Takatoku Nishi

A friend I met in Guayaquil shared with me a saying about Ecuador:  

“Los ecuatorianos son seres raros y únicos: duermen tranquilos en medio de crujientes volcanes, viven pobres en medio de incomparables riquezas y se alegran con música triste.”

“Ecuadorians are strange and unique beings: they sleep peacefully amid rumbling volcanoes, live in poverty amid incomparable wealth, and find joy in sad music.” I was drawn to the coexistence of seemingly opposing conditions expressed in these words—danger and everyday life, richness and poverty, sadness and joy—existing within the same place.  As I encountered the natural environment, people, and culture of Ecuador, I began to sense how things with different qualities influence one another while forming a single environment. The mangroves I encountered in Guayaquil remain firmly rooted in place, while the wind and flows of water passing between them have no fixed form and continually shift as they affect their surroundings.  In ENTRE, I sought to understand this state of different elements relating to one another as a single spatial condition. The strength of the mangroves, firmly rooted in the ground, is reflected in the supporting columns, while the screens evoke the formless and shifting qualities of wind and moving water.  Rather than bringing a completed form from Japan, the space took shape through an ongoing engagement with the local environment, dialogue with people, and relationships with local materials and techniques.