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The Presence of Absence
Kengo Kuma
Hiroshige Museum of Art (left), interior (right)
figure. This ambiguity allows architecture to become a light sensor. For example, a thin thread will move when the wind blows, but a thick piece of thread will not move. The thinner thread is more delicate and makes a good sensor.
material suspended in midair; it feels like a floating building. The structure appears to vacillate between an object and a space.
Yes, yes [laughs]. With this and other buildings, there is a sense that the architecture is in the process of
I presume that by using simple, thin elements,
disappearing—or coming into existence but
you can create architecture that harnesses
not yet fully formed. Your Water/Glass House
light to create complex visual effects. I wonder
creates a similar effect with different materials,
if the delicate voids in your structures relate
for example. Where does this phenomenon
to the Japanese concept of ma—the strategic
of floating originate? You have written about
pause inherent in the timing of Noh drama or
artwork created during the ukiyo-e—or floating
the intentional void spaces in Japanese art.3
world—period in Japanese history.4 Did this
Do you apply the concept of ma to your work?
Ma is a very necessary thing. For example, a lattice is like a roof’s pitch: you can see how much space is in between. This is microspace. At a bigger scale, there are two elements—the solid and the space in between. There are two buildings in the Hiroshige Museum. Going into the middle is the most important. In Noh theater, the stage and audience share a common space. Because this interior ma space is critically important, it must be the most beautiful space. It is therefore not an object, but space that I am focusing on. I feel that the void framed by the Shizuoka International Garden and Horticultural Exhibition is such a space. There is so much
movement inspire your work?
No—but, yes, perhaps. Actually, I had not thought of it that way. Fuyou-e means floating world, but to a Japanese person ukiyo-e actually means something different.5 But if you think about it—it can be a floating world. That’s interesting [laughing]. I have a deep interest in
3 Ma is a concept that has many meanings and loosely describes an interval. Arata Isozaki defines nine aspects of ma in his book Japan-ness in Architecture. Some of the definitions are interstice, darkness, aperture, transience, and projection of the body. Arata Isozaki, Japan-ness in Architecture, trans. Sabu Kohso (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2006), 327–28. 4 See my description of ukiyo-e on p. 13. 5 Fuyou literally means “to float.”