Sky Russell / fall 2019 HAA 92R Design Speculations seminar
In the weaver's home, hand-dyed textiles hang, translucent, over wood-frame windows. Tracks remain in the floors in places where she has removed shōji doors‒ she likes the space to be open. In her sitting room is a single seat‒ the weaver lives alone. The seat faces west, toward the river and the mountains beyond. In the entryway is a giant, wooden loom.
The charcoal craftsman's home is made of his collection‒ of tools, of clothing lines, of timber and wagons,of boxes and sheet metal and buckets. His entryway is his sitting room. He seldom closes his doors. He looks out onto his garden and the opposite hillside.
The petite old woman at the top of the hill invited me in as I was just passing by. We sat in the entrance of her home, where I didn't even have to take off my shoes. Her friend came over, in her apron and muddy work boots. We all sat to have a cup of tea.
From an architect's perspective, in rural Tenryu Village, Nagano prefecture, Japan, the harmonious, interdependent, symbiotic relationship between house and occupant is striking. Here, in an environment where the vernacular dominates and people live with and within their rich, natural surroundings, the domestic environment is made by its occupancy. The architecture is marked by‒defined by‒ the tracery of daily life left by inhabitants. Against the popularized pristine photography of just-finished buildings where human traces are erased, this series of representations celebrates occupancy as an essential element of architecture.
