Beetle¡Çs House
c Terunobu Fujimori, 2010
Commissioned by the V&A

This exhibition is a celebration of building strategies concerned with small-scale structures, singular design visions and modesty of purpose. Small spaces have always informed architects' ideas of the possibilities and boundaries of creative practice. A reduction in building scale is balanced by an increase in creative liberation, encouraging experimentation with materials, texture and proportion while stressing play and whimsical exploration.

The V&A invited nineteen architects to submit concept designs exploring notions of refuge and retreat, examining themes that touch upon our everyday lives - activities such as play, performance, contemplation, work, study and so on. Each architect was given a specific location in the Museum for which to design a structure. From the submitted concept designs, seven proposals were chosen for construction at full scale - something rarely explored in a conventional architecture exhibition. Two of these projects have come from Japanese architects: Terunobu Fujimori and Sou Fujimoto.

Explorations of transparency and the relationship between internal and external space are the key characteristics of Sou Fujimoto¡Çs 'Inside / Outside Tree', a crystalline, abstracted approximation of a tree form that challenges the notions of architectural thresholds that are at the heart of traditional Japanese architecture. Using architecture to change our experience of a surrounding landscape has long been a key part of much of Terunobu Fujimori's work, most notably in 'Chashitsu Tetsu', an elevated teahouse intended specifically for viewing the surrounding cherry trees as they blossom. He has returned to this strategy here in this exhibition, with his 'Beetle's House' which re-frames the visitor¡Çs view of the surrounding day-lit space in the Medieval and Renaissance Galleries, and provokes a dialogue with the two sixteenth-century architectural objects exhibited alongside - the Morlaix Staircase and the Paul Pindar house facade. Access to the ¡ÆBeetle¡Çs House' involves climbing barefoot, so visitors find themselves developing a physical bond with the building even before 'properly' entering it.

Abraham Thomas

Curator, Designs
Word & Image Department
Victoria and Albert Museum