WINDOW RESEARCH INSTITUTE

Shoei Yoh: A Journey of Light

Architect Shoei Yoh began his creative career as an interior designer in the 1970s. In 2019, he donated materials from his professional archive to Kyushu University, where they are currently being cataloged into the Kyushu University Shoei Yoh Archive. A selection of Yoh’s materials was also added to the collection of the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) following its 2013 exhibition Archaeology of the Digital. The ambitious architect, whose pioneering works in wood and digital design have been gaining renewed appreciation, sought to create designs that express “light as a natural phenomenon”. This seven-part essay series written by researchers in Japan and Canada delves into Yoh’s archival materials to contemplate the light that the architect aimed to capture.

Masaaki Iwamoto

Light Matters

Light, although intangible, stands as a fundamental constituent of architecture. Thomas Schielke delves into the intricate methodologies embraced by modern and contemporary architects in harnessing the power of light.

Thomas Schielke

Danish Architects Serial Interviews

On the occasion of the “Windowology: New Architectural Views from Japan” currently being held in Copenhagen, we conducted a series of interviews with four Danish architects in cooperation with the VILLUM Window Collection, the venue for the exhibition.

Window Research Institute

Windows of Japanese Modernist Architecture

Window Research Institute

Index of Window Sounds and Movements

For this project, we sought to extract and observe the sounds and movements associated with the opening and closing of windows, in order to shed more light on how we perceive a "window" through our ears and eyes. A Glossary of Window Sounds and Movements is the first research project of "Windows Products Inside," carried out as a collaboration between the Window Research Institute and product designer Yoh Komiyama, with video imagery created by Tomohiro Okazaki.

Yoh Komiyama

Product Designer

Study on Hashirama-Sochi; Equipment In Between

The term hashirama-sochi (intercolumnar device), describes the architectural elements that occupy the gaps between columns in Japanese architecture.
It is conceptually analogous to the window. Nakatani Seminar produces short films that documents how these devices transition between different states (e.g. open/closed, day/night, etc.).

Norihito Nakatani Seminar

Waseda University

Window Terminology à la Carte

Linguist Yasunari Ueda looks into the origins of words that mean “window” from around the world to explore the process through which the concepts of the word have expanded over the ages.

Yasunari Ueda

Linguist

Window Behaviorology on Nordic Architecture

Window Behaviorology on Nordic Architecture

At the beginning of the 20th century, during a transitional period when architecture, which had hitherto been part of an ethnographic association, was being incorporated into an industrial social association, Nordic architects, unable to abandon their ethnographic nature in the midst of conflicts and friction between those two associations, took on the waves of industrialization and created mystical hybrids. The Tsukamoto Yoshiharu Lab. of the Tokyo Institute of Technology analyzes the windows of architectural masterpieces in Sweden, Finland, and Denmark.

Yoshiharu Tsukamoto Lab.

Tokyo Institute of Technology

Aldo Rossi’s Window

Windows of Aldo Rossi

Yuji Katagiri

Bridging Windows

Bridging Windows

This series of essays serves to relay contemporary artists’ engagement with and
relationship to windows, as well as the narratives inspired by them, to curators who
endeavor to explore and convey the appeal of their works. From windows that are
associated with the memories of a place, to things that are projected in windows and
memories—what can we come to observe through the cumulative overlay of such
windows?　Drawing: Kappabashi Kamekichi

Chic, the Yutaka Kikutake Gallery magazine

Vague Focal Space at the Window

Vague Focal Space at the Window

A window is a boundary that also opens out to both urbanscapes and natural landscapes. However, simply building an opening into a building’s wall is not the end of the story. The question that arises now is: What kind of relationship between the inside and the outside does this boundary develop? By examining both old and new buildings as examples, the window space will be explored.

Takahiro Ohi

Madosoto: Outside Scenery

Madosoto, Outside Scenery

Most often, we remember a famous building’s interior and exterior, but surprisingly, we rarely remember what we see when looking out a window from within. When, in fact, we see not only the building itself but also the scenery from it. We look out the window spontaneously, even if the scenery outside is not a grand natural landscape, a magnificent garden, or a dynamic urban nightscape.

Windowology 10th Anniversary Exhibition & Symposium

Articles relevant to the exhibition of Windowology 10th Anniversary Exhibition: The World Through the Window and the symposium titled the Windowology International Conference: Windows Represent Civilization and Culture.

Window Research Institute

Windows and Photography

Windows and Photography

Photographer Takashi Homma introduces some compelling windows spliced between his own photos and text.

Takashi Homma

Photographer

A Bookcase like a Small Building

This project started when WRI commissioned o+h, the young wife-and-husband team of architects Maki Onishi and Yuki Hyakuda, to design a bookcase for us. This is a series of entries that will be documenting the making of the bookcase until its completion.

Maki Onishi + Yuki Hyakuda / o+h

Architect

Colors of Windows

Clear air, born from the trees, the land. White steam that murmurs from a kitchen. Plants that sprout from the earth, and flowers floating in a vase. The pigments in the sky at sunset, primary colors in an LCD TV. Human lives and nature are tethered at the window, where a multitude of colors merge and mingle. From Korea, Japan, India, Thailand, and one realm of the imagination–––––these are multicolored stories about windows written and painted by Korean watercolor artist Byun Young Geun.

Byun Young Geun

Watercolor Artist

Contemporary Taiwan through a Window

After his experience on a journey through villages and folk houses in 11 Asian and Middle Eastern countries, Ryuki Taguma now lives in Yilan, located in northeast Taiwan, while practicing architectural design. In this series, Taguma will pursue the many faces of Taiwan as it exists today as seen through windows.

Ryuki Taguma

Fieldoffice Architects

Exhibition Report: The 16th International Architecture Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia 2018

Naomi Shibata

Editor

Fenestration Observations

Fenestration Observations is a series of window disquisitions by Matthew Fargo. In it, the translator of Akasegawa Genpei’s Hyperart:Thomasson probes the city for hidden and forgotten features of the fenestral landscape. Join him on his hunt for windows that, seen in a particular light—from a particular and tangential vantage—become accidental works of art.

Matthew Fargo

Translator

Japan Pavilion, The 15th International Architecture Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia 2016

“En: art of nexus” is the theme of the Japan Pavilion at the 15th International Architecture Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia 2016, one of the worldʼs largest modern architecture festivals. How are the exhibiting architects interpreting the theme? What are their ideas of the various forms of “windows” in architecture? WRI interviewed the architects and the venue designer by taking actual works as examples.

Jean Prouvé’s Windows

Jean Prouvé was originally a metalworker by trade, but he became a leading modernist architect himself through collaborating with progressive architects such as Le Corbusier. In this article series, structural engineer Shin Yokoo, who has been researching Prouvéʼs achievements from both an engineering and design perspective, sheds light on the architectʼs experimental work with windows.

Shin Yokoo

Structural engineer

Open Spatial Interfaces—A Record of 40 Years of Field Research

The world is home to many unique architectural cultures. Architect Koji Yagi shares personal accounts from the field research he conducted in a variety of these different cultural regions over a span of 40 years.

Koji Yagi

Architect

Photography was Born at the Window

A collection of essays exploring the origins of photography, highlighting the window's significance, realism pursuit, and early photographic representation paradoxes.

Francesco Zanot

Photography Critic ＆ Curator

Scandinavian Windows

Nahoko Wada, a specialist in the history of modern Japanese and Scandinavian residential architecture, introduces several different ways light may enter a space through an aperture of Scandinavian architecture.

Nahoko Wada

Architectural Historian

Slow Food and Windows

In this series, Tomoki Shoda traces the relationships between the taste of traditional foods registered with Slow Food and the window as an architectural element that utilizes the natural environment around us.

Tomoki Shoda

Researcher

Takashi Homma’s Conversations on Photography

Recordings of interview by Takashi Homma, who has speculated on the relationships between windows and photos.

Terunobu Fujimori’s One Hundred Windows

In this series, architectural historian and architect Terunobu Fujimori, who has traveled extensively to study buildings of various times and places, will be introducing a selection of notably intriguing windows found in historic buildings from all across Japan, one at a time.

Terunobu Fujimori

Architectural Historian, Architect

The 16th International Architecture Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia 2018

To commemorate the occasion of the 16th International Architecture Exhibition La Biennale di Venezia (May 26th-November 25th, 2018), WRI has caught up with architects and artists.

The Joys of Making Windows

Practical research project of making windows with digital fabrication technology
This work was conducted as part of YKK AP's Windowology research

Hiroto Kobayashi

Professor, Keio University Graduate School of Media and Governance

THE SAGA OF CONTINUOUS ARCHITECTURE

Associate Professor Yusuke Obuchi of the University of Tokyo is the foremost authority on digital fabrication research in Japan. He hosted this interview series with experts working with architecture and the latest technology.

Yusuke Obuchi

Associate Professor, University of Tokyo

Today/Yesterday

Today/Yesterday is a series of columns written by London-based artist Shizuka Yokomizo.  She weaves together photographs and text to show us what she observes through her windows as the everyday gently changes.

Shizuka Yokomizo

Artist

Traveling Asia through a Window

In 2015 Ryuki Taguma took a year off from school to travel around villages and folk houses in 11 countries in Asia and the Middle East, visiting countries from China to Israel.

Ryuki Taguma

Fieldoffice Architects

Window Behaviorology

Windows draw light, wind, and people, and they are focal points of everyday life.
Yoshiharu Tsukamoto Laboratory of the Tokyo Institute of Technology documented and analyzed the various behaviors that occur around windows in different countries.

Yoshiharu Tsukamoto Lab.

Tokyo Institute of Technology

Window Behaviorology in Switzerland

The Chair of Architectural Behaviorology at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETHZ), led by architect Momoyo Kaijima, conducted a series of interviews with architects based in Switzerland on their approaches to designing windows.

The Chair of Architectural Behaviorology led by Professor Momoyo Kaijima

ETH Zurich

Window Column from London

Nanami Kawashima, an architect, living in London, deciphers the history and culture of London by focusing on the windows of buildings.

Nanami Kawashima

Architect

Window Column from Paris

Architect Raybun Funaki, who is involved in many projects as Co-Founder of TeePeeArchitects, talks about French windows from his unique perspective.

Raybun Funaki

TeePee Architects

Window Moments

We present the movies of windows all around the world.

Window Research Institute

Window Sociology

Five sociologists — Takashi Machimura, Hideo Hama, Yutaka Harada, Rina Yamamoto and Junji Nishikawa — discuss the relationship between society and windows through the diverse themes of "principle", "history", "change", "representation" and "application".

Window Workology

This series examined windows that "work" alongside people by controlling natural elements such as light, wind, and steam in manual workplaces in Japan.

Yoshiharu Tsukamoto Lab.

Tokyo Institute of Technology

Windows in Art

Art critic Ossian Ward reconsiders art from Renaissance painting to contemporary art, using the windows as clues.

Ossian Ward

Art Critic

Windows in Chinese Architecture

Koji Ichikawa, a specialist in modern Chinese architectural history, delves into the yet underexplored window culture of China, which is home to a unique tradition of architecture distinct from that of both Japan and the West.

Kouji Ichikawa

Assistant Professor, Tohoku University

Windows in Japanese Tea Rooms

Chashitsu or the Japanese tea room was a unique architecture that was built without any expressive ornaments at a time when rich ornamentation was a general trend in architecture. This serial article focuses on and discusses characteristics of tea room windows that brought about dramatic changes in Japanese architecture.

Rei Mitsui

Architect