Our recent residential project ORANGE is intended to realize a space where children can touch the raw world with their innate, pure sensitivity.
The concept has its root in my personal absorption in phenomenological and ontological spatial studies during college. The strong interest came from my fundamental frustration and intuitive objection against the process through which a person – even though being born with limitless possibility about the ways to perceive, communicate and interact with and the world - gradually deteriorates to a stereotypical adult, or so-called “ordinary man” as he/she grows up. The answer seemed to be found in inquiry into human spatial recognition and its chronological change.
Instead of a lengthy abstract analysis, I would like to refer to one short movie titled "Sweet Baby Experiences Rain for the Very First Time" (http://bit.ly/1b5xUMO). What it shows is a striking evidence that pouring rain – just an ordinary, cold, mostly unwelcome phenomena – is nothing but a sparkling manifestation of the world-in-life, or rain itself, for a girl who experiences it for the very first time. Even an ordinary rain brings an ecstatic joy to a person, as long as he/she maintains the fresh sensitivity to the world, or the rain itself.
Architectural space should have such a sparkling singularity instead of mundane machine-for-living efficiency, and it shouldn’t be easily lost through its daily use,: my belief is that an architectural work should always bring about a chance to activate the sensitivity to the space itself. ORANGE is a realization of the parents’ and our wish that the two children living there shall not lose their pure sensitivity for ever.
The snapshots photographed during the public preview has been uploaded at [http://bit.ly/U3BkaC]. As you can see in them, we have welcomed so many kids, who really enjoyed to touch, run and jump around, lie about, etc., all in the full flush of life – and thus verified that our intention has successfully come true.
※Translation credit :- Translation is by Shingo Tsuji (CHIASMA Factory)
