What the crystal reveals or makes visible is the hidden ground of time, that is, its differentiation into two flows, that of presents which pass and that of pasts which are preserved.
Gilles Deleuze.’Cinema 2: The Time Image‘. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. 1989. p98
In the chapter ‘Breaking Down Particles’ Kuma defines ‘particlisation’ as a predetermined strategy of architecture where ‘an object remains an object’ yet its ‘surface becomes interactive’. Devising an architectural method from which to avoid the ‘objectification’ of buildings, Kuma rejects window openings, opting to ‘dissolve’ the architectural objects thingness, through which he (dis)integrates the boundaries of the building, shedding the ‘control exercised through enclosures’, to create a shelter that simultaneously renders a connection to its environment through its very surface. Not only does Kuma create a new relationship between architecture and its environment but a ‘dual condition’, which he defines as ‘the relativisation of matter’, to capture what he describes as an ‘infinitely continuous environment…between being and representation, between its essential heaviness and its apparent lightness, between its opaque attribute and its actual transparency…an oscillation between matter and empty air, reality and fiction’. [1]
Kuma’s architectural spaces play with what he terms ‘the phenomenon of introspection’, through which, he reignites the (in)dependent nature of the mind, encouraging it to explore and wonder, in order to perceive the relationship between internal and external spaces, generated when the occupant of his spaces experiences, what he defines as an ‘alternation’ between themselves and his architectural spaces.[2]
A multiplicity of flickers
unite and disperse
caught within cuts
Crystalline Thinking 2016, ‘Home-lab’[3] site-reflective installation, cut-crystal vases and curtain header tape
- Momentarily capture infinite reflections within material form
- Visual and auditory formations.
Plural View 2016, giant kaleidoscope made from industrial pipe and cut crystal vase.
[1] Kengo Kuma. ‘Anti-object: The Dissolution and Disintegration of Architecture’. AA Publications. 2008. p98-120
[2] IBID., p29
[3] Nick Simpson. ‘Home-lab’. Online Source: http://www.general-practice.net/homelab.php. 2016. Source cited: 8th May 2016
Home-lab is curated by Simpson, which he defines as a ‘platform for experimental work housed in domestic settings’.