Like a Cloud, It Will Drift Beautifully
Midori Hasuike
Curvy, soft shapes, white veils, transparencies leading to hidden and mysterious moments; considered cute or sexy, innocent or strategic, SANAA’s architecture is with no doubt universally alluring.
No wonder the Japanese practice has encountered enormous success in the West, where heavy cultural heritage—both in historical and contemporary sense—is of deep concern.
Over the past few decades the European architecture scene has shown rising interest in Japanese firms. With this, the field which is usually nourished by its own intra-geographical-or-cross-continental cultural debate began to expand, giving space to “outsiders”. Just think about France: the nation has progressively developed a bond with the Japanese cultural scene, so much so that those successful architects who managed to open a European branch, did so in Paris before any other foreign city. Call it mentorship, but truth is a European acumen can be sensed in this type of dynamics: no one is ever going to tear the Louvre down, sacré bleu, but building a new Louvre that cannot compete with the original one — even just for the fact that it is conceived and designed by a heterogeneous element — is fine. One step short of creating a movement, it is instead a perpetual drive: import, reinterpret and adapt. Japonisme, remember? That was over 150 years ago. What we may see today is perhaps closer to a brand import marketing strategy than a true cultural shift.
Japanese architecture (in Japan) is often the result of a diligent, tireless, and stubborn practice, translating an artistic gesture into a physical reality. Its conception and production process differ from standard European conventions - obviously. More subtly though, this difference first emerges not at an aesthetic level, but a perceptual one: when and where questions are first asked. In Europe, questions appear before and during the concept design phase. In Japan, during and after. Sometimes, actually, way after the concept phase, because what must be first conceived is a gorgeous image. Make it real, free yourself up from pre-conceptions, perhaps follow an elected aesthetic guideline, and just sketch it down. It will work, eventually, after those late questions that sound closer to engineering than design. And well, most of all, it will look beautiful. The second point of difference relates to the conceived lifespan of a built project. In Europe, a building is meant to last forever. At the very least it wants to be a monument. In Japan, lightness and delicacy reflect the precariousness of the project’s perspectives. Japanese architects are trained to see their projects die, reduced to dust as part of the cities development.
European Cities, fascinated by the “naiveté” and the subtlety of Japanese practise, attempt to redeem part of their dusty built heritage by giving space to this lightness, putting it side by side with equally beautiful, well considered local architectures, or as stand-alone landmarks of enlightenment. Yet SANAA as seen in Japan has a different vibe when compared to what we experience here in Europe. It’s not just because of the lack of insulation or looser legal and technical requirements in Japan. Sometimes, there is a palpable sense of pressure for SANAA to perform SANAA abroad. When the project's program concerns the art world, aspects of this pressure are conveniently eased, simultaneously muted and complimented by SANAA’s restraint and austerity. However, when it comes to a more institutional or commercial building, this pressure is amplified. It is imaginable that the firm is simply brought in to give the building an expected style, a SANAA-ness.
The recently inaugurated Bocconi Campus presents several classic SANAA features: metal mesh, curvilinear volumes, curtain-likes homogeneous facades, transparencies and thin pillars sustaining meandering canopies. But just as Le Corbusier’s 5 points were meant to be exported and applied world-wide, in the urban context of semi-central Milan these characters express not SANAA but a SANAA-ness, that is, it exists, yet with dull charm - if compared to their other projects built in Japan. Import, reinterpret and adapt.
Still, a cloud-like building in a grey area of Milan represents both a delicate and courageous act. The building makes the community, the users, the tourists and the passers-by content. Just happier. Everybody cheers up when bumping into this abnormal corner of the city. This soft, unexpectedly beautiful alien is approachable because it speaks to our guts, not just to our brains. It must be the curves, their sexiness, its cuteness, and of course SANAA’s SANAA-ness: that power of not-so-innocent seduction.
MIDORI HASUIKE is an architect active in the fields of interior and set design.
After receiving her MArch with honors from Politecnico di Milano in 2010, she worked at award winning architecture firms in Rotterdam, Tokyo and New York.
In 2015, she founded MIDORI Hasuike | Set Design, practice based in Milan and active internationally, with the aim of exploring architecture and its related fields by means of a multidisciplinary approach.
Image Credits: 1-3,5-7 Bocconi Campus Building, SANAA. Photograph: Midori Hasuike 4. Lens Louvre, SANAA. Photograph: Iwan Baan
After receiving her MArch with honors from Politecnico di Milano in 2010, she worked at award winning architecture firms in Rotterdam, Tokyo and New York.
In 2015, she founded MIDORI Hasuike | Set Design, practice based in Milan and active internationally, with the aim of exploring architecture and its related fields by means of a multidisciplinary approach.
Image Credits: 1-3,5-7 Bocconi Campus Building, SANAA. Photograph: Midori Hasuike 4. Lens Louvre, SANAA. Photograph: Iwan Baan