The Alvar Aalto Academy and the MFA last night brought us Hiroshi Naito to speak at the Atheneum in Helsinki about some of his projects. For me it was the first time I saw his work and it was a real revelation. He produces wonderful buildings generated principally from a connecting detail usually a beautifully crafted timber joint which informs the whole project. This was the key issue in his lecture that of the Japanese wooden tradition and how it translates into his work now through a kind of moving back and forth between scales. The timber detail informs the whole building concept which feeds back to the detail and so on. This is a tradition also inherited in Finnish Architecture he suggested. His projects principally seem to be about the roof as shelter, walls usually being secondary elements with a strong sense of local tradition infused into the project from whichever canton the buiding is in. He was introduced as a critcal regionalist a label he was happy with and he hinted at a quite anti-global moral stance which sat with a very romantic take on the landscape and buildings in general. A belief in Architectures world changing power which many Architects now may feel inside but be ashamed to articulate. Like good architecture lectures should be it was truly thought provoking and inspiring.
Hiroshi Naito -Innerscape Exhibition currently at the MFA Helsinki 30.11.2005 - 30.1.2006 (with published catalogue)
JA published a book on him (JA46 : hiroshi naito) photo above from JA website
Hiroshi Naito - Archinform - Detail - AR