Big Furniture Like a Cave

This project won the Grand Prize of Art in Container International Competition in Kobe Biennial 2011 in Japan. My idea is to hollow out the volume inside a container in order to build amorphous space like a cave. This “Artificial Topography” is made of only plastic material as same as my famous work “Aqua-scape”.
This is not only art work but also one big furniture. Because all the portions are soft like a sofa, and person who enter into this space can relax by finding the place suitable for the form of its own body.

How should be amorphous space as a big furniture designed ? I drew many sections at first. Secondly, 3D computer model was generated from many sections by using “loft” command in Rhinoceros. The lighting was also important.

About 1000 sheets of the soft plastic material of 10-mm thickness were cut down in contour line form, and were laminated like a stratum. All the processes after carrying out computer modeling were performed manually. The workload was huge.

As The Nature-oriented Architecture

I am a great interest in nature especially the system of nature. Two years ago, my exhibition held in England. In the exhibition, a lot of experimental architectural projects and the execution works in each category that I obtained the inspiration from nature such as “Solar”, “Air”, ”Water”, ”Ground”, “Crystal”, “Biological”, “Flower”, and “Aurora” were exhibited. Because these aimed to approach “Nature” more closely, it was named “Nature-oriented Architecture”.
And therefore, this “Artificial Topography” is the recent project of the Nature-oriented Architecture as “Ground” category.

This is the third prototype of the Whole Plastic Architecture for me. I took pains to select the optimal plastic material. I tried various materials. I researched the softness of material, intensity, the cutting method, a binder, etc. Finally, polyolefin firing resin board was selected.

I am thinking about ”Future form of architecture” now. Architecture should change. One reason is to deal with the global environmental problem. Another reason is to get over the modernism of the 20th century, and to discover suitable architecture in the 21st century.
Architecture until now has been hard, heavy and unmoving; however, when I think about architecture in the future, it should be soft, light and moving. This work is the third prototype based on this idea. This installation consists of only soft plastic materials and it is amorphous shape like a cave or a jellyfish.