Light As Air: Emerging Architects of Japan

Japan has one of the world's most admired architectural traditions, one that has influenced artists and architects worldwide from the mid-19th century onwards. Presented here are some of the best of a new generation of Japanese architects, intent on making "something new of tradition". They stand today at the crossroads where Japanese tradition and contemporary architecture meet.

Shuhei Endo

Shuhei Endo's award-winning Rooftecture S (2005) is the epitome of a space-saving home, one of the architect's alphabetized range of Rooftectures, Springtectures, Halftectures, Growtectures and Bubbletectures. Clinging desperately to the front of a railway retaining wall in Kobe, with the street above on one side, and the Inland Sea on the other, it is reminiscent of a trapped rock climber, or perhaps a discarded envelope caught there by the wind.

The inevitable first impression is one of awe: "Wow!" you think. "It looks tiny, and how on earth does it stay perched up there anyway?" But on closer inspection the house seems surprisingly spacious, stylish, comfortable - and on a site 20 metres long but only 1.5 to 4 metres wide, that's no mean feat.

Though it seems to be merely tacked onto a sheer cliff-face, it is actually pinioned to five structural columns on the level plane of bedrock: the retaining wall is nothing more than a backdrop, albeit one with a presence that shaped the entire design. A galvanised steel sheet roof folds down over the seaward façade, and creates an almost A-frame building, with the ends of the prism kept open with light-giving glass. The lower ground floor peeks out below, with floor-to-ceiling glazing and a priceless seaside vista that perhaps no other architect would have had the guts to capture.

Such a precariously nestled shard of a building - in its eccentricity as much as its utility - is truly an example of modern Japanese design. And all this considering that Shuhei Endo's career high really only began in the 1990s, with perhaps his first ‘big' initiation to the international award scene in 2000, winning the Third Millennium International Competition at the Venice Biennale.

Kengo Kuma

Like Shuhei Endo's Rooftecture S, Kengo Kuma's Lotus House (2003-05) also has the benefit of a watery setting, though this one is riverside, and rather than fronting onto a busy rail line, is hidden away deep in the mountains.

The designs of Kengo Kuma & Associates always seem to centre on seamlessly merging the built form with its environs. Almost intangible walls feature prominently, as endless glass panels in the Nagasaki Prefecture Art Museum (2001-05) and the ethereal Water/Glass villa (1995), which seems to float entirely unsupported above the Pacific Ocean. Raw nature also makes its way into most of Kuma's designs, often in the form of traditional slender bamboo screens for the Ando Hiroshige Museum (2000) and The Great (Bamboo) Wall house (1992-95), set upon rocky hills.

Neither of these themes are lost in Lotus House, where the facades are a chequerboard of alternating thin white travertine stone tiles - one there, the next missing - so that what looks at first like black and white squares is in fact an almost-there breeze-wall, allowing air and light to pass freely through. Nature is further integrated into the design by the lotus pond from which the project takes its name: the surface of the water is perfectly level with the ground floor and the smooth white pathway verandah. The house itself appears to be floating, like the Water/Glass villa, in the middle of nowhere.

Kuma's designs are imbued with the styles of Japanese tradition - minimalist lines, sheer boundaries and delicate lotus petals - but they also reflect the modern way of Japanese architecture: just as he refuses to wear a tie for its restrictive connotations, the buildings he creates are free from fixed borders and rules.

Tezuka Architects

Also bending the rules to experiment with limited resources is Tezuka Architect's ‘Roof House'. Located in an unassuming outer suburb of Tokyo, the whole concept of the home is a solution to the pressing demand for more space, in a country where there really is no more groundspace to give. The commissioners and occupiers had used the roof of their previous residence as makeshift extra living area, and so the home created for them by Tezuka held this as the core inspiration.

When you think about it, the roof of a house provides a huge surface area, which is almost never utilised for anything more than maybe heating water or capturing solar power. Here, the roof is an integral part of the family home, with access points via wooden ladders and skylights as though it were just another living-room. It is gently inclined (at a pitch of ten) and with a low-walled seating area, al fresco kitchen, outdoor shower, and views of Mount Kobo, is the extra room that most Japanese families wish they had space for.

Like Shuhei Endo's Rooftecture S, it's an experiment - and a successful one at that - in making space where it seemed there was just no more space at all. And with other quirky project names like Anthill House, Wall-less House, Megaphone House, Clipping Corner House and Step House, it's not surprising that Tezuka Architects' reputation is for casual innovation, and a sense of freedom from tradition.

Yoshio Taniguchi

Tezuka Architects also lent their talents to the Matsunoyama Natural Science Museum, KYORORO, where huge picture windows frame the surrounding forest and turn everyday patrons into a living exhibition.

Yoshio Tanaguchi's take on ‘museum' on the other hand, holds slightly more to the traditional side, for his first work outside of Japan was the renovation and expansion of the Museum of Modern Art in New York (1997-2004). Having already created the Nagano Prefectural Museum (1990), Toyota Municipal Museum of Art (1991-95) and the Gallery of Horyuji Treasures at Tokyo National Museum, Tanaguchi's ability to mix the traditional with artful innovation was already well-known on home soil.

And with a plan to "transform MoMA into a bold new museum while maintaining its historical, cultural and social context" it is unsurprising that despite its Manhattan setting, MoMA now wears a distinctly Japanese face.

Taniguchi's MoMA features sweeping views - taking in what little organic environment can be captured in this urban panorama with rectilinear linear layouts, vast open spaces, and, of course, endless fields of shimmering glass that make one feel as though supported by nothing but air (or smoke and mirrors). Steel pylons were shifted, removed and reinstalled to create the most expansive exhibition spaces imaginable, with ultra-minimum joins. The visible ceilings float away from the walls and structural ceiling: for the much-needed ventilation as well as lighter-than-air aesthetics.

It took five years, $425 million, and an exchange program of sorts, with US firm Kohn Pedersen Fox (KPF) sending eight employees to Tokyo, and an architect from Taniguchi's atelier setting up shop in New York. But even though the Japanese design was translated with an American twang - and a whole lot of restrictive building regulations to boot - there's a whole lot of Tokyo now living on 53rd and 54th Street: downtown Manhattan.

Akira Sakamoto

If Tanaguchi wanted minimalism at the MoMA, it's still nothing compared to the stark whiteness of Akira Sakamoto's homes, restaurants and retail premises. Akira Sakamoto Architect & Associates CASA was established in 1982, and since then has won numerous Japanese awards: - the 2001 6th Kansai Architect Grand Prix, 2001 Architectural Institute of Japan Selected Architectural Design Award and 1997 Japan Architects Association Newcomer Prize for his Hakuei Residence (Osaka, 1996) alone. And yet his designs have somehow not yet attained full international recognition.

The looming alabaster façade of his Sesami Restaurant (Osaka, 2004) almost seems to be internally lit like a huge empty billboard; balanced out by the traditional Japanese wooden screen door nestled between the front walls. It is this interplay of restrained elegance and subtle adventurism that brings him into the same league as his contemporaries: the new breed of Japanese architects, who find inspiration in the treasured strictures of old Japan, and use modern minds to break free of the old ways.

Previous. Hakuei Residence, Osaka: Akira Sakamoto's forte is stark white minimalism and an artful direction of natural light.

Top. Shuhei Endo's Rooftecture S looks out to the inland sea from its wall-side perch on a silver landscape.

Second. The almost-there walls and floor-level lotus pond of Kengo Kama's Lotus House.

Third. Tezuka's Floating Roof House is completely open along both sides, allowing nature to flood inside.

Fourth. Millions of visitors each year now visit the wide open expanses of the MoMA as reconceived by Yoshi Tangiuchi.