Tree Changer

The structure of plant forms is the inspiration for this architect's cultivation of beautiful, organic and highly innovative buildings.

WHEN IT COMES TO THE WORK of Japanese architect Sou Fujimoto, I was an early adopter. In 2013, I saw his house design for Solo Projects in Spain based on the concept of a ‘geometric forest’ with untreated timbers forming an open latticework structure. That same year, I was one of thousands of visitors to his Serpentine Pavilion in London’s Kensington Gardens.

His appointment marked a shift in the commissioning of the globally significant pavilion to one that embraced a new generation of architects. Julia Peyton-Jones, then director of the Serpentine Gallery, recalls the sense of risk in choosing someone without the “easy acclaim outside the profession”, as part of the funding was predicated on the subsequent sale of the pavilion. It is with a note of pride that she reports it was the most visited exhibition of design anywhere in the world that year. It is easy to understand why. The cloud-like form Fujimoto designed and had simply constructed in a gridded, white-steel framework took on an ethereal quality. Dense in parts and transparent in others, it looked digital while revealing its natural surrounds and that of the adjacent gallery. The concept was always, according to the architect, “that geometry and constructed forms could meld into the natural and the human”.