A House in the Garden: Shofuso and Modernism

(bright music) - [Narrator] In New York on West 54th Street, between 5th and 6th avenues, in the garden of the Museum of Modern Art, there's a house.

It is the third house built on the site during the last six years.

The first two were contemporary American.

This one, representing 16th and 17th century prototypes, is Japanese.

It was presented to the museum on behalf of the people of Japan and accepted as a recognition of the unique relevance to modern Western architecture of traditional Japanese design.

- It's really very interesting as a Japanese exhibition house that was displayed at the Museum of Modern Arts, 1954 and 1955, following the series of "The House in the Garden" as a third modern house in the garden.

But here, it wasn't literally a modern house as the previous examples, but one from Japanese tradition interpreted for the Museum of Modern Art.

The idea that Japanese traditions embody the principles of modern architecture, I think was central to this ideas of a flexible space, one that is open to the environment and how this is all embodied here at Shofuso.

(bright music) - So it's no wonder that when the Museum of Modern Art, looking to have a third in a series of A House in the Garden, that they wound up choosing a traditional Japanese house.

It's quite extraordinary, but I think that there's really some clear reasons for that.

Modernism was more than just what came from Europe to the United States.

It's a transnational and it spans the globe.

So there's ideas that are moving from Europe to New York, from South America to New York and vice versa, and to Japan and back.

Bringing in an example of traditional Japanese architecture and showing how that was meaningful was daring actually and also profound in its implications that this Anglocentric view of history is really fraught in so many ways.

- [Ken] Shofuso looks to what is called showing architecture, what becomes known as the classic Japanese residential style, but adapted to the context of New York, the Museum of Modern Art.

- [William] It was actually the most popular exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art up until that point in time.

A quarter of a million people visited that house and took away a direct experience of classical Japanese architecture.

Americans who had been at war with the Japanese, came out and were fascinated by this different way of living.

And it was really an idea of how one begins to rebuild the connections between American culture and Japanese culture after this white hot period of World War II and all the destruction.

And so, this is just eight years after the end of the war when these groups are getting together and thinking about this way to build this bridge through architecture.

Antonin and Noemi Raymond worked for Frank Lloyd Wright in the 19-teens.

They made the decision early in 1921 to establish themselves independently.

For the next 18 years, they worked with really astounding success in Japan.

- The whole relationship between Noemi Raymond, Antonin Raymond and the core staff, including George Nakashima and Junzo Yoshimura, I think is a very interesting one.

I think it really becomes a family of sorts and experienced this whole aspect of working together, being connected to the land, appreciating art and having a holistic view as the basis of this creative process.

- [William] When the Museum of Modern Art reached out to Antonin Raymond and Noemi Raymond, and they were having conversations about that third iteration in a series of A House in the Garden, Antonin had suggested a team of people that included Junzo Yoshimura.

- [Narrator] The building, in this case, was done in Japan in 1953.

It was designed by Junzo Yoshimura.

Shipped to the United States, it was reassembled in the spring of 1954 with great care and the usual precautions.

- [William] Yoshimura, his experience in this country channels through Raymond Farm.

- He actually lived on the farm for a while, while he was building Shofuso House.

To think that he was actually here experiencing with my grandparents' nature and the farm, and the farm life was very interesting to me.

- It is becoming a more nationalistic era worldwide.

So it's a very complex period that he's experiencing, but then at the same time, able to visit these Quaker farmhouses, being able to experience Shaker architecture and really finding a close connection to that actual craft.

- When my father came to Japan in 1934, he was curious about his Japanese roots, about the aesthetics that he sensed was there.

And he worked with Raymond on several projects and became very close friends with Junzo Yoshimura.

And Junzo, he knew a lot and had seen a lot of Japanese architecture, and he was delighted to have this Japanese-American friend who didn't know about that and was curious about it, and he took him to all kinds of temples, and they must have talked about the aesthetics of architecture and the way that it blended in with its landscaping and the structure that manifested the way that the building was used and the flexibility of the interior spaces and the openness to the exterior spaces.

And I think that Dad realized that, and probably through Junzo's introduction and instruction, that this is kind of the epitome of Japanese architecture.

- [William] Junzo just knew how to get into the mindset of Japanese classical architecture, but also to understand that he could do incredible modern architecture at the same time.

Junzo brought alive these traditions and while MoMA was inclined to do something out of tradition, he really brought it alive, so it was obvious that he should be the one to design this house, and so they commissioned him to do just that.

- That presence in New York and the connections that he has through that really are the basis for a huge range of work, the Motel on the Mountain, a residence for Nelson Rockefeller, the Japan House, which becomes known as the Japan Society of New York, he becomes the emblem of Japanese architecture or architects in the United States through this increasingly broad range of work.

- Once the Japanese exhibition house closed at MoMA, had been moved to Philadelphia, that also opened up an extraordinary period in Junzo's work where he was not only doing work in Japan, he actually was getting to do work in the United States.

But for an architect to actually build outside of their own country, even in the post World War II era, that's fairly rare.

- "I owe so much to Junzo and his deep understanding "of the Japanese psyche and culture.

"He felt too, my yearning to understand it "and took me in hand.

"He knew so well the elegance and power of simplicity, "the beauty of proper materials in building, "the delicacy of unfinished wood, "the traditional and modern creative proportions "where the error of a fraction of an inch "can make the design fail absolutely.

"He knew these things well "in both the time-honored Japanese design "and in the free, modern concepts, "and he passed them on to me."

- [Narrator] The idea that a house is a roof is not an unusual one.

There are two decisive elements, the structural cage below and the roof above, one expressing the characteristic sense of construction, the other, the sense of shelter.

Both elements are required to make a home into a house.

- Antonin and Noemi had 18 years to work in Japan before the outbreak of World War II.

By the time they do the Tokyo Golf Club in the 1930s, it's very cutting-edge, modern architecture, built of concrete, beautiful indoor-outdoor spaces and other elements, all designed by Noemi, by Antonin and kind of as a seamless whole.

And so it created an entirely new vocabulary of architectural thinking within the Raymonds' work.

- Seeing the way my grandfather worked on the engineering of the trusses in the buildings, whether it was in 1920s or much later, you see the influence of the Japanese craft.

It was always form, function, angle, color, shape for a building or a roof line or a new piece of furniture.

- [William] There was this incredible creative collaboration between Noemi and Antonin.

While she was not an architect, she was a designer of spaces, she was a designer of furniture.

She had an eye for detail and for color and for engaging with the world around her, which came out of her training as an artist in New York City.

- [Charlotte] Throughout my career, I've always gone back to how my grandmother looked at things.

With her colors, she would take colors from nature and you'd think, oh, it's gonna be browns and tans and soft colors.

But then she was throwing the orange and the bright purple and the blues, because when you go into nature and wild flowers, there are those bright, exciting colors.

- [William] The house that they purchased was first built in 1738, and it was added to over the years, particularly in the 1850s.

But there is fabric here that gets to the early history of Europeans, particularly English Quakers in the Philadelphia region.

- Seeing the way that he took a Quaker farmhouse, he kept the craft of the building, but then added the lovely Japanese influences for this farmhouse, and it's a wonderful one because it kept the best of both worlds and joined them together.

- [William] In Japan, traditional Japanese farmhouses were incredibly rich source of inspiration to the Raymonds.

Here in New Hope, they found an analog in the Quaker farmhouses.

So you get them exploring not only the common ground between traditional Japanese architecture and modern architecture, but also exploring the common ground between traditional Japanese architecture and the traditional farm architecture of the New Hope area and that applicability to modern architecture.

It was a place of working and living.

And at the center of this house was this wonderful dining table where they brought together people who were in the area for thoughtful discussion and engagement around meals.

- When we were kids, the dinner table was very important.

It was the most important part of the day.

My grandfather always had his spot at the end.

He would start to tell stories of his childhood because he loved talking about the farm where he grew up.

And he would laugh so hard, the tears would be coming down, streaming down his face, and he couldn't get the joke or the story out.

- [Narrator] The beam suggests the tree, and the tree suggests the beam.

Nature and art are thus united, reciprocally.

- The war broke out, and we were incarcerated in, I think it was March of 1942.

We went to Minidoka on the Idaho desert.

One of the good things that came out of that incarceration was that my father and this Japanese carpenter who was trained in Japan were together, given the job of trying to make the barracks more livable.

The wind and the sand came in, and Dad there took some of his blueprints and plastered them on the wall to keep the the wind out.

And he was very happy to work alongside this Japanese carpenter whose name was Gentaro Hikogawa, and he learned how to use Japanese tools.

He learned more thoroughly how to do Japanese joinery, and he also learned how to work with found materials.

My father's professor from MIT found out that we had been incarcerated, and he also found out that Noemi and Antonin had left Tokyo and were living in New Hope, so he asked them if they could possibly sponsor us to petition to get us out of the camp, 'cause he didn't think that was right.

And thankfully, Noemi and Antonin sponsored us, and we were able to leave the camp much earlier than most of our relatives who were there.

We came in 1943, and Dad was not allowed to work on any of the architectural projects, 'cause they were government projects.

(laughs) But Antonin and Noemi insisted that they needed someone to help with chicken farming, so that's what he did when we came to Raymond Farm.

(chickens clucking) - The Nakashimas live on the Raymond Farm for about a year.

Nakashima is able to begin a studio here at the Raymond Farm that grows into the George Nakashima Studios over on Aquetong Road.

- When we first came to New Hope, it was a way to get out of camp, of course.

But when he found out that the name of the community was New Hope, it had a special significance for him.

He realized, I think, from his training in the Raymond office, how important (indistinct) was, that the orientation of the buildings in relationship to the sun was really important, so that's why he fell in love with his site, because it's a south-facing slope.

- [Charlotte] I believe my grandfather really picked his locations of his buildings for the vista and the way that the slope runs down.

The most intriguing thing when people come here is they come through the front, and it's a traditional farmhouse, but they walk through the door, and (inhales) your breath is taken away.

- Dad liked to take long walks, so he must have walked all the way down here to this site on Aquetong and thought it was a really nice site, because it's a south-facing slope.

And he found the owner of the property, who was a farmer, and convinced the farmer that my father would work off three acres of property in exchange for the land.

The owner agreed, and we lived in an old army tent for almost a year while dad started building the buildings.

And he built the shop first, because he knew he had to have a place to work and to make money.

(saw buzzing) - And the shop was first a place where he could make furniture, and he was the only person making furniture at that time.

The family lived, and it was also the showroom.

So talk about multipurpose spaces, in this case, built out of getting a new start, so it built out of frugality.

- We had an old car, and he'd go along by the side of the road and collect rocks.

He'd get out and throw it in the back of the car, and then we'd drive home and put it in the wall.

(laughs) And I remember, I was only five or six at the time, but he says, "Okay, I need a stone this size for the wall.

"Go get one," so I was the assistant mason at that time.

- Over the years, George was able to build a new building anytime he needed space to do something.

By the late 50s, he's getting more success.

He builds a wonderful studio called the Conoid Studio.

It sits on the land in some ways like this wonderful primitive animal, standing on the landscape with two sturdy arms reaching out into the landscape and pressing this wonderful window with a sliding door out into the treetops.

But it's made of concrete, and it's all about the roof.

Well, a lot of Japanese architecture is all about the roof.

So even though it looks incredibly modern, it's a thin concrete shell structure.

It also has a deep resonance with certain Japanese traditions.

You can see where artists and architects in the modern era are improvising a bit with those traditions and are more freely rendering them.

Shoji are really great at diffusing light, at modulating light.

And the modulation of light in architecture is one of the central ways of bringing art into architecture along with proportion, the beauty of construction.

All of these are values that the Raymonds, Nakashimas and Yoshimuras embraced in their way.

(gentle music) - [Narrator] A house is a roof, and so the thickness of the eaves sometimes is exaggerated to produce an illusion of greater weight and density, stimulating the sense of shelter.

- [Mira] My father was more interested in engineering and building than he was in the Bauhaus.

That was reinforced by his experience.

He literally had to be hands-on when he was working with the carpenters at the Raymond office.

That's when he switched to furniture.

He said, "Well, furniture is the same as architecture, "it's just a smaller scale."

So he felt that was a good translation.

He could be in control of the entire process of design and building something from the beginning to the end, and that's why he went into furniture instead of architecture.

It's the engineering discipline that's at the heart of it, but it's also that plus the respect for natural forms, the respect for the material itself, which comes from the Japanese aesthetic and the idea of kodama, the spirit of the wood.

- This is a very rich environment to work in where there's almost a spiritual dimension to this landscape being in the presence of this landscape, and that you could draw energy out of that, and George did.

I think he asked that of the people he worked with, not to be devotees, but to recognize that working in an environment of this gives you something as an artist.

- [Narrator] Space, light, air, openness of plan, and lightness of appearance are essential to the conception of a house.

- While it appears in some ways and has taken the guise of a house, it is really a machine for seeing.

- [Ken] The function of how light comes in, how you sit really does become central to this, not simply as a style of elements, but how do you appreciate the garden, the sound of the breezes, the sound of the water, really experiencing whether it's cold or hot, and gets to the core of what this tradition of domestic architecture is all about.

- [Narrator] Space, light, air, the abode of fancy, the abode of vacancy, the abode of the unsymmetrical.

- [Ken] When we look at these sites of Shofuso the Raymond Farm and the Nakashima Studio, I think they're very special spaces of living, working, art, all coming together that's lived its experience and the artwork itself is living.

- This kind of agrarian lifestyle is part of being an artist.

You live close to the land.

You live close to nature, and that becomes an important part of your aesthetic and your way of being.

(bright music) - [Charlotte] I feel very privileged to be able to say that we preserved the property.

Throughout history here, great artists have come through.

(rain falling) - [William] Japanese classical architecture, in one of its most important ways, is really about connecting the individual within a house and looking at the garden beyond.

So it's about setting up a way of looking at the world around you and just being very profound and deep and expansive in how you open up the nuances of that through the materials you choose as an architect, through the design of the garden by the garden master, by the way that the person lives in the house, and how they create a moment for a guest.

And so when I think about Shofuso, it brings centuries of exploration of how to engage with the world around and this incredible shared legacy between the Raymonds, Yoshimura and the Nakashimas, and how there's so many ways of connecting with it today.

(bright music) (rain falling)