WINDOW RESEARCH INSTITUTE

Of Homes and Windows in the 20th Century: In Conversation with Ken Tadashi Oshima, the Curator of Living Modernity: Experiments in Housing, 1920s–1970s

…ded beyond individual houses. Photography and exhibitions helped to communicate what modern living could be and promoted the underlying desi…

Issue 14: A Window for Standing Still—Fieldoffice Architects, Paomagudao Park

This issue I’d like to introduce a park that I designed myself. Jiaoxi Yilan’s Paomagudao Park completed in 2021 was formerly th…

01│Antoni Gaudí: A “Sensible Architect”

Introduction The window is an extremely popular motif among architects. It would be natural to think that the possibilities for window desig…

Issue 13: Democracy Under Canopies (Fieldoffice Architects)

Democracy and freedom have now spread throughout Taiwan a place where …

“Shoei Yoh: A Journey of Light” Symposium Report

On September 7 2024 the symposium “Shoei Yoh: A Journey of Light” was held at the AIJ Hall (Architectural Institute of Japan Tokyo). Centere…

The Diversity of Windows in Kiyonori Kikutake’s Serizawa Literary Center (Serizawa Kojiro Memorial Museum)

Numazu Shizuoka—the birthplace of Kojiro Serizawa the author known for works such as Ningen no Unmei [The Fate of a Human]. Nestled in a pin…

A Culmination of Sutemi Horiguchi’s Aperture Designs: The Tokoname City Municipal Ceramics Research Institute (Tokoname Tounomori Research Institute)

The exhibition Explorations of Horiguchi Sutemi: Modernism Rikyu Garde…

The Windows of Tomoya Masuda’s Naruto Cultural Center: A Faintly Bright Louvered Space

The Naruto Cultural Center is a posthumous work by architect Tomoya Masuda. It is one of several buildings that the former Kyoto University …

The Windows of the Diffendorfer Memorial Hall and University Chapel at the International Christian University (ICU): Preserving, Passing On, And…

The International Christian University’s campus plan was originally designed by W. M. Vories & Co. and later developed by Antonin Raymon…

A Conversation with Silke Langenberg

Silke Langenberg Full Professor for Construction Heritage and Preservation in the Department of Architecture at ETH Zurich has been conducti…

Issue 12: A Small Church for the Indigenous (Taitung)

It’s said that Christians now constitute around 7% of Taiwan’s population a rather high proportion compared to Japan’s sta…

A window with a memory

…Mirrors and Windows: American Photography Since 1960 talks about how a window open to the outside world is a metaphor for photography. Furth…

Windows: Overlapping and passing through

Why wasn’t it a window? I organized an exhibition called Medium and Dimension: Liminal and wrote a text for the exhibition catalogue entitle…

The Windows of Hiroshi Hara’s Awazu House: Spaces of Light Illuminating the Darkness

…sis of Painting + Sculpture + Photography + Design + Architecture + Music] exhibition (planned by Yoshiaki Tono) held in 1966 at Matsuya Gin…

Issue 11: Joined Somewhere, Connected Throughout—Chen Chi-Kwan, Tunghai University Methodist Hall

The campus of Taiwan’s first private university Tunghai University stretches across the suburbs of Taichung a city in the center-west …

A Home that Draws in Breezes from All Directions: The Fumiko Hayashi House

… shashin ruiju [Architectural Photography Collection] 9 no. 14 (1935–1940); “Wayō zentei shū” [Collection of Japanese- and Western-style fro…

Gerrit Rietveld – A sense of space

Gerrit Rietveld (1888-1964) is perhaps Holland’s best-known architect. His Schröder House in Utrecht from 1924 has achieved iconic status. I…

Naruto Cultural Center

Virtual Tour

Completed after the architect’s passing this building is one of a cluster of works by Tomoya Masuda in the city of Naruto. Outwardly it exhi…

Chochikukyo

Virtual Tour

Located in the foothills of Mount Tennozan overlooking the headwaters of the Yodogawa River in Yamazaki Kyoto this residence is characterize…

Tokoname City Municipal Ceramics Research Institute (Tokoname Tounomori Research Institute)

Virtual Tour

The gradated purple mosaic exterior tiles are a surprising sight as one approaches this building which is tucked away on a small hill remove…

Serizawa Literary Center (Serizawa Kojiro Memorial Museum)

Virtual Tour

Nestled within a coastal pine grove this building characterized by its four tower-like cores was built at the height of the Metabolist movem…

Summer House in Karuizawa

Virtual Tour

Relocated to Karuizawa Taliesin in 1986 this distinctive butterfly-roofed building was originally designed as a summer house and studio base…

ICU Diffendorfer Memorial Hall / ICU Chapel

Virtual Tour

The ICU Diffendorfer Memorial Hall has continuous windows with frames made of cast aluminum. The completion drawings reveal their intricate …

Aichi University of the Arts Lecture Building

Virtual Tour

This building extends 110 meters in the north-south direction establishing a strong axis at the heart of the campus. In the east-west direct…

Fumiko Hayashi Residence

Virtual Tour

Built as two separate structures to comply with wartime restrictions that limited new residential constructions to a maximum floor area of 3…

Migishi Atelier

Virtual Tour

This early work of Japanese wooden modernist architecture was built for the painter couple Kotaro and Setsuko Migishi. Despite undergoing mu…

The Prince Karuizawa

Virtual Tour

This pondside hotel consists of a 126-meter-long arced accommodation wing and a public wing. Each guest room features a large wall-to-wall p…

The Windows of the Komai House by W. M. Vories & Co.

The soon-to-be 100-year-old Komai House now called the Taku & Shizue Komai Museum stands along a canal path in Kitashirakawa a suburban …

A Conversation with François Charbonnet (Made in)

Made in is a highly acclaimed architecture firm that was founded in Geneva Switzerland in 2003. François Charbonnet one of its co-principals…

Windows of the Aichi University of the Artsby Junzo Yoshimura and Akio Okumura:The Concrete Science of Living with Nature

The Aichi University of the Arts was built to the designs of Junzo Yoshimura and Akio Okumura in 1966. Situated in the forested hills of Nag…

Issue 10: The Billowing School—Chen Ren-He, Wave Building, San Sin High School of Commerce and Home Economics (Kaohsiung)

When talking about the first generation of post-war Taiwanese architects there are famous individuals such as Wang Da-Hong who studied under…

Issue 9: The Windy County Office—Yilan County Hall (Atelier Zo)

While this column has primarily introduced the windows of unnamed buildings in Taiwan there are a number of works of modern and contemporary…

Komai House

Virtual Tour

This Spanish Mission-style house was designed with an emphasis on healthy living. It is characterized by red roofing tiles cream-colored wal…

KATONO House

Virtual Tour

Located on the outskirts of Sapporo this single-story modernist building constructed with weathering steel bricks and other locally sourced …

Alvar AaltoRoom in TKY 2

This is a room in a student dormitory at Aalto University (formerly the Helsinki University of Technology) which is located in a suburb of H…

Alvar Aalto Living room of Mäntylä

This is the living room of a house designed for a senior engineer at the Tampella factory in Inkeroinen an area that thrived on the wood ind…

Gesellius, Lindgren, Saarinen’s Showcase windows of the Pohjola Insurance Building

This insurance company building located on a corner lot along Aleksanterinkatu in central Helsinki was designed by the national romanticist …

Issue 8: The Town of Floating Pigeon Lofts

Houses stand there dotting the farmland. Small huts sit above them in the sky. It’s a bit of a strange sight but one that you’ll…

Transition of Kikugetsutei, Equipment In Between

This booklet contains the findings of the Waseda University Norihito Nakatani Seminarʼs Windowology research titled “Study on Hashirama-Soch…

Thinking About Architecture from Their Windows

This book presents findings from the Tohoku University Taro Igarashi Laboratoryʼs Windowology research themed on “Window History” (2007–2009…

The Experimental Design of the KATONO House in Sapporo

Known as an experimental work of modern architecture tailored for Hokkaido’s climate the KATONO House (Personal Residence) in Sapporo design…

A Conversation with Christine Binswanger, Raúl Mera (Herzog & de Meuron)

Herzog & de Meuron the Basel-based architectural duo founded their firm in 1978 after studying architecture at ETH Zurich. They have sin…

Kay FiskerStorefront at Stefansgård

The apartment building in Copenhagen. Due to restrictions placed on the use of steel during World War II a steel lintel could not be used. K…

Kunié Sugiura – My Window

A window is a structure that lets light into a room and provides a view of the outside world but when windows appear in photographs they are…

Between Hatakeyama and Sugiura

… and Windows – American Photography since 1960” exhibition in person at the MoMA (the one Hatakeyama had seen through catalog as a col…

Issue 7: The Slate Village Down the Mountains: Pingtung

There are now around 580000 native Taiwanese (the term used in Chinese. In Japan it seems the term “indigenous” is often used) r…

The Divine Invasion: Aldo Rossi’s Windows without Glass

When we face the presence of towering walls massive mountains or solid…

Screen Time

Screens are everywhere: stadiums stations billboards buildings refrigerators thermostats on our wrists and in our hands. As a physical inter…