28 July 2006

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Thomas Heatherwick and the temple of Kagoshima


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At only thirty three years of age, Thomas Heatherwick is already a leading name in the world of contemporary art and architecture, his works, from town planning to civil engineering, from industrial design to so-called “public art”, invariably marked by a sense of innovation and unpredictability.
Examples include his Rolling Bridge, in London, which, rolling back on itself, makes it possible to embark on the Grand Union Canal, or Manchester’s “B of the Bang”, an explosion of steel 56 metres high and weighing 150 tons, which concentrates within itself all the energy and adrenaline of sporting tension.

Recently this young British prodigy has been involved in the study of a Buddhist temple, commissioned by Mr. Uehara, spiritual leader of the Shingon school in Japanese Buddhism.
The work will be built on the gently rolling hills of Shiroyama, on the outskirts of Kagoshima, a place sadly famous for the cruel battle fought there in 1877 between the armies of the Empire and the Samurai rebels of Saigo Takamori, who were opposed to the Westernisation process in Japan.  Local people however have said that the presence of Mr Uehara has already contributed to the purification of this site and its painful memories.   

The eclectic London architect’s project has been warmly welcomed by its sponsors. Even though designed within the rigorous limits and severe regulations inevitably required by a building conditioned by, and saturated with, religious significance – the position of Buddha’s effigy, the orientation of the temple entrance, the site of the Hondo – Heatherwick’s work                         remains truly faithful to his reputation and marks a moment of fracture with the traditions of classical architecture, not only in the context of oriental temples but, it could be said, of all places devoted to religious worship.

The final aesthetic solution is based on the central idea of creating a cohesive and unitary structure where foundations, pillars, walls and lighting are neither distinguishable nor perceptibly separate.  After initial work on a clay model for the project, Heatherwick found inspiration in a piece of draped cloth that encloses the place of worship within it.

The technique used is similar to the experiment already carried out for the construction of the Wellcome Trust in "Bleigiessen", a spectacular sculpture composed of 150,000 glass spheres suspended on 27,000 steel wires. On this occasion, starting with the idea of capturing the elusive shape of moving liquid, Heatherwick harked back to the ancient German tradition of "Bleigiessen": a way of predicting the future through the interpretation of the strange shapes obtained from melting pieces of lead in a spoon over a candle flame and then immediately pouring the resulting liquid into a bowl of cold water. One of the 400 different figures obtained by pouring small amounts of melted metal into cold water was digitally scanned and enlarged to scale in order to produce the model for the sculpture.
In a similar way, the final appearance of the Kagoshima temple was arrived at through using a laser scanner provided by a hospital to digitalise one of the many attempts at textile modelling.  The result is a three-dimensional curving shape that seems to have neither beginning nor end and which, as someone was quick to point out, could be compared to the lineaments of the cushion that every Buddha statue rests upon.

Technically the creation of such an extraordinarily surprising design is made possible by a solution as simple as it is effective: in other words, breaking down the building into a succession of superimposed layers.  Thus, a series of plywood levels alternates with thick layers of glass, providing sufficient light for the interior, and the angle of each superimposed plane is such that rainwater slides easily away.

It is another triumph for Heatherwick’s ideas and inspiration, and we can only hope that the necessary funds will soon be raised to allow this extraordinary work to be built.



LINKS
- Thomas Heatherwick