Precedent Study: Moriyama House by Ryue Nishizawa

Buildings that evoke contemporary values

Through Nishizawa's design, he started with the considersion of the shape of contemporary architecture. "Since new architecture is presumed to respond to new needs, I would like to reflect on the shape of this architecture in regard to its evocation of contemporary values".



Small community within the big community

Moriyama House is located in a traditional part of Tokoy where daily life contiunes in a typically urbarn manner. There are more than ten buildings on the site, each with different characterisitics and accommodating varying needs. These independent, separate blocks are scattered around the site, forming a series of connected individual gardens open to the surroundings. Although several of the buildings are currently rented, all of them may someday be used by Mr. Moriyama. the group of individually proportioned, creating a small community and a landscape in and of themselves.






Informality in between

Ryue Nishizawa: This happened only because Moriyama-san, he was a very flexible person.(laughs)This is not my doing, this is his doing. With the spaces between the different blocks of the Moriyama House I just proposed something which was notspecific. But personally, I think that spaces have the power to get people to think of ways to use them, especially when they are not standard spaces. This special behaviour doesn't appear when you have a standard way of use.Only if there is something nice or special, people start thinking. If it's nice, if they like it, they start thinking: in which kind of way could I use it? Stephen Taylor: I think that's very interesting aspect about your project, especially the potentiality of the gaps. It's fascinating that your client was perhaps not into gardening before but now he is. There is great potential as an architect to set things out and allow for people to then in a particular way, to create the sort of environments for people to then add to and make better and inhabit.