Thread of Space-Time
Proposal for Inujima Architecture
Time-Place-Journey
Introduction
In the fall of 2022, just days after Japan welcomed tourists back after one of the longest COVID-19 lockdowns, I found myself journeying across the archipegalos on an adventure of self-discovery. I had just finished a master’s of architecture and my goal was to understand the architect’s whom I had admired during my education. I wanted to experience their architecture and understand how time and space collide.
Under the advice of a close friend, I found myself standing at the edge of the Seto Sea admiring the fine black sands of Inushima. Although small, the island captivated my attention. Inujima is connected to the Setouchi Triennale, a contemporary art festival but due to it’s difficult access and small size, it remains relatively unknown. I fell through the heavens at the Seirensho Art museum only to emerge on the other side of the moon, disoriented but with an exciting momentum that carried me through to the island’s different art installations like an erratic bee in a wildflower field — feasting on an experience I could not grasp in its entirety.
I am inexplicably drawn to Japanese architecture because it evokes emotions and creates a temporal experience unlike any other. But reading about architecture does not compare to walking on the grounds or touching the walls. Visiting to personally experience and understand how something was built can reframe one’s connection to a place and the landscape.
The architecture of Inujima can be considered as equal measures art as it is architecture and provides a means of communicating with the land that proposes a dialogue for the future as the resident population continues to decline. Following my trip to Japan, I continued to think about the architecture I had witnessed and decided that the best practice to understand Inujima would be to practice design for the place myself. I am therefore proud to present a proposal for an installation on Inujima. This installation records the history of the island, marks the land as a “you are here” moment, and provides a means for people, resident and visitor to connect with the land, the sea, and each other.
Please enjoy.
時 間 | Time
Inujima is a small island in the Inland Seto Sea approximately 3km southeast off the coast from Okayama. From Okayama station, it is accessible by taking the JR Ako line to Saidaiji station and then a bus to the small fishing village of Hoden. For day-trips to the island, there is just a single bus in the morning. From Hoden to Inujima is a short 15 minute boat ride with eight daily trips, one of which lines up with the aforementioned bus. Alternatively, it is possible to access Inujima from Uno port island hopping from Naoshima and Teshima but is more difficult and not recommended.
Inushima is just 0.54 sq. km and about 1 km at its widest point. In 2017 there were just 47 residents, down from some 5,000 who are said to have lived on the island during the peak of its copper smelting and quarrying industries. These two industries are what brought prosperity to the island. Historically, the quarry provided white granite for castle building, including Osaka Castle. Later, a copper refinery was established in 1909 but lasted just 10 years when a sudden fall in the price of copper and various changes in the economy struck. The refinery was abandoned and the population soon declined.
In 1995 artist Yukinori Yanagi visited the island and envisaged revitalizing Inujima with contemporary art using the copper refinery ruins. This set in motion actions that resulted in the Seirensho Art Museum designed by architect Hiroshi Sambuichi in 2008, nearly 100 years later. The museum is as a revitalization of the abandoned copper refinery and seeks to balance history, art, culture, and tourisim within the context of an environmentally concious design. The success of the art museum and inclusion in the tri-annual Setouchi Triennale Art Festival brought visitors to Inujima as well as established Art House Projects where abandoned houses are repurposed as art installations.
Inujima is becoming a point of contemporary art that draws in tourists, yet despite the influx of tourists the island remains relatively unkown and is slowly being reclaimed by nature as the elderly population continues to decline. An argument can be made that the prosperity of Inujima depends now on the attraction of tourists. Would more art installations, attractions, and activities draw greater awareness to the island nationally and internationally? How can rebirth of the island as a cultural hub encourage prosperity?
場 所 | Place
The Seto Inland Sea lies between the major islands of Honshu, Kyushu, and Shikoku. During the Meiji era many islands industrialized as quarries and factories sprung up among the 727 islands, removing an abundance of raw materials and forever scaring the landscape. Yet as quick as the factories came, they also disappeared, leaving behind ruins, contaminated sites, and ghost villages.
Only 160 islands are inhabited and what distingues Inushima, Teshima, and Naoshima is the Setouchi Triennale Art Festival that draws in thousands of tourists annually. Begun in 2010, the art festival aims to revitalize island communities that were once a nexus of commercial trade into a place where ideas are now traded, once more connecting the archipelago to the broader region and extending internationally. Through contemporary art trading ideas rather than material goods strengthen’s the region’s position to coneract the massive depopulation.
I visited Inushima on November 11, 2022 for a day on my way from Himeji to to Okayama. In the following week, I would also visit Naoshima twice.
At the east end of Inujima the decaying remains of the copper refinery were transfromed into the Seirensho Art Museum. The museum is mostly burried in the ground and conveys the power of wind, heat, and light in both the art and architecture. The space cannot be perceived without simutaneously acknowledging how the copper reinfery remains have been incorporated into a place that is about feeling the effects of nature. Energy in the form as warm air, cool wind, and reflected light envelope each visitor, offering up a question as to what existed, what exists, and what will exist as a tri-lateral continuation of man, nature, and the architectural process that build and destroy.
Similarly, the many art-houses on the island are a dialogue to perceive nature and focus attention on nature and the landscape, conveying sensations that articulate the built space with the specifics of the island’s place. As such, the art installations function as an emotive experience to draw attention to the landscape, it’s surrounding water and air, the rotation of the earth, and the changing time, both literally in days, and years; and abastractly in population and existence.
旅人 | Journey
To walk the land is to experience its sights, smells, tastes and feels. Architecture that connects to the landscape becomes a device for experiencing nature. It heightens our awareness of ephemeral time and our perception of details. New sensations leap out and bath us in experience.
As in life, architecture is a journey of discovery. By embarking on this journey, one enters a realm ill defined by time and space. Though we strive to define our position in space and time, like quarks in an atom we can never quite realize both simutaneously.
The works of Inushima are created from modern materials, frequently repurposing existing structures that blend a traditional spirit and way of life with a modern interpretation. In detailing these installations, the contemporary art develops as a means of exposing the charms of the region and the people that live there. It amplifies the existence of the beautiful scenery and reclaims the scenery for the community. As such, the installations are optics for understanding the cultural past, present, and future, as well as feeling the landscape, and power of nature.
A visit to Inushima is a journey of discovery, in architecture and landscape. The architecture is a vehicle that enables the visitor to extend their perceptible awareness beyond the geographic confines of the island to be ever presently aware of the land as an island in the sea. Furthermore, the journey is narrated by the materials that amplify the changing climate, wind, air, heat, and sun to expose nature’s natural process resulting in a wealth of natural scenery. From walking the rough stone paths baked since the crack of dawn to feeling the age of the shou sugi ban wood siding slowly erroding back to its underlying raw wood, the tactile qualities of different materials become notes of a ballad that convey the charm of the island along an infinite timescale past, present, and future.
Architecture on Inushima therefore, must strive to enhance the visitor’s awareness of nature while simutaneously preserving it’s natural beauty. It must locate the visitor in space and time and exend an open invitation for meaningful dialogue. When successful, one can appreciate life, art, and the beauty of nature as well as find an internal tranquility as meditative as the slow lap of wind driven waves along the islands shoreline.
設計 | Design
This installation is a means of perceiving nature in time and space. It is designed as a journey of discovery.
A small trail at the edge of the village weaves through the forest to the highest point on the island where thread of ma collects as a point to look back and contemplate the island’s position in the Seto Inland Sea.
Thread of ma draws its strength from the island’s significant moments along a culutural and natural landscape in time and space. The design is organized as a journey that is conceptually distinguished by a thin strip of paper twisted into a spiral ramp. The pathway signifies a time on the island as a line that elevates the visitor from the natural forest ground to the open blue sky.
近寄る | Approach
The installation is set in the forest, a natural landscape that continues to grow organically. Set along a gravel path made from quarry rubble mixed with copper refining slag, the visitor feels the landscape with their body. A sign post made from quarried rock signifies the begining of a long wall of textured semi-opaque channel glass that frame’s the visitors vantage. Although set as if to separate nature, it infact welcomes nature through the sand-blasted rough grain of the opqaue glass that offers a tactile impression of sunlight filtered through the surrounding tree canopy during the day and a glowing interior illumination at night. The materiality of the wall and gravel path are both distinctly man-made but counterbalanced with nature as interative material surface that affords a variety of textural effects.
時間 | Time
The glass wall is marked with Inujima’s rich and storied history. A sandblasted timeline is embossed onto the glass along a timeline from 1469 to the present, marked in years and depicted through graphics to show when the local shrine was built, establishment of the village, quarrying of stones for Osaka Castle, rise of the copper refinery, decline in population, begining of Inujima Art Project, and attraction of tourists. Told in graphic relief, time is made relative along the visitor’s journey.
場所 | Place
The pathway circles around an interior courtyard with an art installation, “A sunken sea” that depicts the Inland Seto Sea as a traditional Japanese rock garden that is slowly falling into the ground. This reflects how nature is reclaiming the departed islands in the Seto Sea and questions our role in environmental conservation and retention among built construction. Surrounding the garden are a series of benches that offer different perspectives to contemplate the artwork and rest. These benches are strategically placed to face in significant directions towards points of interest on the island both past and present: The harbour gateway and village, theSeirensho Museum, the campground, the stone quarry, and the chemical industry — though they are screened by the surrounding forest, their position is significant for their double perspective on the rock garden.
旅路 | Journey
Ascending the spiral ramp is a motion in time and space that transitions from present to future. A doorway in the wall marks the end of the timeline at the present. Stepping through time and space to the lookout, one enters an entirely different universe with sweeping vistas of the island in the direction of the town and museum from a platform floating in the air. This is a place to look back on the current revitalization efforts to rebirth the island and the places one has visited on the island. From this vantage, it becomes possible to contemplate Inujima’s past, present, and future.
私 | About
I am a foremost a dreamer in search of a meaningful experiences. Secondly, I am an architectural designer and structural engineer. I am deeply enriched by traditional and contemporary Japanese architecture which brings us closer to nature and each other. I hope this propsoal brings you joy in thinking about Inujima and optimistic possibilities for the future.
References
Giardina, Serena. “Pattern of Growth,” 2018.
“History of Inujima.” トップページ. Accessed June 18, 2023. https://www.city.okayama.jp/museum/inujima-story/island_05.htm.
Inujima Seirensho Art Museum Handbook. Naoshima: Fukutake Foundation, 2017.
Sambuichi, Hiroshi. Hiroshi Sambuichi — Architecture of the Inland Sea. Tokyo: Toru Kato, 2016.
If you enjoyed this design, you can download the booklet here: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/w4o7ooib5c379da2yk6zx/Inujima-ThreadofSpaceTime_KNgo.pdf?rlkey=psqsglgyc4nte7b02qjn0tz9g&dl=0
