WHERE ARCHITECTS LIVE - Part 3

This is part 3 of a -post series. See previous posts here: 1, 2

The space of Shigeru Ban, Pritzker Prize recipient, was a Zen-nature experience concealed in geometry and minimalism. I turned around a large wall and found myself in an open space with vivid metaphors. Ban lives in the quiet, wooded Hanegi Forest complex of Tokyo. Oval platforms, filled with moving images from his surroundings, the complex and life in the city, played seamlessly on them. Above each was a cutout in the same shape and size, reflecting the complex's oval centre - with trees and open-to-sky aspect. "Like all my architecture projects its origins lie in its location, and it's based on ad hoc solutions that couldn't be used elsewhere", he says. "The key issue was not to cut down trees".
At the end of the space is a curved room, with a video of his manifesto. Ban's style of architecture, which preserves rather than modifies or eliminates, is presented by his self-awarness and passion towards simplicity: "I do what makes me feel free, what comes naturally, nothing more".

I then strolled into Marcio Kogan's space. Kogan lives in Sao Paulo. His installation was all about the big city and the little things inside his home. Blue-sky balconies looking down onto the "ugly, violent, polluted" yet "mysterious, full of energy" city; wide windows with louvres that reveal a private link to the outside world; memorabilia from all over that reflect the tastes and affinities of a man who sees everyday contrasts as integral to his work.
This is part 3 of a 4-post series. See the next post here.