Tsuboniwa
Tsuboniwa is a small secret garden inside of a small secret courtyard of Montpellier.
We have decided to explore the meaning of Ukiyo so well described in the briefing of the competition. The art of capture the eternal moment as well as the plenitude of the floating world has always been expressed in the relation of Culture and Nature. Following this with this notion Tsuboniwa is the Japanese name for the small open inner gardens which began as a successful adaptation to the architectural styles in the Heian Period. It was the key element to introduce at the same time the physical pleasure and the symbolic meaning. This double condition of the physical and spiritual world is what we intend to create with this small project.
We understand experience as being crucial to Architecture doesn’t matter its function, durability, size or form. So this proposal is created by thin wooden panels that explore a dialectic of meanings such as 'Inside/Outside', 'Ephemeral/Eternal’, ‘Small Scale /Big Scale' trough the corporal and spiritual experience of it.
Some of the given courtyards have plants inside although we cannot call them gardens while they seem very small in relation with the existing spaces around so this proposal consists in a small structure able to adapt to different courtyards and put them in value by creating a small inner space where we want to collect all the existing vegetation and add some more from the spaces around, bringing the outside to the inside.
The used panels don’t have enough stability to be stand as a single element, nevertheless by creating a unity of three panel – the triangle - we have a strong element that can expand infinitely. Therefore, we propose to assembly them so as to create a symbolic occidental typology using the vernacular panels normally found in the traditional cultures. The intention is to discover the UKIYO atmosphere always so present in the Japanese small inner gardens.
An overlapping of references in a coherent way as to give a new sensitive experience to the visitors: you arrive to the existing courtyard and you can see a doubtful scale in relation with Tsuboniwa. You see some vegetation coming out in the center, claiming to your presence while you find yourself in another doubtful situation, inside of the courtyard, outside of the pavilion. Eventually you decide to go inside trough the small openings where you need to curve yourself and feel the relation between your own body and the body of the Architecture. The roughness of the thin wood panels asks for your tactile experience, touching it. While walking in this sequence of doors you always see the sky above and the enfilade focusing a specific detail, a fragment of the existing courtyard. After the ritual of passing this sequence of the openings almost like if it was a labyrinth, you finally discover an even smaller opening that reduces again the scale and offers such a different atmosphere, full of plants. And the shadows, and the light, and smell. And the sky and the people. Always the people as the first scene while the existing courtyard appears as the background. The inner garden inside of the inner courtyard. Here, we truly want to suspend the time and offer this eternal moment by overlapping the physical and the spiritual experience.
