OKOSHI-EZU

Moon­light­ing is not a new thing in the archi­tec­ture pro­fes­sion. Often side projects and after hours work is sought as a way of exper­i­ment­ing and design­ing out­side of the con­straints of
con­ven­tional prac­tice, which, bur­dened with
unad­ven­tur­ous clients and ham­strung by
reg­u­la­tory con­trol, lacks the shim­mer­ing qual­ity of a good non-profit job.

It’s more than that though. Side projects occa­sion­ally open the designer’s eyes to some­thing new — some­thing that they may not have stum­bled upon oth­er­wise and this helps to enliven their day-to-day prac­tice. Such was the sit­u­a­tion when Andrew Bar­rie, now Pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­sity of Auckland’s National Insti­tute of Cre­ative Arts and Indus­tries, asked if I would join a team of stu­dents and recent grad­u­ates to build paper mod­els called “okoshi-ezu” for an exhi­bi­tion of Japan­ese archi­tec­ture. That was two years ago and since then I have become obsessed with what paper is capa­ble of.

Okoshi-ezu are an ancient and almost
for­got­ten form of Japan­ese paper
archi­tec­tural model, in which con­struc­tion infor­ma­tion is com­mu­ni­cated to the crafts­man through a model which folds flat.

These mod­els can be thought of as a sort of tra­di­tional pop-up, being erected and held together using an elab­o­rate sys­tem of tabs, hooks and inserts. Notes on the draw­ing indi­cate mate­ri­als, dimen­sions, and tex­tures. Their porta­bil­ity and leg­i­bil­ity to the lay­man are in stark con­trast to mod­ern day con­struc­tion documentation.

Okoshi-ezu, which appeared in16^th cen­tury Japan, were most often employed for the doc­u­men­ta­tion of tea­houses, a highly refined build­ing type which emerged at that time. More ordi­nary con­struc­tion was so sys­tem­a­tised and car­pen­ters so well trained that most build­ings could be con­structed just from a sim­ple plan. Built for the rul­ing elite, how­ever, tea­houses were care­fully designed and cus­tom made, and record­ing such spe­cific design inten­tions required the devel­op­ment of a new draw­ing type – the okoshi-ezu. This method of doc­u­men­ta­tion speaks to the level of trust in the craftsman’s skill, but also to the type of build­ings that are gen­er­ated from it. Often these designs reflect a spa­tial com­plex­ity that is sub­tly resolved in seem­ingly sim­ple for­mal elements.

The man­u­fac­ture of an okoshi-ezu model is an exer­cise in decon­struc­tive origami. The build­ing design is ratio­nalised to its most char­ac­ter­is­tic fea­tures and then a spe­cific fold­ing method is designed to exploit the inher­ent geom­e­try of the build­ing. Once this fold­ing method has been designed, the model ele­ments are drawn to pro­vide for log­i­cal con­struc­tion of the model, com­plete with the tabs and slots which hold the model together. Com­plex ele­ments such as stair­cases, the bane of any model maker’s life, are designed to self-erect when the model is opened.  Assem­bly is also rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Japan­ese accep­tance of Yes and No together. It is just as impor­tant for an okoshi-ezu to fold into a recog­nis­able build­ing, as it is to fold flat. As such, when it comes time to pre­pare the model, each mode of oper­a­tion has to be con­sid­ered, with care being taken to avoid ele­vat­ing one at the expense of the other. The resul­tant object is bal­anced between the abstrac­tion of archi­tec­tural rep­re­sen­ta­tion and a phys­i­cal form of the building.

These mod­els are not only con­cerned with the rigour of con­struc­tion doc­u­men­ta­tion. They also offer an alter­na­tive way to approach archi­tec­tural mod­els and archi­tec­ture in gen­eral. West­ern archi­tec­tural mod­els are often cold, ster­ile and ubiq­ui­tously sta­tic – touch­ing them inevitably causes dam­age. Okoshi-ezu, in con­trast, are char­ac­terised by a child­like air of play­ful­ness in their assembly.

As if hark­ing back to our col­lec­tive
expe­ri­ence of pop-up books as chil­dren, the mod­els man­age to squeeze a grin from even the most battle-hardened practitioner.

The small set of these mod­els were shown in New Zealand and Japan as part of a trav­el­ling exhi­bi­tion on the famous Kumamoto Art­po­lis pro­gram. This exhi­bi­tion showed con­tem­po­rary archi­tec­ture in the Kumamoto pre­fec­ture by archi­tects such as Jun Aoki and Kazuo Shi­no­hara. The mix­ture of the tra­di­tional model mak­ing prac­tice and con­tem­po­rary build­ings is rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the jux­ta­po­si­tion of new and old that exists in Japan­ese cul­ture. The con­stant search for the new and the novel often char­ac­terises the West­ern view of Japan­ese archi­tec­tural prac­tice. It is, how­ever, tem­pered by a respect for the tra­di­tional. It is fit­ting then, that these mod­els present the con­tem­po­rary as a re-invention of the traditional.

With the help of a num­ber of model mak­ing enthu­si­asts, a much larger set of mod­els has been cre­ated for a ded­i­cated okoshi-ezu exhi­bi­tion in Aus­tralia and New Zealand. The new exhi­bi­tion presents the con­tem­po­rary work of such mas­ters as Toyo Ito, Tadao Ando and Kengo Kuma, along with the designs of a new gen­er­a­tion of Japan­ese Archi­tects. The exhi­bi­tion is in part a result of Pro­fes­sor Barrie’s time in Japan com­plet­ing his PhD and work­ing in Toyo Ito’s office. His con­nec­tion to that scene has allowed for an influx of Japanese-flavoured archi­tec­tural treats in the form of vis­its from Shigeru Ban, Mark Dytham and Aki­hisa Hirata among others.