木漏れ日 [komorebi]
Japanese: (n.) “sunshine filtering through leaves”
There is perhaps no English translation for the Japanese concept of Komorebi, a description of the dappling of light as it filters through the forest.
Yet the experience is universal, immediately understood by any who have wandered amongst the trees, transfixed or inspired by the interplay between the light and the leaves and the landscape.
Our Komorebi brings the bare wood of winter out to the frozen river as a memory of the leaves and their luminesence. It is a place to pause and experience the movement of time as the light washes over the textured surface morphing constantly inside and out.
This unbuilt shelter concept celebrates both the complexity of nature, and the refined simplicity of her designs. The multitude of leaves are just a single simple timber section, reduced down to a most efficient module, notched, and repeated to create complex ornament.
Komorebi is amorphous and impermanent. It is simple pleasure, an appreciation of light, of material and of time.
Year: 2016
Location: Winnipeg, Canada
Collaborators: Marcin Kitala, Dmitry Troyanovsky