My dream is to grow plants on buildings just as the human body grows hair," said Terunobu Fujimori, the architectural historian turned architect who grabbed Japanese media attention in the 1990s with a series of buildings that incorporated living plants.
The names of Fujimori's works -- Chive House, Dandelion House, Single Pine House -- pretty much say it all. Hundreds of pots of chives sway in the breeze on the slanting roof of a one-story cabin in Chive House while the roof of Single Pine House has a pine tree growing on it.
PHOTO:VICO LEE, TAIPEI TIMES
Photos of these and six other buildings by Fujimori in Japan, as well as four models of his architecture, are currently on show in Wildness in Architecture (野蠻建築展) at the National Culture Association (文化總會).
PHOTO COURTESY OF THE NATIONAL CULTURAL ASSOCIATION
For Fujimori, one of the key issues in 21st century civilization is the relationship between the natural and the manmade. His buildings, which incorporate nature, are meant to deal with the issue from a visual and aesthetic perspective.
In addition to his architecture, Fujimori is known for a series of award-winning essays collected in Adventures of Detective Architecture, published in the 1980s. It was the first series of architectural essays to become a national best-seller in Japan.
Convinced that artificial structures and elements in nature can reach a perfect harmony, Fujimori uses steel, mortar and industrial wood to build the inner structures and hidden elements of buildings while placing plants, soil and stone in the more visible locations.
The results are often houses of "ambiguous nationality" which appear naive or even surreal. He planted grass in a diagonal grid all over the roof of Camellia Castle, where a camellia is also planted.
"We often see plants on roofs of modern buildings, but they hardly ever blend in with the architecture. This is because rooftop gardens are usually designed by ecologists, who dislike artificial things. They would rather suppress the artificial to better express the plants," Fujimori said.
"But I think both the plants and the building have to look good. It's not easy, but I want them to get along well."
Apart from building private houses, Fujimori designed the Kumamoto Prefecture Agricultural University Student Dormitory using local timber. Independent pillars, a characteristic of Japanese wooden architecture, are used, but with a twist -- the rows of freestanding, undressed pine columns give people the illusion they're walking in a forest.
Fujimori admits that there are many limits to this incorporation of natural elements. "In Japan, most plants die in winter, so the houses can appear pretty only for a brief time. And when they grow too quickly, the house seems untidy. It takes a lot of work to make these buildings look nice," he said.
Plants in Taiwan, for example, may overwhelm the whole building into which they are integrated because they are "extremely strong".
Wildness in Architecture will show at the National Culture Association located at 15, Chungchin S Rd Sec 2 (
President William Lai (賴清德) yesterday delivered an address marking the first anniversary of his presidency. In the speech, Lai affirmed Taiwan’s global role in technology, trade and security. He announced economic and national security initiatives, and emphasized democratic values and cross-party cooperation. The following is the full text of his speech: Yesterday, outside of Beida Elementary School in New Taipei City’s Sanxia District (三峽), there was a major traffic accident that, sadly, claimed several lives and resulted in multiple injuries. The Executive Yuan immediately formed a task force, and last night I personally visited the victims in hospital. Central government agencies and the
Australia’s ABC last week published a piece on the recall campaign. The article emphasized the divisions in Taiwanese society and blamed the recall for worsening them. It quotes a supporter of the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) as saying “I’m 43 years old, born and raised here, and I’ve never seen the country this divided in my entire life.” Apparently, as an adult, she slept through the post-election violence in 2000 and 2004 by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), the veiled coup threats by the military when Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) became president, the 2006 Red Shirt protests against him ginned up by
As with most of northern Thailand’s Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) settlements, the village of Arunothai was only given a Thai name once the Thai government began in the 1970s to assert control over the border region and initiate a decades-long process of political integration. The village’s original name, bestowed by its Yunnanese founders when they first settled the valley in the late 1960s, was a Chinese name, Dagudi (大谷地), which literally translates as “a place for threshing rice.” At that time, these village founders did not know how permanent their settlement would be. Most of Arunothai’s first generation were soldiers
Among Thailand’s Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) villages, a certain rivalry exists between Arunothai, the largest of these villages, and Mae Salong, which is currently the most prosperous. Historically, the rivalry stems from a split in KMT military factions in the early 1960s, which divided command and opium territories after Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) cut off open support in 1961 due to international pressure (see part two, “The KMT opium lords of the Golden Triangle,” on May 20). But today this rivalry manifests as a different kind of split, with Arunothai leading a pro-China faction and Mae Salong staunchly aligned to Taiwan.
RSS