Nest or Cave?_by Sou Fujimoto
| September 25th, 2009Below is a Reading Quote taken from “2G august 2009″, Image from internet.
The nest and the cave are both primal states of architecture, but in a sense these two are opposites.
For the person (or animal) living in it, a nest can be described as a hospitably arranged “functional place.” By contrast, a cave is there regardless of people. It is a place that occurs naturally irrespective of whether it is hospitable or in hospitable for a person to inhabit. Yet neither is it unsuitable as a place in which to live. In a cave there are various contours and hollows, as well as unexpected expansions and contractions. When people set foot in a cave, they rediscover how to inhabit these geographical features. These hollows seem like they can be slept in, that height seems good for eating, those nooks are slightly more private spaces, I could put this book here; in this way, they gradually begin to inhabit these geographical features. In other words, a cave is not functional but it is heuristic. Rather than a coercive functionalism, it is a stimulating place in which various activities are enabled. Each day, people will discover new usages for a place.
Thus, the nest and the cave seem similar but are actually opposite concepts. A functional place made for people, and a place existing prior to people that is for people an “other” place. And because it is other, it is suffused with chances for unanticipated discoveries. Therefore, having called it a cave, its outer appearance does not have be like a cave, but rather the quality of a cave itself might be imagined as a pure form that we could call a transparent cave.
Rather than nests, I think that in future architecture should comprise cave-like places. I think that would be richer. The problem is that a cave itself is a naturally occuring topography that provides people with rich discoveries of otherness. Is an “artificial cave” possible in “architecture made by people”? The big question is whether something that is without purpose, or something that exceeds purpose, can be made intentionally.
It is precisely an artificial, transparent cave that indicates the possibilities for future arhitecture.
Here is THE book that talks about his design/theory by himself.(maybe out of order)