CORE IDEAS Shin'ya Kojima

Shinya Kojima

 

On January 15, 2019, Mr. Nobuya Kojima, founder of Kooo Architects (Xiaoda Architectural Design Office), was a guest at GLA, where he delivered a talk titled “CORE IDEAS” and shared his practical project experience and design insights.

Looking back on the years since Xiaoda Design Office was founded, we have encountered a wide array of people and been immersed in an equally diverse range of cultural contexts and local customs across countless projects. Throughout the design process, we have faced unimaginable taboos and dramatic, almost theatrical situations: when designing a hotel on a narrow plot in Tokyo, our team tirelessly attended every information session held for nearby residents to address concerns about privacy; in a remote Chinese village where even radio signals were unavailable, we worked under the scorching sun with a construction team that could not read blueprints to figure out how to build using local techniques; and when devising the modular structural connections needed for a fashion-design exhibition within the Louvre in France, we conducted countless trials and experiments with the exhibits themselves…

If we were to sum up these four years in a single sentence, it would be that they were four years of repeatedly testing the resilience of our vision. We believe that a clearly articulated core idea possesses tremendous power: as we advance the project, we embrace constraints and requirements while growing together with a wide range of stakeholders.

Design related to architecture has always been a complex puzzle, yet such puzzles invariably yield joyful solutions. We have steadfastly pursued this quest—striving for that singular moment when the final piece of the puzzle falls perfectly into place, a moment no one has ever witnessed before.