Kengo Kuma & Associates

This house sits beside a quiet river, deep in the mountains. My concept for the project was to lay waterways between the river and the house and plant them with lotus flowers, so that that the lotuses would link the dwelling with the river, and with the woods on the far side of the river.

The structure itself is composed essentially of holes. It is divided into two wings, with a hole-shaped terrace in between serving to connect the woods behind the house with the woods on the opposite bank of the river. The wall surfaces are also composed of countless holes. I wanted to create light walls that the wind would sweep through using stone, normally a massive material. I had taken the same approach (a light, porous wall surface that takes advantage of the texture of stone) once before, in the Stone Museum (2000).

This time, an even lighter effect was made possible by using a ‘flat bar chain structure’ to which thin travertine stone plates were fastened. I suspended the 30mm-thick stone plates, which measure 20cm by 600cm, from flat 6mm-by-18mm stainless steel bars, creating a porous checkerboard pattern; each bar was connected at its ends to the two bars above and two bars below. The system allowed the screen to be very flexible in response to external forces and movements. Since the chain is thinner than the stone panels, the suspending element almost disappears and the stone appears to be flowing in the air. The lightness of the stone is an expression of the gentle lotus petals.