A House in the Garden: Shofuso and Modernism

in new york on west 54th street between fifth and sixth avenues in the garden of the museum of modern art there is a house it is the third house built on the site during the last six years the first two were contemporary american this one representing 16th and 17th century prototypes is japanese it was presented to the museum on behalf of the people of japan and accepted as a recognition of the unique relevance to modern western architecture of traditional japanese design it's really very interesting of the japanese exhibition house that was displayed at the museum of modern art 1954 and 1955 following the series of the house in the garden as a third modern house in the garden but here it wasn't literally a modern house as the previous examples but one from japanese tradition interpreted for the museum of modern art the idea that japanese traditions embody the principles of modern architecture i think was central to this ideas of a flexible space one that is open to the environment and how this is all embodied here at shofuso so it's no wonder that when the museum of modern art looking to have a third in a series of a house in the garden that they wound up choosing a traditional japanese house it's quite extraordinary but i think that there's really some clear reasons for that modernism was more than just what came from europe to the united states it's it's a transnational and it it spans the globe so there's ideas that are moving from europe to new york from south america to new york and vice versa and to japan and back bringing in an example of traditional japanese architecture and showing how that was meaningful was was daring actually and also profound in its implications that this anglo-centric view of history is really fraught in so many ways shofuso looks to what is called showing architecture what becomes known as the classic japanese residential style but adapted to the context of new york the museum of modern art it was actually the most popular exhibition at the museum of modern art up until that point in time and for many years to come a quarter of a million people visited that house and you know took away a direct experience of classical japanese architecture americans loved it americans you know who had been at war with the japanese came out and were fascinated by this different way of living and it was really an idea of how one begins to rebuild the connections between american culture and japanese culture after this white hop period of world war ii and all the destruction and so this is just eight years after the end of the war when these groups are getting together and thinking about this way to build this bridge through architecture [Music] antonin and noemi raymond worked for frank lloyd wright in the 19 teens they made the decision early in 1921 to establish themselves independently for the next 18 years they worked with really astounding success in japan the whole relationship between naomi raymond antonin raymond and the core staff including george nakashima and minza yoshimura i think is a very interesting one i think it really becomes a family of sorts and they experience this whole aspect of working together being connected to the land appreciating art and having a holistic view as the basis of this creative process [Music] when the museum of modern art reached out to antonin raymond and no amy raymond and they were having conversations about the third iteration in a series of a house in the garden antonin had suggested a team of people that included junzo yoshimura as well as some other architects that had worked with raymond or been close to him at some point in time the building in this case was done in japan in 1953. it was designed by junzo yoshimura shipped to the united states it was reassembled in the spring of 1954 with great care and the usual precautions yoshimura his experience in this country channels through raymond farm he actually lived on the farm for a while while he was building chapusso house [Music] to to think that he was actually here experiencing with my grandparents nature and the farm and the farm life was very very interesting to me it is becoming a more nationalistic era worldwide so it's a very complex period that he's experiencing but then at the same time able to visit these quaker farmhouses being able to experience shaker architecture and really finding a close connection to that actual craft [Music] when my father came to japan [Music] in 1934 he was he was curious about his japanese roots about the aesthetics that he sensed was there and he worked with with raymond on several projects and became very close friends with jonzo yoshimura and junzo um he knew a lot and had seen a lot of japanese architecture and he was he was delighted to have this japanese-american friend who didn't know about that he was curious about it and he took him to all kinds of temples and and they must have talked about the the aesthetics of architecture and and the way that it blended in with its landscaping and the structure that manifested the way that the building was used and the flexibility of the interior spaces and the openness to the exterior spaces and i think that dad realized that and i probably through junzo's introduction in instruction that this was this is kind of the epitome of japanese architecture [Music] junso just knew how to get into the mindset of japanese classical architecture but also to understand that he could do incredible modern architecture at the same time [Music] junzo brought alive these traditions and while moma was inclined to do something out of tradition he really brought it alive so it was obvious that he should be the one to design this house and so they commissioned him to do just that [Music] that presence in new york and the connections that he has through that really are the basis for a huge range of work the motel on the mountain the residence for nelson rockefeller the japan house which becomes known as the japan society of new york he becomes the emblem of japanese architecture or architects in the united states through this increasingly broad range of work [Music] once the japanese exhibition house closed at moma had been moved to philadelphia that also opened up an extraordinary period in junzo's work where he was not only doing work in japan he actually was getting to do work in the united states but for an architect to actually build outside of their own country even in the post-world war ii era that's fairly rare [Music] i owe so much to junzo and his deep understanding of the japanese psyche and culture he felt too my yearning to understand it and took me in hand he knew so well the elegance and power of simplicity the beauty of proper materials in building the delicacy of unfinished wood the traditional and modern creative proportions where the error of a fraction of an inch can make the design fail absolutely he knew these things well in both the time-honored japanese design and in the free modern concepts and he passed them on to me the idea that a house is a roof is not an unusual one there are two decisive elements the structural cage below and the roof above one expressing the characteristic sense of construction the other the sense of shelter both elements are required to make a home into a house [Music] antonino amy had 18 years to work in japan before the outbreak of world war ii by the time they do the tokyo golf club in the 1930s it's very cutting edge modern architecture built of concrete beautiful indoor outdoor spaces but equally importantly interior spaces with furniture tables mosaic tile work and other elements all designed by noemi by antonin and kind of as a seamless whole and so it created an entirely new vocabulary of architectural thinking within the raymond's work seeing the way my grandfather worked on the engineering of the trusses in the buildings whether it was in 1920s or much later you see the influence of the japanese craft it was always form function angle color shape for a building or a roof line or a new piece of furniture and so we were able to hear that and understand that that was important [Music] there was this incredible creative collaboration between noemie and antonin well she was not an architect she was a designer of spaces she was a designer of furniture she was intensive in how she looked at and explored the world you know she had an eye for detail and for color and for engaging with the world around her which came out of her training as an artist in new york city throughout my career i've always gone back to to how my grandmother looked at things with her colors she would take colors from nature and you think oh it's going to be browns and tans and soft colors but then shoes throw in the orange and the bright purple and the blues because when you go into nature in wildflowers there are those bright exciting colors and i've kept that in my own work [Music] the house that they purchased was first built in 1738 and it was added to over the years particularly in the 1850s but there is fabric here that gets to the early history of europeans particularly english quakers in the philadelphia region seeing the the way that he took a quaker farmhouse it kept the craft of the building but then added the lovely japanese influences for this farmhouse and it's a wonderful one because it it kept the best of both worlds and joined them together [Music] in japan traditional japanese farm houses were incredibly rich source of inspiration to the raymonds here in new hope they found an analog in the quaker farm houses so you get them exploring not only the common ground between traditional japanese architecture and modern architecture but also exploring the common ground between traditional japanese architecture and the traditional farm architecture of the new hope area and that applicability to modern architecture it was a place of working and living and at the center of this house was this wonderful dining table where they brought together people who were in the area for thoughtful discussion and engagement around meals when we were kids the dinner table was very important it was the most important part of the day my grandfather always had his spot at the end he would start to tell stories of his childhood because he loved talking about the farm where he grew up and he would laugh so hard the tears would be coming down and streaming down his face and he couldn't get the joke of the story out [Music] the beam suggests the tree and the tree suggests the beam nature and art are thus united reciprocally the war broke out and we were incarcerated in uh i think it was march of 1942 we went to minnidoka on the idaho desert one of the good things that came out of that incarceration was that my father and this japanese carpenter who was trained in the in japan were together given the job of trying to make the barracks more livable the wind and the sand came in and dad there took some of his blueprints and plastered them on the wall to keep the wind out and he was very happy to work alongside this japanese carpenter whose name was gentaro hikogawa and he learned how to use japanese tools he learned more thoroughly how to do japanese joinery and he also learned how to work with found materials my father's professor from mit i think he was the head of the architecture department found out that we had been incarcerated and uh he also found out that noemie and anton had left tokyo and were living a new hope so he asked them if they could possibly sponsor us to petition to get us out of the camp because he didn't think that was right and thankfully knowing and antonin sponsored us and we were able to leave the camp much earlier than most of our relatives who were there uh we came in 1943 and uh dad was not allowed to work on any of the architectural projects because there were government projects but he antonin annoyed me insisted that they needed someone to help with chicken farming so that's that's what he did when we came to rain farm [Music] it was until later that i realized that my grandmother had helped release george and his family from the internment camps i was really proud of that to hear that and i imagine it wasn't easy [Music] the nakashimas live on the raymond farm for about a year nakashima is able to begin a studio here at the raymond farm that grows into the george nakashima studios over on aquatong road when we first came to new hope it was a way to get out of camp of course but when he found out that the name of the community was new hope it was it had a special significance for him he realized i think from his training in the raymond office how important kimon was that the orientation of the buildings in relationship to the sun was was really important so he that's why he fell in love with the site because it's a south-facing slope i believe my grandfather really picked his his locations and his buildings for this the vista and the way that the slope runs down [Music] the most intriguing thing when people come here is they come to the front and it's a traditional farmhouse but they walk through the door and you your breath is taken away [Music] dad liked to take long walks so he must have walked all the way down here to on this site on aquatong and thought it was a really nice site because it's a south-facing slope and he found the owner of the property who was a farmer and convinced the farmer that my father would work off three acres of property in exchange for the land the owner agreed and we lived in an old army tent for almost a year while dad started building the buildings and he built the shop first because he knew he had to have a place to work and to make money [Music] and the shop was first a place where he could make furniture and he was the only person making furniture at that time the family lived and it was also the showroom so talk about multi-purpose spaces uh in this case built out of getting a new start so built out of frugality [Music] we had an old car and he'd go along by the side of the road and collect rocks he'd get out and throw it in the back of the car and then he'd drive home and put it in the wall and i remember i was only five or six at the time but he says okay i need a stone this size for the wall go get one so you know i was the assistant uh mason at that time over the years george was able to build a new building anytime he needed space to do something they needed to expand the the shops so they had a finishing department a place to store wood by the late 50s he's getting more success he builds a wonderful studio called the canoid studio it sits on the land in some ways like this this wonderful primitive animal you know standing on the landscape with two sturdy arms reaching out to the landscape and pressing this wonderful window with a sliding door out into the treetops but it's made of concrete and it's all about the roof well a lot of japanese architecture is all about the roof so even though it looks incredibly modern it's a thin concrete shell structure it also has a deep resonance with certain japanese traditions you can see where artists and architects in the modern era are improvising a bit with those traditions and are more freely rendering them shoji are really great at diffusing light at modulating light and the modulation of light in architecture is one of the the central ways of bringing art into architecture you know along with proportion the beauty of construction all of these are values that the raymonds nakashimas and yoshimura's embraced in their way a house is a roof and so the thickness of the eaves sometimes is exaggerated to produce an illusion of greater weight and density stimulating the sense of shelter my father was more interested in engineering and building than he was in the bauhaus that was reinforced by his experience i mean he literally had to be hands-on when he was working with the carpenters at the raymond office that's when he switched to furniture he said well furniture is is the same as architecture it's just a smaller scale so he felt that was a good translation [Music] he could be in control of the entire process of design and building something from the beginning to the end and that's why he went into furniture instead of architecture [Music] it's the engineering discipline uh that's at the heart of it but it's also that plus the respect for natural forms of respect for the material itself which comes from the japanese aesthetic and the idea of kodama the spirit of the wood [Music] this is a very rich environment to work in where there's almost a spiritual dimension to this landscape being in the presence of this landscape and that you could draw energy out of that and george did i think he asked that of the people he worked with not to be devotees but to recognize that working in an environment of this gives you something as an artist a desk is called a showing in japanese and a house containing showing is called a showing zukori which means literally the desk way of building showing architecture really develops in the kojoein historically and one of the key elements is the showing which is the study space for the abbot to read his scriptures [Music] [Music] [Music] um a certain seclusion is essential to the enjoyment of delicate and subtle effects [Music] space light air openness of plan and lightness of appearance are essential to the conception of a house while it appears in some ways and has taken the guise of a house it is really a machine for seeing the function of how light comes in how you sit really does become central to this not simply as a style of elements but how do you appreciate the garden the sound of the breezes the sound of the water really experiencing whether it's cold or hot and gets to the core of what this tradition of domestic architecture is all about [Music] [Music] um [Music] one of the really special things about shafusso is how it grounds japanese history and philadelphia history together here in philadelphia at this very same location there's been a continuous japanese presence since 1876 one of the most beautiful things about shofuso is that it's a living site it's a living structure the people who work in the gardens the the gardeners who put their hand to the garden become authors and designers of the garden as well [Music] space light air [Music] the abode of fancy the abode of vacancy the abode of the unsymmetrical you know when we look at these sites of shofuso the raymond farm and the nakshima studio i think they're very special spaces of living working art all coming together that's lived it's experienced and the artwork itself is living this kind of agrarian lifestyle is part of being an artist that you live close to the land you live close to the to nature and that becomes an important part of your aesthetic and and your way of being i feel very um privileged to be able to say that we preserved the property and we're working on creating a raymond farm center throughout history here great artists have come through they've shared their ideas and i think we can continue this people who come together and come up with new ideas together through that kind of friendship have long lasting effects shafuso is here 60 some years later after being in new york and we still have an impact on the world and that collaboration in the 1950s among george nakashima antonin and noemi raymond and johnson yoshimura helped create that mid-century design aesthetic that is still significant and has an important influence around [Music] m japanese classical architecture in one of its most important ways is really about connecting the individual within a house and looking at the garden beyond so it's about setting up a way of looking at the world around you and just being very profound and deep and expansive in how you open up the nuances of that through the materials you choose as an architect through the design of the garden by the garden master you know by the way that the person lives in the house and how they create a moment for a guest and so when i think about shofuso it brings centuries of exploration of of how to engage with the world around and this incredible shared legacy between the raymonds yoshimura and the nakashimas and how there's so many ways of connecting with it today [Music] [Music] right so you

Channel: Japan America Society of Greater Philadelphia

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Id: ba2drsok3EM

Length: 35min 56sec (2156 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 20 2020