Spring Garden, Tomoki Shibasaki
book-japan
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VIEW PALACE SAEKI III
Tarō is around thirty. After his divorce, he moves alone into View Palace Saeki III, an apartment block in Tokyo scheduled for demolition. His lease is still valid, so he remains one of the few residents left. He does not look for a new apartment or plan a new life. He waits until moving becomes unavoidable.
Tarō does not know his neighbours’ names, so he refers to them by the zodiac signs assigned to their apartments: “Mrs Snake,” “Dragon Woman.” People exist as elements within a spatial arrangement: someone lives one floor above, someone next door, someone has just moved out.
After his father’s death and cremation, Tarō grinds the remains in a kitchen mortar, preparing the ashes to be scattered. The gesture was meant to complete the ritual of farewell, but fragments of bone become lodged in the grooves of the mortar. Tarō cannot bring himself to wash it or throw it away. In its indentations, the last physical trace of his father remains.
THE BLUE HOUSE
Nishi lives in the same apartment block as Tarō. Several years earlier, she happened to buy a photography book called Spring Garden, showing the interiors and residents of the blue house across the street.
The blue house is not an ordinary building. It is an individually designed space with a garden, custom-made furnishings and carefully arranged interiors. The book presents not only the architecture, but also the lives of people connected with the arts who shaped the space around their own way of living.
Since then, she has regularly returned to the area to look at the house from outside. Over time, observation alone is no longer enough. She wants to see what remains of a place she has known for years only through photographs.
Natural Ellipse (ナチュラル・エリップス)
DARIUSZ PROLEJKO / Shibuya, Tokyo, Japan/
FULL REVIEW → TRANSPARENT BLUE ↗
VIEW PALACE SAEKI III
Tarō is around thirty. After his divorce, he moves alone into View Palace Saeki III, an apartment block in Tokyo scheduled for demolition. His lease is still valid, so he remains one of the few residents left. He does not look for a new apartment or plan a new life. He waits until moving becomes unavoidable.
Tarō does not know his neighbours’ names, so he refers to them by the zodiac signs assigned to their apartments: “Mrs Snake,” “Dragon Woman.” People exist as elements within a spatial arrangement: someone lives one floor above, someone next door, someone has just moved out.
After his father’s death and cremation, Tarō grinds the remains in a kitchen mortar, preparing the ashes to be scattered. The gesture was meant to complete the ritual of farewell, but fragments of bone become lodged in the grooves of the mortar. Tarō cannot bring himself to wash it or throw it away. In its indentations, the last physical trace of his father remains.
THE BLUE HOUSE
Nishi lives in the same apartment block as Tarō. Several years earlier, she happened to buy a photography book called Spring Garden, showing the interiors and residents of the blue house across the street.
The blue house is not an ordinary building. It is an individually designed space with a garden, custom-made furnishings and carefully arranged interiors. The book presents not only the architecture, but also the lives of people connected with the arts who shaped the space around their own way of living.
Since then, she has regularly returned to the area to look at the house from outside. Over time, observation alone is no longer enough. She wants to see what remains of a place she has known for years only through photographs.
Natural Ellipse (ナチュラル・エリップス)
DARIUSZ PROLEJKO / Shibuya, Tokyo, Japan/
FULL REVIEW → TRANSPARENT BLUE ↗
