Radically Unfinished
In collaboration with:
With the support of:
Mio Tsuneyama & Fuminori Nousaku
Japanese architects Fuminori Nousaku and Mio Tsuneyama see architecture as a node in the network of decay and regeneration. They use their own house and workplace as a laboratory to remodel it experimentally from an ecological point of view. Their house was named “Holes in the House”. The duo drilled holes in the existing floorboards to allow light and heat to circulate. The concrete-covered ground around the house was opened up. The house thus functions on several levels: as a home, as a workplace and as a place where, while learning, they put their practice into action.
In that practice, they consistently seek a holistic understanding of well-being in architecture: feeling good in a cosy space, having access to fresh air, plants, earth, good food. Well-being is also: being good to the environment, by making space for water, by rethinking foundations so the ground can breathe, by choosing materials that are reusable or compostable. In early 2024, their work was exhibited at the TOTO gallery in Tokyo, under the title URBAN FUNGUS—Architecture is a Complex Ⅿesh. At the same moment, their first monograph, Urban Wild Ecology, was published.
Nousaku and Tsuneyama have been researching the relationship between architecture, cities, and ecosystems at universities in Japan and abroad while designing architecture and writing articles. They attempt to bring the wild back into the city based on their idea of “Urban Wild Ecology“and actively incorporate traditional knowledge of stone masonry and wood framing as well as materials that return to the soil, such as straw and earthen walls. They refer to cities as “human-influenced habitats for diverse organisms.“It decomposes part of contemporary cities faced with challenges, absorbs their nutrients, and grows like a fungus (mushroom.) They see architecture as a nexus point in the mesh of such decay and regeneration while striving to establish multispecies networks by using the wild and traditional knowledge to cut into the mesh and reconnect them
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