Tezuka
Architects (J)
Takaharu Tezuka (1964), Yui Tezuka (1969)
Takaharu Tezuka (1964), Yui Tezuka (1969)
Although
of Japanese origin, and based in Tokyo since 1994, this young team also
boasts a wealth of lengthy experience in the West. Yui Tezuka studied at
the Bartlett School in London. Takahura Tezuka, with a degree from the University
of Pennsylvania, spent four years working as Richard Rogers' associate.
The Tezuka Architects agency won the 2000 competition for the Museum of
Natural Science in Matsunoyama, and already has to its credit a dozen or
so completed private houses, which come across like so many unusual variations
on the same theme. Each one develops to the utmost a special connection
between the domestic and the natural: living in light, with wind, looking
at the sea, in the landscape, etc. In seemingly linking up with a form of
constructive rationalism, the architectonic features of these houses actually
contribute to constructing this domestication of nature (or this "naturalization"
of the domestic): here a huge cantilever helps to totally open up the house
onto a garden, there a glass façade slopes to fit beneath a tree
many hundreds of years old, and here again an extensive, gently sloping
roof duplicates the house's layout and uses, but from without.