ABSTRACTION AND INFORMALITY GENERATE A NEW AESTHETIC: AN INTERVIEW WITH KAZUYO SEJIMA

摘要

Most people familiar with their work see beauty in SANAA's architecture. The design approach of theTokyo-based practice, whose founding partners Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa also work in parallel on personal projects for their own clients, is clearly led by a conscious ambition to achieve a new aesthetic. An aesthetic that combines space and nature fluidly, and that does not determine how people use their buildings. This informality changes the way in which people interact with internal spaces, with nature and with other people. Surprisingly, the creative brilliance and ambition of SANAA's design processes have been undervalued by some Western architects, who see them as naive or innocent. This is perhaps attributable to a cultural bias that over-intellectualises the design process, which in turn undermines the role of visual thinking as the leading generative force in the architectural design process.