Book: made.

In the traditional sense, this book does not function. By creating an “L shaped” book I am attempting to capture the most significant view, configuration, and construction elements of the Mount Fuji Studio’s Tree House in urban Tokyo.

The view of the ceiling is truly what creates the “space” of this house. There is something found in craning your neck upwards, peering through the branches of a tree, light filtering to your face through the layers of timber that monumentally defines the under- canopy space. And so, just as Mount Fuji Studio applies this experience to architecture, I attempt to apply it to the reading and viewing of a book.

There are essentially two planes connecting at right angles to create this moment; two planes that are expressed in nature as a branching arm, in architecture as a perfect and seamless wooden joint, and in my book as a defined and sutured binding. My book seeks to expose the bones and basic principles found in nature and abstracted in the form of the Tree House.

For just as in nature, where the tree grows out of one central pillar, both the Tree House and my book are grounded and function through a central core element. In the book we find a single string about which all of the pages rotate. In the house, there is an empty core encircled by perfectly crafted wooden frames.

Within Japanese architecture there is a harmonious relationship between built environment and natural habitat. Just as the grain of the wood becomes less prominent in a completely wooden house, the cover of my book takes a grain like quality, abstracts the view of ceiling meeting central core, and blends into the overall pallet of materials.

Nearly all of the Japanese houses we have looked at as a class have dealt with efficient use of very little space. As such, my book gives you four pages.

Fill wisely.