Waterscape Colab with JPRE Office

Flowing aluminum forms overhead encode powerful associations with water, invoking archetypal symbols of purification, transformation, and the life-sustaining element that holds profound significance across cultural traditions. The mirror-polished surface treatment amplifies these aquatic references while simultaneously suggesting the celestial, as reflective materials have historically served as portals between earthly and heavenly realms, from sacred mirrors in various traditions to the reflective pools of contemplative gardens. The organic undulation of rigid industrial material creates productive tension between the manufactured and the natural, suggesting that human creativity might aspire to capture natural phenomena in permanent form, much as the Japanese concept of borrowed scenery integrates natural elements into architectural experience. The corridor configuration activates threshold symbolism, presenting the illuminated doorway as a liminal space between states of being, an invitation toward transformation that the solitary white-robed figure seems to embody. White garments traditionally signify purity, initiation, or transitional states across numerous cultures, reinforcing the reading of this space as one facilitating passage rather than mere occupation. The vertical stratification between the dynamic ceiling and calm floor plane may suggest cosmological ordering, with the overhead realm associated with the mutable and transcendent while the ground plane represents stability and the earthly. Numerologically, the apparent multitude of individual metal elements might evoke abundance and interconnection, each separate form contributing to a unified whole. The charcoal walls function as visual silence, creating necessary pause that allows the sculptural elements their full expressive impact while suggesting the void from which creative forms emerge. This workspace thus positions daily labor within an environment encoded with symbols of transformation, flow, and transcendence, potentially elevating routine activity toward the contemplative.

They performed the design for shared office spaces. Inspired by traditional Japanese craftsmanship techniques for making kimonos using a single piece of cloth, here, a aluminum sheet is spread across the entire ceiling and fills the space with waves of vitality, like that of the sunlight shining on the surface of the paddy fields of yesteryear. The overlapping metallic waves create areas of different heights and expanses of space that change freely, as water flows in a lively and reactive manner, thus suffusing the area with the necessary functions and atmosphere.