Kengo Kuma - Fu-an

The Centre international d'art et du paysage de l'île de Vassivière is proud to host from the 29th June to the 5th September 2010 a creation by the architect Kengo Kuma entitled Fu-an, a tea pavilion located at the extreme end of Aldo Rossi´s building in front of the Vassivière lake. The exhibition will be opened at noon on the 28th June 2010.

The invitation extended by the Centre international d'art et du paysage to Kengo Kuma is an affirmation of its choice of viewing architecture as experimentation and utopia. This idea is intrinsic to the very architecture of the Art Centre built by Aldo Rossi, to the new artists' residence project conceived by Berger & Berger/ Building-Building, to Yona Friedman's Licorne de Vassivière (Licorne Eiffel), to Hans Walter Müller's inflatable modules, to Gilles Clements's landscape charter and to Philippe Rahm's architectural charter.

For the Centre international d'art du paysage at Vassivière island, Kengo Kuma proposes the building of a teahouse called Fu-an, "space of tea ceremony flying in the air" -, it's a project respectful of existing architecture while at the same time in open contrast with Aldo Rossi´s post-modern building: "Concentrating on the essential and on the powerful sense of poetry that we are creating here amid finished zones, a space of refined life generating new, important ideas".

Kengo Kuma re-interprets Aldo Rossi´s cafeteria by turning it into a light and luminous structure that invites one to contemplate and meditate, an aesthetic and tasting experience such as one finds in the traditional tea houses in Japan, in the places de dedicated to the tea ceremony.

Fu-an is one of Kengo Kuma's most important and poetic nomad works, and is a perfect interpretation of his personal conception of architecture. This is an ephemeral construction made of a plastic structure that hangs suspended thanks to helium and is covered by an immense transparent organza veil that weighs eleven grams per square meter and is anchored to the ground by small pebbles. The way that the space is conceived designates no main entrance; the visitor comes in and is naturally led to sit down on tatamis to contemplate the tactile and visual richness of the floating materials opening to the outside and filled with light, in keeping with the architectural principle that is fundamental to Kengo Kuma.

This evanescent structure changes its expression with the least change of light, by displacements or movements on the outside provoked by nature or by visitors. In this structure, the passage of air and light is never interrupted, matter and color change according to the time of day, evoking the "ukiyo-e" painting style of the Edo epoch, which sought to transcribe in painting the endless changes of nature and time. For the eminent Japanese architect, this involves developing a structure in which the use of matter and light allows him to create within space a hermetic and intimate feeling in harmony with the transparence and lightness of organza – recalling the robes of the celestial angels in Japanese legends.

The matter that the structure is made of immediately seems "to disperse like a cloud and evaporate like mist". The essence and the charm of this project lie in its transparence and fragility. Light filtered from the outside envelops the visitor like a second skin and transforms it into a magic place, a unique experience of contemplation while also delighting in an extraordinary selection of scented herbal teas.

Kengo Kuma
Fu-an