Building of the Day: CRS Studio

The brief for the CRS (Center for Remembering and Sharing) studio called for a space that can be used for yoga, meditation, various events, or as a photography studio. The space should accommodate the core mission of CRS: to be a community center for artists and individuals who want to share their creativity. In looking for an approach, transcendence emerged as a common element in the various activities. During meditation, one leaves behind everyday reality to enter into an empty space, free from pressure, desires and needs. Yoga focuses attention internally, concentrating on movement and breathing. We decided the form of the space should recede and disappear, as if a fog had entered the space and obscured its limits. Space is defined by surfaces which in turn are delineated by their edges. Instead of blurring all the edges, conic geometry is intersected with curved walls to define a partial edge with a certain ambiguity. It has aspects of finitude and infinitude, of restriction and openness joined in a single crease. Thus we are reminded that the edge is meaningful and that it gives a sense to the space it encloses. The impulse toward the infinite is defined by the finite.

Architect: Clouds Architecture Office:

Tour Guides: Ostap Rudakevych; Masayuki Sono