Hitoshi Abe obtained his Master's Degree in Architecture in 1989, from the Southern California Institute of Architecture. From 1988 to 1992 he worked in the Coop Himmel(b)lau agency in Los Angeles. In 1992, he received his Ph.D in architecture from Tohoku University, and set up the Atelier Hitoshi Abe in Sendaï, where he was born. He has also been director of the Architecture Laboratory at the Tohoku Technology Institute since 1994. He is probably one of the most cross-cultural architects of his generation. "The search for paradise" is what Hitoshi Abe pursues in his architecture, involving a reconstruction of the unity between people and the environment. Architecture is, in the first analysis, the very opposite--it introduces separation. The new technologies usher in a shift in western thought, based on the duality of mind and matter, towards a more oriental conception which does away with boundaries and borders. They offer a glimpse of the paths to paradise. How is this development in architecture to be taken into consideration, and then rendered tangible? A house only exists when it is lived in, and when the place and the life of its occupants meet in a physical way. The architect's role is not to create an ideal life, or an ideal home, but to give form to the interaction between a life and a specific environment. This is what Hitoshi Abe is experimenting with in his I-House project.	(J)
	Atelier Hitoshi Abe Abe (Hitoshi) (1962)
	¥ I - House 2001