Interview by Patrick Loo & Sarosh Mulla
Held at the University of Auckland, School of Architecture & Planning
13th May 2010
‘Bloomberg pavilion’ by Akihisa Hirata Architecture Office at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo
Architectural metaphor cannot often be described as delicious. However Akihisa Hirata’s recent lecture, in the University of Auckland’s Communique series, showed that a good food analogy can be surprisingly illustrative. It seems that Hirata’s entire practice can be summed up in an image of a particular type of fish roe sushi, which demonstrates his central theory of ‘tangling’.
Hirata is the latest architectural prodigy to emerge from Toyo Ito’s office and following the establishment of his own practice, the aptly named Akihisa Hirata Architecture Office, has completed a series of highly thoughtful tangled projects.
Tangled accumulation, in the way that roe tangles to seaweed in nature, finds a corollary in the salmon roe sushi. Hirata approaches his projects similarly, looking for the natural pattern that has emerged and then imposing an order and rigour that results in spaces and architecture that can be both inhabited and read as ‘tangled’. The complexity of spaces that results can be seen as contemporary interpretations of Adolf Loos’ Raumplan. Spaces can be viewed through one another, allowing glimpses of life that is contained within, but without ever giving a view of the whole.
Hirata exploits the beauty of complexity through a logical, yet often hidden, set of rules. For example, for the fabric installation “animated knot” for Canon, Hirata creates a continuous, double curving fabric knot which is so complex at first inspection that the viewer thinks of each of its parts as being completely unique. However, the complexity of the curvature is simply achieved through some cunning arrangement of the uniform curved steel frames that form the fabric installation’s skeleton.
While Hirata’s spaces are not overly pragmatic in shape, at times his way of breaking down program into digestible chunks through geometry, as shown in the Architecture Farm projects, reinforce his intelligent engagement with rules. Even though Hirata often hides his overriding logic, it is this use of logic that places him apart from today’s current set of formalists, who seem to be intent on the final result and neglect a clarity of how to generate it.
There are many who will not be enamoured by his work. However, what must be appreciated is the approach to research that pursues an ongoing idea through both built and unbuilt work. All too often as designers we are found to be guilty of dropping concepts just because we have used them before due to the fear of being typecast as a one trick pony. So the idea languishes and misses the opportunity to be developed. We also, in that true Kiwi fashion, are nervous about telling others about our lofty ideas. Preferring instead to shelter behind the stable shield of pragmatics and client direction. As such, Hirata’s open engagement with a consistent body of research demonstrates that a good idea often has enough depth to belie the fear of repetition; even when you are dealing with a strong aesthetic.
Given that Hirata’s work is clearly approached as research, it was interesting to see the reaction from students engaged on their own research. For once, the students thought this practicing architect’s work was more experimental, more challenging, more deliberate and just tastier than the content of their studios.
This Article featured in the NZIA Auckland Branch Broadsheet — “Block’