ARCHITECTURE & NATURE-Part I: Junya Ishigami

This month we make a tribute to the relationship between nature and architecture through 7 videos of internationally known architects who explain this relationship to us and how it extends to their work. We start with the Japanese Architect Junya Ishigami, whose work we saw at the Fondation Cartier in Paris.

By Efi Michalarou

When a hotel owner hired Ishigami to create a new garden and an addition to his hotel, the premise was that the addition should be built in a forest, and the garden in an area with meadows alongside. Because they were only allowed to build in the woods – meaning having to cut down almost all of the trees – Ishigami decided “to move all the trees from the forest and create a new forest.” Each tree was carefully relocated, uprooted and replanted over four years. They also relocated the moss that was already there, used the existing stones to make stepping stones, and integrated the water in the area: “We used everything that was already there and changed the layout to create a new artificial environment that was as close as possible to something natural,” Ishigami says. In continuation of this, 50 years earlier, the location had been rice paddies, and so Ishigami wanted to combine the rice paddy landscape with the forest landscape. Ishigami explains how it wasn’t about creating something from nothing, but rather about using the already existing environment and “letting the passage of time create a new garden. So, the concept was that the garden would take a long time to mature”.

Junya Ishigami, Creating Nature with Time, Camera: Jakob Solbakkenm Edited by Klaus Elmer, Produced by Marc-Christoph Wagner, All pho tos: Ⓒ junya.ishigami+associates, Ⓒ Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, 2020, Supported by Dreyers Fond