I forget which book I ever read an analogy that says that the layers of rice are like rolling hills. In an instant, I felt like a strange beast in the Classic of Mountains and Seas, which could swallow mountains and rivers in one bite, so it was not mighty.
Using food to engage in art is no longer a new thing for no one before, nor is it a container for food (those Japanese mothers who love to dry love bento on Twitter must not be spared in this game), but seeing the miniature architectural works made by several designers with lunch boxes, I still can't help but be amazed.
The designer wrote on Instagram that the structure and experience of the bento box are similar to the architectural space, and if the design of the bento box is updated, the eating experience will also be improved. They are currently targeting three well-known modern buildings in Japan, The Longhouse in Sumiyoshi, the 21st Century Museum of Art in Kanazawa, and the Tokyo Apartment.
Sumiyoshi's Azuma House is an important work by Tadao Ando, which won the Architectural Institute of Japan Award of the Year in 1979. In addition to the use of materials, it implements the clear water concrete, iron glass, wood and stone strips that Ando's "shimizu concrete poet" is good at, and it also has strong specificity in structure.
The space in Osaka's Sumiyoshi Ward was a narrow, cramped and extreme project at the time, with a very narrow base area (about 4 m) and a deep depth (about 14 m). The bento box also restores this form, while converting the two-story house into a combination of two bento boxes. Keeping the staircase as decoration and the different rooms separated by bento boxes, it is both practical and aesthetically pleasing.
The 21st Century Museum of Art in Kanazawa was conducted by Japanese architecture duo Sanaa Sejima Kazuyo and Nishizawa Ritsue, and won the Golden Lion Award at the Venice Architecture Biennale and many other honors. The most praiseworthy thing is its "like a transparent floating flat round island" appearance, supplemented by a 360-degree transparent and open glass curtain wall, so that the daily scenery and artwork blend with each other, and the moisturizer silently tells the connection between art and the city.
The museum has 6 collection rooms and 8 special exhibition rooms, each of which has a slightly different height and shape depending on the purpose, and is also restored in a bento box. At the same time, there is no frontal entrance in the strict sense of the word, which is also one of the characteristics of the Kanazawa Museum of Art. In addition to the use of the bento box, it has also been innovated according to eating habits and made it into a form that can be rotated. Although there is no 360-degree glass curtain, you can also watch the beauty of 360-degree food.
The Tokyo Apartment, which condensed Fujimoto's painstaking efforts, was also rejuvenated after the "lunchboxization". Fujimoto likes to retain an "ambiguous order" in his works, and does not like to deliberately intervene in natural or artificial media, but rather reflects the "primitive" urban landscape. Located in a residential area of Tokyo, this collection of residences contains several residential units, each consisting of 2-3 house-shaped rooms and stairs connecting them. Bento boxes are also made in clusters of containers in their original proportions, where you can place dishes in different containers, symbolizing harmony and different urban spaces.
In addition, the seemingly unnecessary home-to-home gap in the Tokyo apartment designed for light has also been preserved, becoming a fulcrum for storage and a gap for drainage.
I am often asked what is the difference between "plagiarism" and "tribute". In my opinion, the former is a cunning and shameful "take-ism", while the latter is based on the existing product characteristics, learning the beauty of the design thinking of predecessors, and skillfully grafting some common elements to make it glow with new vitality. Obviously, this series of works is the latter.