Future Talks 04 : Ken Nishiguchi

ZZ: Thank you very much for meeting us in your office for the interview today. To start, could you briefly introduce your studio and describe the main principles and values of your work?

KN: My studio is a one-person operation focusing on residential design. I design architecture inspired by the "law of nature". This means understanding the context of the land's morphology, history, industry, etc. and designing architecture that is appropriate to the site.

ZZ: I see. Do you work mostly on urban projects or on projects in industrial or rural areas?

KN: More on the village projects, which also means connection to industrial areas, as in Japan industry is located in rural areas and not so much in the cities.

ZZ: How do you perceive the role of an architect in current and future society? Do you have any concerns about the future of your profession?

KN: These days, we live in a society where people are more focused on convenience and efficiency, on the control over the environment and I think there is certainly a role for architects to be a part of that situation. However, my primary focus in the design process is to consider architecture that is following nature, over which humans have no control. That would be an architecture that sometimes incorporates inconvenience as well.

ZZ: The fusion of inconvenience and the design process is very interesting. Could you describe how you work with the concept of inconvenience a little more?

KN: I think it is important that we embrace unpredictability and the unexpected. As the French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss, in "La Pensée sauvage" (The English translation - The Savage Mind, 1966 or Wild Thought, 2021), talked about bricolage. In other words, the idea of creating something new with what you have on hand is very important for me. Nowadays, architects usually get building materials prefabricated from suppliers in conveniently compatible dimensions, but in the old days, buildings were often constructed using stones and wood that were around the site. It was never planned; there were also curved trees and distorted shaped stones. My interest is in combining architecture with unpredictable materials found around the site. Humans have the ability to manage and solve such situations. For example, combining wood and stone of a certain size would be an activity that is part of an industry, and people would be too dependent on the system. But I believe that systems, while seemingly convenient, weaken people's power.

ZZ: How do you perceive the importance of the architect's influence on the lives of ordinary city dwellers and where does it lead you in your own work?

KN: As I mentioned earlier, when talking about the use of prefabricated materials versus unexpected material shapes found on the construction site, I try to influence and educate people not to be too confident about what we can control. We have to be open to situations, where things are not going our way and to accept uncontrollable phenomena around us.

ZZ: Which social aspects do you find most important for architects to think about?

KN: The most important issue is the increase of empty abandoned houses due to the shrinking population. However, I see the shrinking population as a positive thing. I think it is a good idea to return the land of abandoned houses vacated by the shrinking population to nature.

ZZ: How and which way do you prefer empty houses to return to nature by just degrading themselves or by architect's intervention, demolishing, recycling and cultivating greenery?

KN: Buildings built of stone and wood return to nature by themselves, but concrete and steel buildings in urban areas take a very long time to decompose naturally. This is where human help will be needed in order to recycle these materials.

ZZ: How does climate change influence your work?

KN: I used to design houses like Le Corbusier's white cubes in wood. However, I realised it was not a good idea. By creating eaves on the roof, you can protect the exterior walls from rain, and you can adjust the amount of direct sunlight coming in, since the angle of the sun is different in summer and winter. In other words, I have shifted from white cubes made of wood to buildings with eaves - overhanging roofs.

ZZ: Has it been gradually changing in your design process through your experience of extreme weather events?

KN: That's right, but it is not new or my invention, as Japan has always had buildings with eaves. It is a very typical element of traditional Japanese architecture. I think that the white cube architecture just could not adapt to the rainy Japanese climate.

HK: It is true that white cubes accelerate the deterioration of exterior walls due to rain and snow. To use vernacular architecture as an example, the Gassho-zukuri of Shirakawa-go in Gifu, Japan, has a steeply sloped roof to reduce snow loads, and in the region of Harran, Turkey, the roof is domed to keep the harsh heat outside. Our ancestors were wiser in adapting their architecture to the location and climate, weren't they? (Laughs)

ZZ: How do you perceive the influence of the SDGs (Goals of the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development) on Japanese architecture and how do you reflect them in your work?

KN: I work as an independent architectural firm, so I don't live with the flow of industry, and therefore I don't intend to follow the SDG campaign. Of course, we should aim for a sustainable society and I'm thinking about how we can achieve it.

ZZ: In Japan SDGs concept seems to be a top-down structure and it makes it hard for independent architects to relate to it, but anyway do you have any examples of sustainable approaches you find interesting?

KN: For example, when I walk around town, I often find fake wood or fake trees. In other words, these are just printed surface materials with a realistic wood grain structure look, but they are made of plastic, metal or concrete. Of course, petroleum is used in the process. Instead of working so hard to create such fakes, we should use real trees. It is not only about the quality of the material itself, but about the whole process. When people intervene in the forest, cutting away selected wood, light and wind come into the forest, the forest becomes healthier, richer, and eventually it becomes a resource.

ZZ: That is a good point. I also saw a lot of fake trees made of plastic and concrete during my stay in Japan. There is also a lot of plastic bamboo around. (Laughs)

HK: Unfortunately, even traditional structures like Torii (entrance gate to shrine) are starting to be replaced by plastic instead of wood.

ZZ: Do you see the Japanese public debate on the sustainability and adaptability of cities as sufficient and fruitful? Could you give some specific examples of its outcome?

KN: I know there are often such discussions, but I have never participated in them. But when I was a juror for a college graduation design, some of the students focused on water resources, forestry, and so on. I realised during that discussion that the concept of sustainability is not only popular among adults, but also among the younger generation.

ZZ: What are the possibilities and limits of Japanese architects in creating ecological/sustainable architecture?

KN: It is important to know how much we can work as architects without being swayed by the currents of capitalism.

ZZ: I see, money is a major limitation of Japanese architects. What do you think of the possibilities?

KN: Possibilities... I am finding out how to live off the grid. In other words, how to live independently of the system.

ZZ: Is it even possible in Japan to live independently of the system? Because I feel Japan's settlements are so dense and super organised.

KN: Some people in the mountains in the countryside are living off-grid. In cities, it would be difficult. But I think it may be possible in cities if people learn to enjoy the inconvenience. I have high hopes for AI. When AI takes over tedious tasks and works instead of humans, people will have more free time. I think our way of life would change if we had more time to waste. As a side note, Japan may seem like a very strict society at first glance, but it has subcultures like an otaku culture, anime and video games culture. I would like to find a way to add physicality -- physical interaction with 3D reality of our environment to games, like you can see in Pokemon Go augmented reality game for example, and overlay it with sustainable activities to improve our environment in a game-like way. This could result in an opportunity to turn capitalism upside down. I think a story like "the environment has been improved by the fusion of government and otaku culture" could be done if it were in Japan (laughs).

ZZ: That is an interesting challenging idea. In the eyes of Europeans, Japanese architecture has a very close relationship with nature. Where, in your opinion, do these roots lie? And is this relationship about ecology and sustainability?

KN: In my opinion, I don't think that people in the past have treated nature with so much consideration for ecology and sustainability. In Japan, there are many gods or spirits in nature, and I think the roots are that human beings have lived in nature with gods. That is a Shinto idea and Animism, too. This belief is still present in Japanese society, we still respect the gods within the trees or stones.

ZZ: So, when you design using stone and wood in your projects, do you design with a sense of the divine?

KN: It is similar to what I said earlier about fake wood, I feel there is less material energy in fake things. I feel high energy is in real wood and strong energy is in real stone. I feel that the more you create something artificially, the more the material loses its frequency and energy. It is not a spiritual idea, but an intuition, that people can feel when they touch these materials.

ZZ: How do you perceive the problems of UHI (urban heat island) in Japanese cities? How do you see the use of NBS (nature-based solutions) in this context and do you use them in your work?

KN: Heat island is a problem of population concentration, and since Japan's population is decreasing, it may be a good idea to create greenery on vacant land in urban areas.

ZZ: You use a lot of natural materials in your "House of the Earth", is it for aesthetics or for the function of solving some specific problem?

KN: The criterion was not the appearance, but whether or not I myself would feel comfortable in the house. When I was a child, I lived near the mountains, so the house is like a recreation of that mountain landscape. Talking about comfort, I mean the comfort that the five senses can bring us. Sight sees light and green. Tactile senses touch stones and wood. Hearing is the chirping of birds. Smell is the smell of fallen leaves in the mountains...

ZZ: How do you perceive the role of public space in contemporary Japanese cities? How do you include it into your design process?

KN: I think that it is more important for public space to act as an open platform for various possibilities rather than to give it a specific role. Anyway, I have not yet designed a public building, so I cannot make any clear statements.

ZZ: Do you use methods of participation/communication with the public or the local community in your work and how do you perceive this method in the context of Japanese society?

KN: Even if I have a chance to design a public building, I probably will not incorporate public participation. Because I expect incorporating opinions of many people tends to result in architecture that is an extension of what already exists and becomes ordinary. I believe that architects should make proposals that citizens and local communities are not aware of. If I would communicate with the public, then it would be only after the creation of the proposed design. On the other hand, it is important for us to hear the public opinions on what kind of functions they need or expect of course.

ZZ: What would you recommend to the upcoming generation of architects - students of architecture, what topics should they focus their attention on?

KN: In recent years there has been an imbalance between science and technology and nature. Humanly speaking, we are not so different from people who lived 2,000 years ago, and some of the architecture of that time was wonderful. Today's architecture is only for people. So, I recommend to architecture students to think about how to maintain that balance.

ZZ: Thank you so much for sharing your ideas with us.