The Inbetweener

Japanese architect Sou Fujimoto creates spaces that blend nature with everyday life.

- Christopher De Wolf

When Sou Fujimoto was a kid growing up in rural Hokkaido in the 1970s, he was fascinated by nature. So when he moved to Tokyo as a young man, you could reasonably assume he’d have hated one of the most populous metropolises in the world—a vast grey sprawl of small houses and boxy apartment buildings. But that wasn’t the case at all. “I liked Tokyo very much, which was surprising to me,” recalls the architect.

It turned out Fujimoto was fascinated by Tokyo for the same reasons he loved nature. The city felt alive and organic, full of fascinating little details such as shop awnings and electrical wires. Like a forest, the city is a framework of life: solid but also nebulous, beautiful at any given moment, but ever-changing.

ARCHITECTURE WITHOUT WALLS 

You can say the same about Fujimoto’s buildings. Since launching his own architectural practice in 2000, he has designed houses, apartment towers and retail complexes that feel less like buildings and more like loose skeletons that wrap themselves around the lives of their inhabitants. “Something between nature and architecture” is how Fujimoto describes his approach to design.