Private Residence Ukitsubo
New York
2018
2018
The Floating Inner Garden
The twenty-first century is an era when people are literally living in the sky. I was assigned the task of designing in the Japanese style a single 700-square-meter floor in the upper part of a high-rise residential tower that soars over Midtown Manhattan. The client was a contemporary art collector whose collection, not coincidentally, includes works of mine. I accepted the commission more in the spirit of art than of architecture.
Recently, architecture is getting closer to art while art is becoming more architectural; seldom, however, does one hear of them coming together in a beautiful or harmonious manner. Architecture’s sense of inferiority to art and art’s own jealousy of architecture are inextricably entangled. But one need only look back at the Renaissance and Palladio’s Teatro Olimpico to be reminded that once upon a time architecture was truly art. Hence my decision to travel back in time when designing this space.
When I actually stood in this space which floats in mid-air, I was surrounded by sky on all sides. Immediately to the south is the Empire State Building, beyond that the tip of Manhattan and, beyond that again, extends the horizon. To the north, beyond the great expanse of Central Park, you look across Connecticut as it melts into the horizon. I was overcome by a sudden, powerful emotion. I could not resist the illusion that I was standing on the bridge of a colossal battleship.(Manhattan, after all, does have the shape of a ship.)I remembered the USS New York which took part in the invasion of Iwo Jima. Launched in 1912, the USS New York went through the First World War and the Second World War, including the invasions of Iwo Jima and of Okinawa, sustained damage from a kamikaze attack and underwent repairs before finally being decommissioned in 1946. I imagined myself standing on the bridge as this great battleship quietly slid through the seas of time, traveling from west to east in line with the rotation of the Earth.
The rows of huge rectangular windows offer fantastic views stretching to where the land and sea meet the sky. For a long time, scenes like these have been part of my work. Photographing the sea and its horizon has been one of my lifelong projects. I therefore began designing the space based on the sense that this space suspended in the sky was some kind of callback to my Seascapes series. From this I got the idea of using large shoji screens to divide the windows in the tea room and the large living room into an upper and a lower half. If you open the upper shoji screen while keeping the lower one closed, all the hustle and bustle of Manhattan becomes invisible, and the interior space seems to detach itself and float off into the sky.
In order to create a Japanese space, I resolved to use premodern methods that are all but obsolete even in Japan. That involved using ancient materials such as yakusugi cedar from trees over a thousand years old such as was used in the Tenpyo era(729–749)for the shrines and temples of the Japanese capital Nara and stones used in the gardens of the medieval Muromachi period(1336–1573). Old materials are used particularly extensively in the tea room. I decided to call the tea room ukitsubo, meaning “floating inner garden.” This style of name comes from The Tale of Genji, the twelfth-century novel. A tsubo is a small garden; thus Lady Fujitsubo in the book is a woman of the court who lives in a garden(tsubo)full of Japanese wisteria( fuji). By extension, ukitsubo means “a room with a garden that floats( uki)in mid-air.”
In fact, when you pass from the tea room into the living room, you encounter a miniature rectangular garden resembling an island. By recreating vanished nature in the skies above the extremely densely populated island of Manhattan, I have secured against that loss. Just as Central Park which the north windows overlook is one model of nature, I have further miniaturized that model to make a bonsai garden.
Some day in the future, when we have lost all connection with nature, the bonsai garden in this space will remain as an image of nature as it once existed, just like the Seascapes now hanging on the wall.
Hiroshi Sugimoto
The twenty-first century is an era when people are literally living in the sky. I was assigned the task of designing in the Japanese style a single 700-square-meter floor in the upper part of a high-rise residential tower that soars over Midtown Manhattan. The client was a contemporary art collector whose collection, not coincidentally, includes works of mine. I accepted the commission more in the spirit of art than of architecture.
Recently, architecture is getting closer to art while art is becoming more architectural; seldom, however, does one hear of them coming together in a beautiful or harmonious manner. Architecture’s sense of inferiority to art and art’s own jealousy of architecture are inextricably entangled. But one need only look back at the Renaissance and Palladio’s Teatro Olimpico to be reminded that once upon a time architecture was truly art. Hence my decision to travel back in time when designing this space.
When I actually stood in this space which floats in mid-air, I was surrounded by sky on all sides. Immediately to the south is the Empire State Building, beyond that the tip of Manhattan and, beyond that again, extends the horizon. To the north, beyond the great expanse of Central Park, you look across Connecticut as it melts into the horizon. I was overcome by a sudden, powerful emotion. I could not resist the illusion that I was standing on the bridge of a colossal battleship.(Manhattan, after all, does have the shape of a ship.)I remembered the USS New York which took part in the invasion of Iwo Jima. Launched in 1912, the USS New York went through the First World War and the Second World War, including the invasions of Iwo Jima and of Okinawa, sustained damage from a kamikaze attack and underwent repairs before finally being decommissioned in 1946. I imagined myself standing on the bridge as this great battleship quietly slid through the seas of time, traveling from west to east in line with the rotation of the Earth.
The rows of huge rectangular windows offer fantastic views stretching to where the land and sea meet the sky. For a long time, scenes like these have been part of my work. Photographing the sea and its horizon has been one of my lifelong projects. I therefore began designing the space based on the sense that this space suspended in the sky was some kind of callback to my Seascapes series. From this I got the idea of using large shoji screens to divide the windows in the tea room and the large living room into an upper and a lower half. If you open the upper shoji screen while keeping the lower one closed, all the hustle and bustle of Manhattan becomes invisible, and the interior space seems to detach itself and float off into the sky.
In order to create a Japanese space, I resolved to use premodern methods that are all but obsolete even in Japan. That involved using ancient materials such as yakusugi cedar from trees over a thousand years old such as was used in the Tenpyo era(729–749)for the shrines and temples of the Japanese capital Nara and stones used in the gardens of the medieval Muromachi period(1336–1573). Old materials are used particularly extensively in the tea room. I decided to call the tea room ukitsubo, meaning “floating inner garden.” This style of name comes from The Tale of Genji, the twelfth-century novel. A tsubo is a small garden; thus Lady Fujitsubo in the book is a woman of the court who lives in a garden(tsubo)full of Japanese wisteria( fuji). By extension, ukitsubo means “a room with a garden that floats( uki)in mid-air.”
In fact, when you pass from the tea room into the living room, you encounter a miniature rectangular garden resembling an island. By recreating vanished nature in the skies above the extremely densely populated island of Manhattan, I have secured against that loss. Just as Central Park which the north windows overlook is one model of nature, I have further miniaturized that model to make a bonsai garden.
Some day in the future, when we have lost all connection with nature, the bonsai garden in this space will remain as an image of nature as it once existed, just like the Seascapes now hanging on the wall.
Hiroshi Sugimoto
