Takasaki Masaharu, Monobito Architecture. Installation view at Palazzo Bembo, 2016.

Across heaven and earth, we are in search of architecture that resounds within inner cosmos of the heart. Our aim is to create architecture that consists of our own original architectural language and space based on the contexts of regional traditions all over the world.
Fused Time – Museum Sumi is a renovation project transforming a 30-year-old spec house into a community space including an atelier and exhibition spaces for calligraphy art. Old buildings are not mere relics of the past but the memories of life of who used to live, and there are many aspects that transcend time and can be utilized to make the future. In order to weld together a pattern of form and space of new and old into a unique organic whole, it requires a precise integrity developed through a dialogue with existing architecture. Its foundation and structure were repaired and reinforced, and the structural members were exposed in accordance with an interpretation of the previous design. A new structure with a construction method inherited from the old form was inserted into the internal space as forming a nest structure with careful considerations for scenery, wind, and daylight through existing openings. Consistency of structure and agreement of all parts gives the whole organic unity.
Condensed space – Bathhouse Hotaru that consists of a tearoom and a bathroom in a premise of long-established inn connotes “a cosmology of 9.9m2”. One of the functions of space is to free the human spirit from the confined perception of reality. True richness is a state of mind. In this small bathhouse, users can unfetter their mind from all thoughts of everyday life and appreciate the condensed interior space in a context of three-dimensional relationship with the sky and the garden. The space that is intentionally designed at a slightly smaller-than-human scale stimulates users’ senses and awakens their intrinsic sensibility for space. Users are given an opportunity to reflect on themselves and realize the infinite depth and width of their inner cosmos in this delicate and serene space. Due to users’ actions being limited to some extent, it also urges users to expand their thoughts to not only inward but also outward, to the external world and the universe.
Ambiguous Existence – House Shinon is a timber frame house built with a traditional construction method for a family of five in Tokyo. It exists as a mediator that actively absorbs the energy from heaven and earth and shows a sense of expansion and metamorphosis in nature. A concept of the space derived from a deep rapport with nature was defined as a moving infinity that resonates with environment. It implies that the space is the universal medium through which life moves in constant transformation. In the space filled with anticipation, excitement, and hope all of the architectural elements abstractly express interrelationships of constellation topology. A seemingly chaotic relationship between the parts and the whole urges beholders to be participants in experience, and it only becomes apparent in a progression of their own movement through time and space. The ever-changing relationship provides a unique vitality of architecture for their mind and inspires their imagination and artistic sensibility.