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27/6/2010

Kengo Kuma

Centre international d'art et du paysage, Ile de Vassiviere

The Centre international d’art et du paysage de l’île de Vassivière is proud to host from the 29th June to the 5th September 2010 a creation by the architect Kengo Kuma entitled Fu-an, a tea pavilion located at the extreme end of Aldo Rossi ́s building in front of the Vassivière lake. The exhibition will be opened at noon on the 28th June 2010.

The invitation extended by the Centre international d'art et du paysage to Kengo Kuma is an affirmation of its choice of viewing architecture as experimentation and utopia. This idea is intrinsic to the very architecture of the Art Centre built by Aldo Rossi, to the new artists’ residence project conceived by Berger & Berger/ Building-Building, to Yona Friedman’s Licorne de Vassivière (Licorne Eiffel), to Hans Walter Müller’s inflatable modules, and to Gilles Clements’s landscape charter.

Born in 1954, Kengo Kuma sets up his own agency in Tokyo in 1990, Kengo Kuma & Associates, followed in 2008 by his Kuma & Associates Europe in Paris. A professor at Tokyo University and Columbia, this winner of numerous prizes has a collection of over fifty works scattered across the world (the Bamboo House in Beijing; LVMH in Tokyo and Osaka; the Cité des Arts et de la Culture and the Frac Franche-Comté in Besançon; the Frac Paca in Marseille), which place him among the leading architects of his generation.

Kengo Kuma was deeply inspired by the view of architect Frank Lloyd Wright, who for him "translated the Japanese philosophy into a universal language", a re-interpretation that proves essential for modern architecture. With his attention drawn to landscape and context, the other great architectural theme in Kengo Kuma’s work is exploring the use of natural materials such as wood, stone, paper, earth, fragile materials that Japanese architecture has always known how to employ.

In Kuma’s way of thinking, we find Gilles Deleuze’s concept of the Fold: "The folds in the soul and the pleats of matter", which leads him to the idea that architecture must ‘fold’ to nature, that matter is a principle of construction where the aesthetics and symbology of architecture converge.

His idea of "effacing architecture" provokes the quasi-disappearance of architecture in its natural or urban environment by creating open structures that are permeable to outside variations, as attested in Kitakami Canal Museum (Miyagi, 1996-99). For those projects that he claims to be "feeble", Kengo Kuma resorts to common materials such as earth, wood and stone. For example, he uses Japanese washi paper for the Ando Hiroshige Museum (Bato, 1998-2000), stone for the Stone Museum (Nasu, 1996-2000), whose façade closes by a linear repetition of thin blocks of stone. The One Ometesando building (Tokyo, 2001-2003) is made of a succession of strips of wood perpendicular to the façade which are rendered completely transparent and rhythmic by the play of empty and full spaces. Alternating air and light also characterize the façade of the Nezu Museum (Tokyo, 2009), with its streaks of fine bamboo stalks.

For the Centre international d’art du paysage at Vassivière island, Kengo Kuma proposes the building of a teahouse called Fu-an, "space of tea ceremony flying in the air" -, it’s a project respectful of existing architecture while at the same time in open contrast with Aldo Rossi ́s post-modern building: "Concentrating on the essential and on the powerful sense of poetry that we are creating here amid finished zones, a space of refined life generating new, important ideas".

Kengo Kuma re-interprets Aldo Rossi ́s cafeteria by turning it into a light and luminous structure that invites one to contemplate and meditate, an aesthetic and tasting experience such as one finds in the traditional tea houses in Japan, in the places de dedicated to the tea ceremony.

Fu-an is one of Kengo Kuma’s most important and poetic nomad works, and is a perfect interpretation of his personal conception of architecture. This is an ephemeral construction made of a plastic structure that hangs suspended thanks to helium and is covered by an immense transparent organza veil that weighs eleven grams per square meter and is anchored to the ground by small pebbles. The way that the space is conceived designates no main entrance; the visitor comes in and is naturally led to sit down on tatamis to contemplate the tactile and visual richness of the floating materials opening to the outside and filled with light, in keeping with the architectural principle that is fundamental to Kengo Kuma.

This evanescent structure changes its expression with the least change of light, by displacements or movements on the outside provoked by nature or by visitors. In this structure, the passage of air and light is never interrupted, matter and color change according to the time of day, evoking the "ukiyo-e" painting style of the Edo epoch, which sought to transcribe in painting the endless changes of nature and time. For the eminent Japanese architect, this involves developing a structure in which the use of matter and light allows him to create within space a hermetic and intimate feeling in harmony with the transparence and lightness of organza – recalling the robes of the celestial angels in Japanese legends.

The matter that the structure is made of immediately seems "to disperse like a cloud and evaporate like mist". The essence and the charm of this project lie in its transparence and fragility. Light filtered from the outside envelops the visitor like a second skin and transforms it into a magic place, a unique experience of contemplation while also delighting in an extraordinary selection of scented herbal teas.

As part of the Atcrl du Limousin Destination elsewhere project, Kengo Kuma recommends a selection of works to read about the island so as to prolong the architectural and tasting experience of the teahouse: philosophy, literature, drawing, architecture, art chosen by the renowned architect are available to visitors.

Fu-an is an undertaking in collaboration with Kuma & Associates Europe and Kengo Kuma & Associates and in partnership with Biu Beauté bio, Jugetsudo Paris and Pro natura.

The Centre international d'art et du paysage is financed by the Ministry of Culture and Communications/Drac Limousin and the Limousin Regional Council and enjoys the support of the"Lac de Vassivière" mixed Syndicate.

Press contact
Frédéric Legros
tel: +33 (0)5 55692727 / +33 (0)5 55696721 fax: +33 (0)5 55692931 communication@ciapiledevassiviere.com

Opening at noon, 28 June 2010
Shamisen concert with Mayumi Omura

Centre international d’art et du paysage
87120 Ile de Vassivière - France
Open every day from noon to 8 pm.
Vassivière Island is 60 km east from Limoges, on the route to Beaumont du Lac between the departments of Haute-Vienne and Creuse.
Open from Tuesday to Friday from 2pm to 6pm. Saturday and Sunday from 11am to 6pm.
Admission: full ticket: 3 euros/reduced ticket: 1,5 euros over 12 years, students, unemployed/free: under 12 years, disabled and their companions, Friends of the Centre international d'art et du paysage, members of the Artothèque.

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