest students look at their projects with this mindset when there are so many resources and technology to utilize today?
Julia Stark: You stated that your staff avoids referencing the modern period because you avoid using prefabricated materials and like to think about how your projects would be built before the industrial era. How would you suggest students look at their projects with this mindset when there are so many resources and technology to utilize today?
It’s good that you already checked out my answer in that interview. Because of the critical rethinking form in the 20th century, somehow a person becomes the international rights and the global rights to cut off our local culture. Technologies are supposed to be important for our human life to give comfort, but this comfort becomes more industrialized and capitalized to disconnect the ways to quality of life. It then becomes sort of an industrial production or industrial product that is being standardized by the
It’s good that you already checked out my answer in that interview. Because of the critical rethinking form in the 20th century, somehow a person becomes the international rights and the global rights to cut off our local culture. Technologies are supposed to be important for our human life to give comfort, but this comfort becomes more industrialized and capitalized to disconnect the ways to quality of life. It then becomes sort of an industrial production or industrial product that is being standardized by the the future. It is very complex.
government and our only choice is to take this prefabricated or pre-qualified standard material. Therefore, in our research we try not to look at this 20th century technology as more than leveracies, and we try to go backwards as far as we can to be in the further nations of time of how we started to settle in our lives, in the place where we ask how to correct, how to think about resources, how to built a society. That is much more fascinating than looking at how the future of technology can lead us to build buildings. Of course technologies are available, but how we use them is our choice. We learn the latest technologies and the latest ways of construction, but we try to go beyond different ways by learning the latest technologies. That becomes a helpful, very important constraint, not for ignoring but for learning from going further backwards and learning more archeological ways of thinking to look at
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“Technologies are supposed to be important for our human life to give comfort, but this comfort becomes more industrialized and capitalized to disconnect the ways and quality of life.”
21 AN INTERVIEW WITH TYSUYOSHI TANE IDEOLOGY
388 Farms (Atelier Tsuyoshi Tane Architects) Tokyo, Japan.
Photo: Atelier Tsuyoshi Tane Architects
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“This kind of fast trend forces us to visualize, forces us to communicate in this kind of media. Not even architecture is beyond this trend or this vast consumption of media.”
the future. It is very complex.
Gunnar Norberg:
In an interview with Domus about Archaeology of the Future, you stated “As architects, we struggle to bring new ideas designs, but in the end, they quickly become outdated” Over time we have seen the revival of many ideas regarding styles, or ideas on architecture. In the 1740s we saw the revival of the Gothic Style in England. In the early 20th century the Renaissance revival began to flourish. Even today we see the ideas of the mid-20th century begin to return. Why is it that you feel that architects’ ideas become outdated, and what makes an idea outdated?
[Gunnar Norberg]
In an interview with Domus about Archaeology of the Future, you stated “As architects, we struggle to bring new ideas and designs, but in the end, they quickly become outdated” Over time we have seen the revival of many ideas regarding styles, or ideas on architecture. In the 1740s we saw the revival of the Gothic Style in England. In the early 20th century the Renaissance revival began to flourish. Even today we see the ideas of the mid20th century begin to return. Why is it that you feel that architects’ ideas become outdated and what makes an idea outdated?
massive every day and goes through this kind of fast trend force different social networks or websites or blogs. Spreading everywhere and then disappearing every day to update. Nothing stays in your mind clear enough that you can say that this one was the greatest project. We should not forget about what it means for an architect to build a building. It is not just about communication. That’s what I think is important.
I think I could see it get faster and faster. It used to be where our media and our understanding was through physical kinds of applications, such as traveling or reading books. Now it has become a website, or even social networks have become the big consumption of styles where you see more of this excitement of building. The image of architecture becomes so fast. How can you count by yourself which are the greatest projects in the last 10 years? This kind of fast trend forces us to visualize and forces us to communicate in this kind of media. Not even architecture is beyond this trend or this fast consumption of media. The shared image becomes so massive every day and goes through this kind of fast trend, spreading everywhere and then disappearing every day to update. Nothing stays in your mind clear enough that you can say that this one was the greatest project. We should not forget about what it means for an architect to build a building. It is not just about communication. To construct a place for people, society, and history is what I think is important.
I think I could see it get faster and faster. It used to be where our media and our understanding was through physical kinds of applications. Now it has become a website, or even social networks have become the big consumption of styles where you see more of this excitement of building. The image of architecture becomes so fast. How can you count by yourself which are the greatest products in the last 10 years? This kind of fast trend forces us to visualize and forces us to communicate in this kind of media. Not even architecture is beyond this trend or this fast consumption of media. The shared image becomes so
Madeline Fulk:
23 AN INTERVIEW WITH TYSUYOSHI TANE
IDEOLOGY
From Left to Right: Tsuyoshi Tane, Payton Anzaldi, Julia Stark, Cassidy Delfine, Tyler Mahoney, Joel Semancik
Madeline
Fulk:
Your architecture firm’s design process “aims to create an architecture no one has ever seen, experienced, or even imagined yet.” Does this add pressure to the design process and what challenges arise with such a strong idea on what the design process should or should not create?
The important part is that when we try to do the research process and the design process, we understand that designed architecture doesn’t belong to any particular references. Somehow it doesn’t look new but it doesn’t look old. It’s kind of the idea of timeless. You cannot measure that this belongs to what period or this belongs to where. It just gives you some specificity of the projects that are very important. Therefore, when we see the projects are going to be somehow similar to one architect’s references, then we try to go another direction. Every step of our design decisions come from the research. In this way, the more research we do, the more we come up with a clarity of ideas, and they become much more meaningful than just trying to design yourself. The important part is that we use a lot of models rather than 3D rendering because our hands sometimes are much smarter and it keeps a surprise for us to visualize and materialize. So we try to use our
hands to make the models. It creates very different results from the final construction than just designing from only screens or 3D modeling because of the physical experience that is laid out from our design processes. There is not one way that is the right way so we try to experiment. Every process, we put the challenges and something we did before, we don’t want to repeat again.
Tyler Mahoney:
At this point in your career, do you find yourself looking to past architects for inspiration or do you take more inspiration from your current peers in the field?
Of course I think we look at the architect who is a great designer. However, I think this becomes our base knowledge and not as references. It’s a knowledge that we all know, we all see. This is why we do not want to look at modern architects as past references. Our inspiration kind of comes from the way of research, which is a type of archeological research trying to really gather different aspects of human life. Because of this, archeological ideas are much more inspiring. It is something we don’t know. It’s something we may never look at, but because of a project we decide to look at them by chance. This archeological idea is something very interesting because of the use of archaeology to discover something
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PROCESS
in order to change the way history is written. It has been written in a way that discredits the way of linear storytelling. However, the archaeologists go to the place where they start excavating to discover a piece of whatever pots, bones, object, or heritage is present. By discovering this, archeologists dare to change and to rewrite history which is much more powerful that we learned. That is how I see it this way. So this part is very inspiring to learn from this far past human society and how we came up until now.
Joel Semancik:
When you were talking about your design process it seems like it is a very physical and visual process. However, I was wondering if you are listening to anything when you are designing? Is there a sort of auditory influence that music, a podcast, or silence has on your work?
In the workplace, lately, we have music in our studio. I don’t like when everyone is wearing headphones. I understand people want to concentrate, but to ignore those around you is not the best way. It begins to feel closed off. Being an architect you need to be aware. To understand what is happening, who is there, who is looking at you, or what people are working on. You have to be
open to see around you. Music keeps the mood of the day. For example, Jazz makes us work fast and Classic music keeps the quality of the atmosphere. There is an importance of keeping this atmosphere in the work environment, trying to orchestrate the collaboration of work together. Due to our team being of multinational background, people from different countries are able to share a global perspective. Without argument for all of our viewpoints, I will not make a decision. So there is always a discussion to see everybody pointing out what they understand or don’t understand. To clarify, to make such a clear and powerful decision. It is a very important process. Many times, I try to propose and keep the conception and allow the design decision to always be a multiperspective amount of collective discussion. The more we listen to the discussion, the more we think, the better the decision we can provide.
Jamie Spangler:
As an interior design student, I became interested in your history of designing interiors with exhibitions as well as your architectural projects. How would you say your design/thinking process differs between designing an exhibition and architecture?
It’s a strange thing that it happened in
27 AN INTERVIEW WITH TYSUYOSHI TANE PROCESS
this way. It’s not like we were hopefully thinking in a way, it just happened to come to us to say “Can you design this?” In 2012, we got asked to design the stage design for the opera piece. It became a great experience for my career. Designing the exhibition for the duration of three months where there will be 20,000 to 30,000 people might see your work is very intense. For a house, where only one family stays, not many people look at it. At the same time, the house where the family of three persons may stay 30 years will be used for maybe 30,000 days of life. So in this way, in the short time of the exhibition, you have to be able
to maximize the experience. Designing architecture to be used longer but to have the same experience being stretched is different than the set design. To us, time is very different but the way of expression is the same. In this way, by doing the short term project, it made us think of the importance of how to design the public use, as well as private use still feeling like it’s on the line for the public. People change. They like it when they use the house for the first time, but 30 years later they are a totally different person. We think of how we can include this type of experience that is being conducted in the design process.
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LIGHT is TIME, Installation for Citizen (DGT.) at Salane del Mobile in Milano, Italy. Photo: Takuji Shimmura
The Al Thani Collection Museum Space (Atelier Tsuyoshi Tane Architects) at Hotel de la Marine, Paris, France. Photo: Takuji Shimmura
The Al Thani Collection Museum Space (Atelier Tsuyoshi Tane Architects) at Hotel de la Marine, Paris, France. Photo: Takuji Shimmura
Harris Cheifetz:
Everyone here is in their third year of college. Some people are confident about their futures and others are quite unsure. Looking back, how did you feel about the progress you made in architectural studies while you attended university? Did you know you would be successful?
I think that the important part is that I enjoyed it, I like it now, and I like architecture. I would say that when I started as a third year student, I was just enjoying it for the general study of architecture. At that point in time I had no idea if I would be successful or not. It is a journey and something that is great is that we get to design the future with people you meet. There is a great creative process that somehow becomes a thoroughbred process to meet different people and work with different people. With this, each project will never be the same. If you design one house, it’s one client, one particular condition. Most of the time design cannot be repeated. If you’re curious enough to learn from each instance, each process, and each opportunity, then the profession becomes quite interesting. If you get bored, everything becomes boring. It becomes unimportant. When that happens it is best to stop working in the profession. I don’t know if you’re
interested, if you’re curious, if you try to enjoy yourself, or try to challenge yourself, but at the end of the day it is a stressful profession, it requires a lot of responsibility, it’s a challenge and it is heavy to handle. It gives me the bigger amount of challenges than one’s life and has a learning process so I like it.
Sarah Joseph:
As someone who is curious about student and professional design competitions, I am interested to hear about the difficulties of balancing school/work while creating a competitive entry. In addition, do you have any advice on participating in competitions and what you believe led to your success in them?
It is a good question. If you do not want to do the competition, then don’t do it. I won’t do it unless I can win because I don’t want to lose the competition. It’s the truth, because it is so much work and so much effort and if you lose, it’s hard and so disappointing. Also, I have been playing football since my childhood and because of this, I am competitive and I just want to win the competition. So if there is no chance, I won’t want to do it. But if there is a chance, I will want to put forth maximum effort because we want to win. That’s why it is dangerous for the company - I cannot think of
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ADVICE
If you’re curious enough to learn from each instance, each process, and each opportunity, then the profession becomes quite interesting. If you get bored, everything becomes boring.”
33 AN INTERVIEW WITH TYSUYOSHI TANE ADVICE
Imperial Hotel Rendering (Atelier Tsuyoshi Tane Architects) Tokyo, Japan. Photo: Atelier Tsuyoshi Tane Architects
“Most of the time design cannot be repeated.
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Tokodori House in Valley (Atelier Tsuyoshi Tane Architects) Tokyo, Japan. Photo: Yuna Yagii
other projects while focusing on the competition. So maybe once a year, twice a year, we will do a competition, but not as a job. I know from my experience and from other architects - competition becomes a way of production and a way of design style. You get so competitive and you have to run and go forward and become machinery in order to win. You just keep doing it the same way, same type of solutions and same type of team to keep doing the competition. Competitions can be very important for getting projects, but it is also a way of work and a way of life that I see very critically.
Luke Chamberlain:
When you were just 26, you were a part of the winning team in the design competition for the Estonian National Museum. As students nearing the end of their undergraduate degrees, what pieces of advice can you offer to young architects aspiring to experience achievement upon the completion of their education?
I know that there is a lot of desire to be successful like I’ve heard, but I have to
say I’m more for the kind of opportunity that is given as a chance and you then have to make the best effort to be open to do other challenges. So, I don’t see any kind of direction or goal where I need to head, or know where I need to go, I just try to see what I have and then make the best of it and do the best challenges. We have a project for a German company where we were asked to design just 18 square meters of a gardener’s house. You could say that it is small, but for us it’s taken almost 2 years to design the garden house, not because we are bad, but because we spent 2 years coming up with the idea which is going to be constructed this year. At the same time we are designing a large project in Tokyo for a 3.4 km long project for farming. So even though they are completely different sizes and scales, we work carefully because our time is precious. So I don’t know what will happen, we don’t know if our goal will yield success, or if we must try every day to reach it.
35 AN INTERVIEW WITH TYSUYOSHI TANE
ADVICE
“I don’t see any kind of direction or goal where I need to head, [...] I just try to see what I have and then make the best of it...”
From Left to Right: Joel Semancik, Molly Zwack, Madeleine Craven, Jamie Spangler, Harris Cheifetz, Aaron Muth, Professor Marco Brizzi, Tsuyoshi Tane
