Tsuyoshi Tane, Architect-Archaeologist

Japanese architect Tsuyoshi Tane’s archaeological approach to architecture has him looking to the past in order to create forward-thinking projects that challenge at once new and old

In 2010, Tsuyoshi Tane stood in front of a line of 99 framed clock prints inside a warehouse gallery in Tokyo. Despite the occasion being the young architect’s first solo exhibition in Japan, he chose to title this installation Pasts, and in it presented memories from growing up in Tokyo through to the process of winning his first international competition in 2006, for his design of the Estonian National Museum with Dan Dorell and Lina Ghotmeh.

Tane, Dorell and Ghotmeh’s winning proposal involved moving the construction site to a nearby Soviet-era military base, and features an archive room where the climate is controlled purely by the design, needing no special system fitted to preserve the delicate objects within. Naturally, this radical proposal tempted many to label the architect with buzzwords like ‘green architect’ or ‘innovator’, but Tane politely denies such associations, preferring the term ‘social artist’ instead. ‘We just wanted to learn as much about Estonia’s history as possible and translate it directly for the future generation,’ he says, noting that the decade-long project served as the foundation for his approach to architecture.

Shortly after the completion of the museum in 2016, the trio dissolved their partnership and Tane set up his own studio in Paris, Atelier Tsuyoshi Tane Architects, in 2017. Initially located inside a brick building where the world’s first metre-long platinum measuring rod was once produced, Tane’s practice has continued the dialogue between past and future through his designs of museums, houses and even sports stadiums. In 2018, a pair of exhibitions in Tokyo, under the theme Archaeology of the Future and titled Digging & Building and Search & Research respectively, showcased the architect’s obsession with the past.

The exhibitions introduced Tane’s research methods of excavating vast numbers of historic images, texts and artefacts associated with a site. To house the data collected over the years, the studio now has museum-like archive rooms with shelves of found objects, and a library of the team’s self-made encyclopedias.

‘When an archaeologist goes to a field, they start from empty land or a desert. They might find what they were looking for, or they may discover an unexpected history. This is what I’m trying to apply to my buildings. Instead of looking up at the sky for a new invention, I want to dig into the past to discover something that is both new and old. The memory of a place can provide the most durable concepts for architecture,’ the architect explains.

For Tane, this is not only an operational skill but a departure from modernism. He believes that we’re on the cusp of witnessing the limitations of modernism and that we cannot achieve sustainability unless we embrace diversity, traditions and craft.

Modern architecture sought to standardise lifestyles across the world, and the industrialisation of building materials made construction incredibly efficient. ‘One of the research rules I give to my studio staff is to avoid referencing the modern period, because I try to stay away from using prefabricated materials,’ he says, before explaining that one of the first questions he asks at the outset of a project is how it might have been built before the industrial era. He highlights that while he’s not inventing anything new, incorporating components or methods that came before the 19th century is a challenge in today’s construction industry. ‘A lot of traditional methods have all but disappeared, and the challenge is to rediscover, recalculate, reintroduce a way that works in today’s efficiency-driven system.’

His most recent project in Paris, Japanese chef Sota Atsumi’s highly anticipated restaurant Maison, began from this minimal yet fundamental starting point. ‘I asked “What is eating? Why do we gather at a table to eat? How have dining rooms in France evolved since the Middle Ages?”’ the architect explains. ‘Since crops grow in dirt, we wanted to use soil, and eventually settled on baked terracotta tiles.’ Red terracotta tiles are produced in different shapes and sizes all over France, but the material also embodies the anti- industrialisation mentality Tane advocates.

Tane applies this archaeological excavation to residential projects as well. In 2018 he completed the Todoroki House, a three-storey family home in a densely populated urban forest in Tokyo. Its proximity to a river means the air close to the ground is humid, while a constant breeze blows through the trees above. The resulting home is a combination of Tane’s research into how early civilisations built their homes in both humid and arid areas. The ground floor is built a metre into the ground, the living room embedded in the jungle-like garden growing at eye level. The upper floors feature large windows facing every direction and open floor plans to take advantage of the wind blowing from the nearby ravine.

Tane is set to complete another residential project in 2020, this time a weekend home for a French family, set within more than 20,000 hectares of protected forest in Fontainebleau. According to Tane, aside from site-specific memories, the sentimental differences between Japan and France are especially noticeable when working with families. ‘Japanese clients are more inclined towards opening up the floor plan, breaking down the barriers between the interior and the exterior. In Europe, clients prefer covered spaces and defined rooms.’

At the moment, Tane travels between Japan and France at least once a month. In France, he recently won the proposal call for the new Al Thani Collection spaces at the historic Hôtel de la Marine in Paris; in Japan, some of his major projects include a football stadium in Shibuya and a contemporary art museum for the city of Hirosaki.

Referring to the recent Notre Dame fire, which he witnessed first-hand, Tane says that his hope is that it might help us ‘understand durability in architecture better’. ‘A building that has lasted over eight hundred and fifty years is true architecture. A few green patches or a layer of environmentally friendly paint is not the solution. Notre Dame should influence the way we value sentimentalities and sustainable spiritualities.’ Despite this, however, Tane is careful to add, ‘I still wouldn’t call myself a green architect’.

Text / Jae Lee