a bit of a different post this time around.

for those of you not living in japan children in this country are required to do homework over the summer holidays – which includes all the things you might expect, from mathematics to writing practice, keeping a diary, etc. But the bit I have to admit I enjoy the most is something called “free research”, where the kids come up with a project on their own. The reason I enjoy this one is because my oldest daughter and I usually do this project together. This year my daughter decided to make a coffee table, which is why I feel justified in posting the project here. Its not frontoffice work, and its not architecture, but the project came out quite nicely, and this seems as good a place as any to show off.

今回のポストは私たちの仕事と関係なしです。今回は私の娘の夏休み自由研究で作りましたのテーブルです。デザインとペインティングは全部娘の物ですけど、私は手伝いさんとしても少し入りましたから、ここでポストしても良いかな…

we were lucky to have access for a few afternoons to the studio of a good friend, named Shinji Ohmaki.  He also kindly donated a fair amount of time to show us how to paint.

作成現場は、友達、大巻　伸嗣さんのアトリエです。

As for the project…

We started off with a few sheets of cardboard.  This is a material I have been using to make furniture in our home with for about 10 years now, so I have to admit my daughter didn’t get to chose the material, but it is really perfect because its so cheap and easy and can be turned into pretty cool stuff if there is a will.  From this point on however the project pretty much went forward according to my daughter’s direction.

We transferred the design she sketched out onto the cardboard, and cut three pieces and enough strips to form a solid honeycomb structure.

which we then flipped over and painted.

Which was really enough work all on its own.  But still only half way there!  Next we made another honecomb-ish structure that would give a bit of depth for the legs to slip into…

and glued the parts together

…added legs

and after a few coats of clear urethane, put the table to work.

all done !  出来上がり！

interni did a nice spread on the yoyogi house this month.  It is more cool because it is the Russian version.  No one here reads Russian unfortunately but the text that goes with the pictures seems to come straight from this blog, so if anyone has the urge it should be pretty easy to cross-reference with the posts.  Might be a fun game for some.

The graphic artists in charge of the magazine have an interesting and fresh eye.  It is quite nice to flip through the pages even without the benefit of the text.

「インテルニ」雑誌はYOYOGIハウスの記事を出しました。私達はロシア語話せないけど、グラフィックデザインは結構良いですからページを見るだけでまんぞくです。

the graphic with our names and pic is also very cool.  the folks at interni did some nice photoshop work to put our faces into a wee frame that ends up looking a bit like a couple of mythic architects looking to the bright future.  Well, maybe not, but the irony is nice, considering the context.

One of the reasons residential architecture can be especially fun and satisfying is that we get to know the clients much better than usual (for one thing they are individuals and not a board representing 150 people).  It also means we get to go back and visit under casual circumstances, which is a groovy perk in my opinion.

A few months back we visited the owners of the yoyogi house for dinner with our families, and took some pics that are quite nice for showing how the home is lived in.  Personally I am really looking forward to seeing how wild the garden will grow over the summer.  It is already becoming much more interesting than the orderly rows we had planted to start with.

we were going through the photographer’s pictures for the yoyogi house yesterday and found a couple of images that we quite like but for whatever reason didn’t put in the portfolio, and that the magazine editors didn’t use either.  Daisuke did such a good job, so we thought we’d post a few of them here.

Thanks Daisuke for the great work!