Space is written in the Chinese language as 空 间 or ‘empty space’ if translated directly. 间 consists of a small sun inside a door- a sliver of light entering an interior space through a gap in the door. For me, this says a lot about the relational and contextual nature of space. It is not an abstract, continuous and uniform space where objects are located as commonly understood. At the same time, 间 also means interval or pause. 间 therefore relates and connects the temporal and spatial dimensions.

I will be giving a lecture titled, Ecology of Small Ideas: Strategies for the Interval during the Still City event in Tokyo. The event is organized by the multidisciplinary design team from Monnik and supported by the Japan Foundation and the Netherlands Embassy Tokyo.

We visited Wang Shu’s China Academy of Art Xiangshan campus in Hangzhou after a brief heavy downpour. The streaks of rain and dampness of the façade of recycled bricks and roof tiles gave the feeling that the building had existed in the landscape for a very long time.