change the situation

Last month I visited the Kait workshop at The Kanagawa Institute of Technology in Japan by Junya Ishigami Architects. I enjoyed the building very much and I felt Ishigami was different from other architect. 

The building was open to it's surroundings and it was very transparent, but had complex functions. when I look at architecture, I always check relationship between the space and the function. In the Kait workshop, all the function are in one space. So I felt that I wasn't looking at  architecture but walking ion a campus. It was very unique experience.

In many cases, architects start their designs from ambiguous images. At the same time, they study functions, structures, and so on. Some times the designs are changed by functions and some times the functions are changed by designs. To repeat this process many times, architect gradually ajust their design.

I guess Ishigami's first design image was diffirent from other architect images. Many architect first image is the form of buildings. Ishigami's first image doesn't seem to be a form but a situation or scene including human activities. For example five or six young people are chatting in a bright sunlit room or an old man is reading a book in a quiet place and so on.

When many architects try to realize some special form, Ishigami is thinking about what is needed for a scene he imagined. Ishigami tries to realize a scene with minimum structure. 

I remember his words from some lecture. He said that

"if you are in a street, your feeling is different on sunny days or in rainy days. Weather can domantically affect pepple's feeling with small change in temperature or brightness. What I want to do in architecture is match it with the weather, I want to change people's feelings more positively with a samll change in surroundings."

I felt that Ishigami wasn't design a new form but to change the situation.