Sustainable utopia

project Shuhei Endo
photos and text Sergio Pirrone

On the mountains of Sayo-cho, midway along the artery joining Osaka and Hiroshima, Shuhei Endo arrived thanks to a competition: an architectural project to ‘raise awareness’, to ‘spread respect for the planet’, stimulating care for its territory and ‘fears’ for its wellbeing. The result is Bubbletecture H, a total work of Green Technology that performs three required functions: lecture hall, bookstore and exhibition space, all within the concept of ‘circulation’. That of the cycle of life.

Shuhei Endo. He has been seen lying on the green slope, blowing on two leaves of grass. His ideas are thought bubbles. Like illustrations in a Japanese manga, they float, circulate and then become matter. Rational-idealist, he approaches the apparently impossible with serene confidence, nurturing circular utopias, making them come true. A creator of wonder. Nature doesn’t have antipodes, just antibodies. She weaves, adds and subtracts by progression. By evolution and extension, she balances what advances with what retreats, what always moves and influences. At the end of the winding, tree-lined path, the architecture turns its back to us. A primordial pulp, something that will become something else. Filled with the breath of the earth, the back of the hand shows its Corten steel framework (1.2 mm), while to the north the index finger sticks its nail into the descent. The warm skin takes on the powerful red of the sun, while the thumb, resting on the entrance level, becomes moss green. Bubbletecture H is a futuristic gift. A manifesto of coherence, its organic form is the expression of rational essence. A total work of Green Technology, it plays three different roles: lecture hall, bookshop/gallery and workshop, all within a concept of ‘circulation’. That of the life cycle, learned, crossed, witnessed by men. Another tree will be planted, it will grow, to build a new work of sustainable architecture, studying solutions and balances. Society will become more aware, will act consciously, planting other trees. And so on. The ideal is a dreamy game that is never an end in itself. Shuhei frees it inside a mobile plan, drops of mercury that jiggle and expand toward the circular ends of three public spaces, and contract around the floating cells of services, offices and the main entrance. The spatial framework, in Japanese cedar, has variable triangular spans of two-three meters. It forms a liquid space in which intelligent circular satellites rotate around a core of sun and sky. Once again, the essence is a central courtyard of air, glass and wood. The gravel slides down from above, under the suspended ribbing of the steel arm, all the way to the impressive,curious extruded cone. Neither a sloth nor a snail, a good creature smiles at its new life, from the street level, holding an authentic treasure in its lap. The 19 point-by-point supports reduce the contact of the entire work of architecture with the slope, while sustaining a diaphragm for the collection of rain water for irrigation. The use of local wood diminishes the polluting emissions of transport, while the viscous exterior mantle of nature, which maintains the correct humidity to stabilize internal temperature, reduces climate control costs. Self-sufficient thanks to photovoltaic and wind energy, the facility recycles water through drainage. Its structural module can be standardized, eliminating external maintenance thanks to the Corten, which independently thrives on its own oxidation. Finally, in spite of or in addition to all this, Bubbletecture H is an absolute experience, a good story, fanning the flame of architecture.