comfort and lightness

In 2016, five of my international MA students and I won an architectural competition arranged by the Lixil Foundation in Japan. The theme of the competition was ‘Comfort and Lightness’, and the task was to design a “light shelter, one which can be easily assembled and moved” and that would allow residents to “live in closer proximity to nature”.

Our scheme comprised a wooden base, sculpted like furniture, and an adjustable overhead canopy made from several layers of textile. The canopy could be hoisted to allow a 360 degrees opening.

The competition was in two stages: First, 15 teams from schools of architecture around the world sent conceptual proposals on paper and graphic files to Japan. These were screened by the jury, and on this basis three teams were invited to develop their design in a large model or prototype, and present it in Tokyo at a public screening.

After the screening in Tokyo, our winning proposal was developed in collaboration with the architectural office of Kengo Kuma Associates, and built on Lixil’s test site on Hokkaido in northern Japan. The finalized building was opened autumn 2016.