ThoughtThe material speaks… I listen. The material wishes to play the protagonist in its being; the Architecture; its structure. Can’t materials such as paper, sand, and plastic be utilized simply more than surface materials? As its main structure? I open my ears to these voices, to hear what is that they have to say.“Be the wall. Try walking in their shoes. You wouldn’t want somebody opening a big hole through you, would you?” My former mentor and architect, Shunji Kondo had his own ‘one-of-a-kind’ way in explaining things. His philosophy on material and structure had an impact on me and helped shape my style in how I engage with materials.The idea of using material as structure, function, and design dates back to a project completed in June of 2004 called “Crystal Bricks”, which utilizes glass blocks as its material and structure. A glass block, living up to its name, has a certain amount of thickness. The idea was then to create a structural system by stacking these blocks. Observing the completed interior, one can not help but to notice the absurd dichotomy of a steel roof being held up by a glass wall. As the surrealist writer Comte de Lautreamont once wrote in one of his poems, the unlikely combination between the materials can be best described as a “Chance meeting on a dissection table between a sewing machine and an umbrella”. I felt as if we opened a new door to the world of architecture, when witnessing such strange of wonder.Wanting to explore and expand the possibilities of glass blocks as a material, I established a “glass block series” not only to discover new methodologies through experimentation, but to take things to another level. Projects that followed such as “Twin-Bricks” and “The White Lady Bug” utilize glass blocks with different materials that are similar in compressive strength, such as ALC panels, to create a new dynamatism.While I continued to investigate glass blocks potentiality as a material, I stated to think about the possibilities of other materials from numerous angles. For example, in “Magritte’s” we used pre-stressed concrete, erected on site, in attempt to free the material from its incapability’s against gravity. In the “Wooden Frame House”, we created a moment frame by sandwiching a beam in between two pillars in order to create an open floor plan without using any metal components. In “Ref-Ring”, we prefabricated the wooden components, similar in how PC units are manufactured, and continued to push the boundaries of Architecture by cultivating new structural methods and systems. By listening to the material and understanding its weakness and strengths, we can continue to figure out ways to compensate for its weaknesses to excel in its strengths. One thing not to forget is the tremendous support from structural engineers, construction companies, university researchers, and the architecture industry that helped carry out an idea into reality. We carried out projects in a collaborative matter, through a methodology developed by listening to “materials”, thinking about “structural methods”, and finally by integrating “structure and design”.Four years ago, I added “environment” to my motto of “structure and design” and have continued to push its limitations and possibilities. This addition does not signify a mixed system that utilizes different materials to create its structural framework. However, it is our attempt to open a new dimension in how we understand architecture through the combination of different materials.“The Aluminum House Projects” can be taken up as a visible example of such pedagogy. The structural make-up of the “A-Ring” house (the third aluminum project to be built) is made up of aluminum-ring-units composed of aluminum strips, and pillars and beams made out of aluminum. These aluminum-ring-units have multiple functions. Besides its capabilities as a structural mainframe, the rings provide space for water flow, lighting, and has an air-conditioning system installed taking advantage of aluminums thermal properties. We also aimed to create a self-sustained environment by installing mechanics that utilizes natural energy from the sun and earth.Till this day, our industry has separated design, structure, and functions into its own categories and has placed a hierarchy amongst them. My attempt has been to break that hierarchy and to create a parallel relationship between them. I will continue to push the boundaries of architecture by listening to these invisible voices. The material speaks…Yasuhiro Yamashita