Do We Really Need More Stuff? — with Japanese Architect Takero Shimazaki

0:03A home is to do with your necessity. I've not been very good personally with sort of a home as an idea of an investment. It's sort of a home stemming from the idea of your own needs and you know what do you need. I find that if you just chase status it becomes much harder to define this environment as a home. I've lived in so many different spaces, sometimes in a dormitory, which is not mine at all, obviously. And you live there for a year or something. But you spend your time with this act of homing, keeping things quite light, keeping things quite light-footed and touching the earth quite gently.

0:50Takero Shimazaki:Hello, welcome back to Homing. Today is a foundations episode and I'm in the studio with the architect Takiro Shimazaki. Takiro spent his early years in Japan but he's lived and worked in London for many years now. He's designed some very elegant private houses, some of which I've been to, and one of them was nominated last year for the Sterling Prize, which is basically architecture's equivalent of the BAFTAs. They're not big or flashy. They're much more thoughtful and understated. I think he's the ideal person to talk to about the idea of enough and the philosophy of making do with what we already have.

1:36Takero Shimazaki:Takeru grew up in Japan, where there's a long tradition of embracing imperfection and accepting that things age naturally. He tells me that he still wears the cashmere jumpers he inherited from his grandfather, and he extends this idea to homes. In his view we're not really owners at all, we're just borrowing things for a while. We explore what this philosophy means at home, how we might touch the earth more lightly, how to create spaces that feel calm and private even in the middle of a dense city, and how things like light, proportion and boundaries influence how we feel. I hope you enjoy listening.

2:21Takero Shimazaki:Hi, Takeru. Hi. Thank you for being on Homing. This word home is such a beautiful word with so many different connotations. How do you see that word? How would you define it? The more I think about it, it's quite a hard word or hard concept to define. I think it's quite a complex kind of idea but your title of homing you know this act of making a place home resonates a lot with me at first i thought it's something that's very private something personally for me it's something very personal subjective and yeah place that's really comforting and calming for me to do things that are yes very private um but at the same time the more i think and with what connect to what i teach or what i do in practice it is also some something quite public you know i think of sometimes the city as extension of your living room in that you know if so home is like a base like your base pad like a core yeah foundation space um but then you know i go and play tennis i go and you know uh watch a film i go to an art gallery and and sometimes i feel like i am in a living room in my own living room or at my house if i go to an exhibition or see a painting and being in front of that painting and just contemplating it could feel like an extension of a home is that because it's more of a state of mind i think so yes it's um in some sense it's not material as you say how your mood is how you're how you're feeling yeah the more i've talked to people on this podcast the more i feel that the word home is a psychological state rather than a physical structure and i think that's sort of what we're touching on here i i would love to take you back and just find out a little bit more about your personal experience of home how do you look back on the home you grew up in where did you grow up and what what was it like and what did it teach you i was born in japan um and initially started in a very small apartment outskirts of Tokyo and then my father built a house with my grandfather more central Tokyo this is 70s Japan so you know they were inspired by modernism and Japan was going through this kind of rapid growth so we lived in this kind of yes very modern laid out house with big windows you know white building for about 10 years i suppose okay um and then we moved to a new place not too far like another station stop um where my mother's father an architect um designed a house and um i saw the construction of it um I think I was 10 or 11, I saw the process of my mother and my grandfather discussing layout and etc.

5:54And that was really inspiring for me. And yeah, we moved there for about two years before suddenly my father decided to come to the UK to work for BBC World Service. And so that was a bit of a shock for me because we didn't have this concept of this world outside of Japan.

6:17Takero Shimazaki:How did that change your sense of home, would you say? I feel that Japanese homes are designed for summer conditions. So for extreme hot weather and humidity. so they tend to be more open and transparent and my grandfather used to talk a lot about ventilation that's why these courtyards are important because they draw air out from your spaces I feel that in the UK houses are probably more thought for winter conditions So I really enjoy the kind of coziness, you know, I've always enjoyed, I think, since I was a teenager, this kind of feeling of coziness of UK homes. I think both appreciate the sense of darkness or slight dimly lit spaces, but in different ways.

7:24Takero Shimazaki:I must admit, I love a courtyard house. There's something as well, isn't there, about this idea of sort of privacy and openness, and especially in a city. If I think about some of the houses that I've enjoyed visiting most over the years, it's actually often the ones that are very nondescript from the street. You know, I think of a house I went to once which was accessed by, you had to drive sort of along this little service road actually that ran underneath a kind of 70s block of flats and at the back there were some tumbled down garages which obviously belonged to the different flats you know the kind of thing with asbestos roofs and it was remarkable because one of these garages looked slightly more together than the others and within it was a door with a doorbell next to it and you rang that doorbell and this portal admitted you to a pretty amazing house.

8:24Takero Shimazaki:Yes. And I love that sense of theatricality, you know. And another I went to where, you know, it's a warehouse door with a smaller door within it and you open the small door and you have to crouch very low to get through. And it's almost like you're passing through a fallopian tube as you go through the entrance hall and then you get unleashed into this much more dramatic space. Yes. Does that resonate with you, the idea of a home that actually presents itself in a very blank way to the street. Yes, absolutely. I think I find that really interesting. And there was, well, we did do a house in North London, well, Northwest London near Queen's Park.

9:10Takero Shimazaki:I've been to that house. Yes. Where it is, as you say, it's very blank to the street. but inside we created, I mean, at the time we built the whole thing in concrete. And yeah, we were very, very interested in this idea of really reaching for something extremely personal and extremely hidden in an urban situation. Just for someone that wouldn't understand that, why is that a good thing? I'm not saying it's a good thing. It's an interesting thing. I suppose there's a lot to do with light as well, like this kind of sense of something quite sort of dim. And, you know, you have total control about light and noise and aspect, prospect or views, you know.

10:03There we made a garden in minus one level, which the subsequent owner has made it into this absolutely gorgeous kind of inward-looking oasis, really. Yeah, they've made it into this extremely personal space.

10:22Takero Shimazaki:I love that. There's this idea of sort of turning your back on the public realm and looking inward, and as you say, it's about darkness, introspection, Yes. But also the fact that you can connect with nature as well while doing that, I think is really persuasive actually. Yes. It's like a tiny tea house, you know, Japanese tea house. Yeah. It's tiny, but it's inward looking. And there is a whole big world inside that small space. Yeah. When you look deeper and deeper inwards. And that was what we were interested in. Yeah. There's something in here about status as well, I think, isn't there? Because we're kind of conditioned to believe that something that's quite overt, open, big, transparent, somehow projects a sense of status.

11:21Takero Shimazaki:Is that fair, do you think? Yes, I think it's very much part of our world. And we live in, I suppose, a very, you know, we live in a capitalist world. but I really enjoy you know someone saying that a home is is to do with your necessity I've not been very good personally with sort of a home as an idea of an investment it's sort of home stemming from the idea of your your own needs and you know what do you need and and I think that's true for both myself but also for our clients you know we really enjoy listening to each client's brief about what they need and what they would like what they what they love when it's something that is kind of speculative it gets harder to think about that home environment or design that home environment so yes when it becomes about something that is for external interest it starts to get harder to define the sort of i suppose brief and uh but also this idea of homing if you see yeah the act of act of making something a home becomes much harder unless as you say it's a kind of like a generic bunker that is transferable to other owners or i don't know it's a complex topic but uh i find that if you just chase status or even property as an investment it's it becomes much harder to define the this environment as a home maybe really interesting yeah um we're in the studio today not not in your home but but but your home i think you've described to me it's quite a modest place you it seems to me you don't have much in the way of personal possessions is that fair to say i try not to we all try um i think yes i mean you know we realized i mean we were living in a very small apartment in north london when our son was born and then we moved to South London and it's a I suppose a very typical Victorian three-bedroom house which I've done very little to over the years and I think my wife or my family would probably wish that we we would do a bit more we did a bathroom about 10 years ago it took us a long time you know me a long time to draw it and you know get the right builder and do do it uh do the renovation but um and we have planning permission for extension but we haven't really executed it you know i just don't seem to have the time or energy when i when i get to my own house to think about um the whole process you know planning application but also getting the builders getting the cost right and all of those things that i do daily that's so interesting to do that at home again is is is and for myself who you know who i suppose you know this sort of i could then become end up being the sort of the harshest critic so sort of yeah it puts me in mind a little bit of um i did a podcast with with sky ginjal the much miss sky ginjal i asked her what she would make herself for dinner and she says well i just get a tomato maybe a piece of bread i cut it up you know some nice olive oil that's what i eat and i i think this sort of the same thing i find it fascinating that as an architect who spends your entire day thinking about that that when it comes to your own environment you're short of time but also it sounds like comparatively happy to leave it be yes it it also has a lot of i mean if i'm being more serious about it i think there's a lot more in parallel with what i do in work or what we talk about in work which is to to do less or um we we did one year at you know my university uh teaching uh under the topic of enough already and that we all have enough of things already.

15:52We all have enough materials. It's just about the distribution of it. You know, how do we distribute things in the world? That's kind of more of a topic of conversation. We discussed that materially that there's abundance of things already and plenty of things and spaces. And it's about how you distribute that and how you kind of take care of that idea of repair, maintenance, longevity. And sometimes I imagine my own very ordinary Victorian house in the same way as this house in North London that you said you visited, this kind of concrete new house. It's not too dissimilar, you know, in terms of light quality that comes through these kind of Victorian windows, the darkness that it kind of creates on this kind of wooden flooring they're sort of a flexible box i think georgian houses townhouses and victorian houses are perfect you know they're amazing um proportion and you know many many generations have kind of worked into them extended them adopted them so they they have that kind of um already have that uh perfect build quality um sure we probably should insulate them a bit more and but they're they're perfect in terms of a living condition and um you know it's it's in some sense that's what we hope to achieve in our new build projects as well replicating those kind of yeah historical

17:33Takero Shimazaki:buildings um so so yeah my house i think i i reflect quite a lot of those things a lot of what i do in work in what we already have admirably my wife is spending a lot of time in the garden trying to make you know something out of this kind of small patch that we have um and it's it's quite stunning what she's done in the last five, six, more maybe, ten years. As a platform, I think the scope is quite infinite. And I also enjoy the intimacy of my study at home where I work, especially since COVID. We kind of still work in a hybrid way and I kind of find it um extremely um calming and um inspiring actually working from my small study which is kind of a guest bedroom but i bought a drawing board during covid and um that's become you know really exciting to work by hand at home and then i go into work to have a kind of a more of a group discussion on on what i've been drawing but also what everybody else has been drawing and we meet up to talk about that in the office there's something in us called the seeking system and the seeking system drives us to always try and get the next thing find the next thing acquire the next thing climb the property ladder you know find the perfect vase for our table and so on and so on and so on and that's a strong instinct and there's it's not a it's not a bad instinct it's obviously there for a reason because we're hunter-gatherers right we need to try and find stuff yes in order to thrive as a society yes but there's also a point where it becomes destructive somehow so yeah how do we work out what's enough do you think so one of the things i find it was quite sort of striking was as um when my father passed away two years ago, you discuss things like, you know, inheritance or who does this house belong to or this kind of conversation.

19:57And it really hit me that actually we don't own anything, you know, in the end, we actually don't own anything. We're just kind of temporarily using them or borrowing them or we're kind of inhabiting them.

20:17Perhaps same for clothes, you know, I've inherited a lot of second hand clothes from my grandfather or a watch that they've bought in the 60s and the 70s. But I've never actually bought a watch. I have lots of beautifully made cashmere jumpers from my grandfather's generation which if you can't buy them today really I mean they cost you a fortune to buy them but it's maybe similar with your house or home in that the period that you own something is actually quite limited as well because of lots of life events and you know like even noticing my son growing up so fast uh we often get asked to design for a family or you design like you know one three bedrooms for for them or and then they become empty quite quickly uh i had this very interesting conversation with this zurich-based young practice where they kind of did something quite provocative where they actually got rid of all the bedrooms kind of and um made this kind of like a curtain screened kind of, you know, space, series of spaces, which is not too dissimilar to traditional Japanese houses, which are screened off by, you know, rice paper screens, you know, so your bedroom becomes your dining room, becomes your living room, if you just fold your futon and put it away.

21:46So there's that flexibility in traditional Japanese homes. And yeah, so lots of life events have kind of made me think quite a lot about what is enough or what is. necessary uh and there's kind of whole temporality of ownership um you know because you quickly have to think about oh how do you pass something on to your next generation yeah how do you temporarily enjoy things i suppose and you don't probably perhaps then need to own so much it's about like maybe a flow a gentle flow of materials and properties yeah i love that yeah really beautiful

22:32Takero Shimazaki:i love the idea that you have your grandfather's cashmere jumpers that's just magical i mean you know you can't buy that you you go to uniqlo they even cost 100 pounds yeah it's amazing that something can withstand time like that yeah not only materially but also aesthetically yeah and I think that's such a great argument to extend it to the home and think about what's the home's equivalent of the cashmere jumper. Because then the things that we have, they endure and our children can use them too. Yes. You know, I think that's a really, that's a really great exercise to think about that. If we do need or want to acquire something, can it be something that we can imagine our grandchildren using?

23:15Takero Shimazaki:I think it's a good exercise. Yes. Like I was excited that my son said, oh, I want to live here. for as long as I can about our house and our house is not an architect designed house or grand houses that we go and see or visit I was really happy that he's now coming on to 20 but like saying how much he likes our house which is a bit shocked why do you think that is? how do you think he would describe it? what does he say? I guess it's comfort, isn't it? I guess, yeah. And memory? Yeah, when I talked about, like, that I'm coming to talk to you, something my wife talked about was this sort of house is having memories, you know, house is having this sense of the past or some sort of sense of, yeah, narrative or memory that new build homes need to catch up on.

24:23Yes, exactly.

24:24Takero Shimazaki:You know, let's say that you move on from that house at some stage. What do you think of yourself you leave behind in there? Oh, gosh, good question. But for example, you know, it's interesting, yeah. Like when I was describing houses I lived in Japan, they're still so vivid. The things that we did there or things that we were thinking about as we were growing up there or things that I was inspired by or was aspiring to or those kind of things are still there, sometimes physically. um and recently um my sister moved back to live in the house that we grew up in um that my grandfather designed to convert upstairs the first floor into her own apartment her own environment and my mother lives downstairs since my father passed away and um And my sister, she's not an architect, but took great care in retaining as much as possible from the original house in the 80s.

25:36And, you know, she invited architects. Oh, I introduced her to architects and structure engineers. And they came and they were like astonished how well made the hidden beams were or, you know, the whole overall structure. um you know in japan you have to think about earthquakes and things like that as well so she admirably kind of set out on this journey to retain um yeah most of the structure that the uh the frame the flooring even uh but also furniture from our grandmother's generation it's just full of images of us growing up but now it's it's a different space but i see a column with marks and things like that which well that's it that's exactly

26:29Takero Shimazaki:right i i was thinking about there's this walter benjamin quote which is to live means to leave traces right and i really like that because i think that is it i think you know we might leave a scar on a wall from a party that we had or however it may be. I feel like we leave these layers somehow in the fabric. Yes. But as to what we leave sort of spiritually, that's obviously a lot harder to define. But I'd love to pivot to sort of looking at city living specifically. I mean, on this theme of sort of materials that we've touched on briefly, i personally i've talked about this on the podcast but i'm very sensitive to sound okay um so the way that a space is materially is quite important to me do you think about that when you're designing and and how do you feel about a sort of atmosphere of a place we'll talk about light but the atmosphere of a place in terms of the acoustics how does that feed into what you do yeah it's it's it's a big part of what we do um for example new house um had triple glazed so even though it was very open to the gardens all the um uh windows and doors were triple glazed and um when you're there you really don't feel in terms of the noise of of the the cityscape at all nor in the space in North London, that house.

28:05We also did an intervention at the Barbican Shakespeare Tower. Again, I mean, in that instance, it's high up. But again, you've got this kind of surreal sense of you're in the middle of the city but feel completely isolated other than the view.

28:30Takero Shimazaki:and it's magical i think and beyond beyond the glazing what how else can we mediate sound would you say so even in urban situations i think um trees help uh but also for both thermal and acoustic i think it's the build-up of walls um and i think you know we we've worked with stone at Niwa House for the first time as a thermal mass. But that's also worked very well, you know, for sound as well, not just for temperature. Rice screen, it's very light, you know, but in terms of sound, its insulating qualities are extremely good. Really? That's surprising. and um it's something that we had in our bedrooms in japan when my grandfather you know my grandfather's designed house all of the children's bedrooms didn't have um a window or wall we just had these rice paper screens shoji shoji screens that you open and close but uh it's almost like Like, you know when it snows outside and you feel this kind of insulated quality of, a bit like here, this kind of sound being absorbed.

29:53It's a deadness, isn't it? Yes. It feels like that rice paper screen.

29:58Takero Shimazaki:Oh, nice. And I guess tatami matting as well has the same effect. Yeah, it absorbs sound. Yeah. Thresholds, Takiro. Doors, corridors, you know, things like that. how can we help people understand thresholds in architecture and why they are an important thing to think about yes very interesting um i think it's maybe related to this notion of just a you know gesture in terms of you know we talked earlier about privacy and boundary doesn't need to be privacy doesn't necessarily need to be i don't think like heavy walls you know to block sound completely or visual connection completely you know something i i i learned from traditional japanese architecture in terms of threshold or like you know open structures with threshold is that even those spaces themselves might be connected or open by indicating something on the floor or something around the kind of architrave or something around the frame of an opening creates this gesture of a threshold.

31:15Takero Shimazaki:That's interesting. What's an example of that then? So, as I said, it would be like a door, like a frame. I see. So rather than the door itself, you just have the frame. Exactly. Yeah. And in, I guess, like a Katsura villa or traditional Japanese architecture, there would be like a dark wood surround you know framing a view as well as a and often they would have as i say like a shoji paper a screen uh within it but left open or you know and in the case of like niwa house um it's interesting to think that it's it's situated behind a series of terrace houses and you have to go through this kind of alleyway and so there's a sort of initial gate at the street level then you go in and you go through this kind of communal alleyway pathway and then you come to your front door which is probably the most significant threshold because you're going from a cityscape to a internal home and then the house is completely open otherwise once you enter the layout of the house is completely open but marked by series of these white painted frames and they kind of create this kind of a ritual of or gesture of boundaries depending on how deep into a private space you go into or and i guess yes i guess when you come to a bedroom there is a door yeah that's that's really interesting the way you describe that yeah i briefly lived in a house belonging to some friends years ago and it's actually they built it behind a georgian high street so there's a series of shop fronts and this has its own sort of warehouse door and you don't really know it's a house from the front but you get admitted into an initial courtyard and then there's another gate which you go through and then from there there's another holding space and another small warehouse door and then you get to the front narrow front door to the house, which then opens out almost like the beam of a torch when you go inside.

33:44Takero Shimazaki:So I liken it almost to being in a canal boat where you get admitted through a series of locks as you go. Yes. And I love that. There's something, there was something so dramatic about entering that house. You had no clue what you were going to get. Yes. But it was playing with drama and a sense of arrival as you went. And that's sort of what you're describing with, with your house as well. It's a series of thresholds that just make you pause and, and set expectations as you go yes and as i listened to you describe that i'm thinking so it's physical kind of um frame or architrave or a door threshold but also lighting quality changes as you move through these different spaces i think that's that's that's very interesting you know and exciting when you go in and maybe the first space you enter has a table lamp or something and then the next space has got a ceiling lamp light or yeah those kind of things are really interesting to create that journey yeah exactly right well let's move on to light but before you before we do i just wanted to also mention a house i've been to built by the architect adam richards in sussex and it's fantastic but one of the really great things about it is you walk into the entrance hall and the entrance hall is the smallest space in the house but it's also one of the tallest spaces so immediately the acoustics are quite strange you know and also the only thing in there is a pile of logs so you smell that so you're immediately aware that your senses are being played with you know that you're in the countryside because you kind of smell that wood and then you open the door into the main kitchen living space and it's vast like a great hall yes and of course then you know that that sense of contrast is really what makes it exciting and as you say that the light changes the scale changes um but i suppose you know applying that specifically to light because you brought it up how would you go about approaching light not from a technical standpoint because i think that's a bit dull but from an emotional standpoint especially with your japanese heritage i mean it seems to me japanese architecture handles light better than any other how do you look at light emotionally uh wow another another very interesting another podcast another podcast uh well light yes i mean it's it's always been really really exciting for me to think about light but architecture i think ultimately is about light and that's very very exciting because it's something you can't quite touch or grab or like you know um so it's very ephemeral and um i suppose yes i mean as well as uh um enjoying the construction site of my grandfather's timber frame house um where i was really sensing this kind of really interesting kind of flow of light natural light coming through this construction site my first encounter um with with this sense was um Tadao Ando's early work with houses and his work I mean at the time only used concrete as the structure so it was really about sculpting and guiding light and then from there you know I learned about other traditional of Japanese architecture, things like Katsura Palace.

37:20And then you come across a very sort of popular and famous book, In Praise of Shadows by Tanizaki. And there you really learn about this kind of appreciation of not just Japanese architecture, but Japanese art in general and how makeup in noo theater or kabuki theater or all of these things and how artifacts were made in consideration to the space and light connections. And I think Tanizaki describes this kind of journey of the garden outside, Engawa space, which is this in-between space with the roof hanging over this Engawa corridor around the perimeter of a Japanese house. And then you go into this kind of initial space and in a deeper space and so on.

38:16And then you discover a person sitting there and this kind of relationship. But also you talk about Adam Richards' house, which is highly inspired by Andrei Tarkovsky's film, Stalker. And I think, you know, Tarkovsky's films describe a very similar sensibility and emotion with light. this darkness to dimly lit space to lightness the whole film is really about light sculpting with light as he describes in his book so yes i think yes japanese culture but also you know internationally this kind of emotional uh engagement with light in spaces is something that is really really fascinating and um yeah one of the most exciting things about architecture and

39:12Takero Shimazaki:home yeah i mean you mentioned the essay in praise of shadows there that is really the touch point for all this stuff isn't it and you know lots of people talk about it but if anyone watching or listening hasn't read it i really do recommend it yeah you know as you say it's so embedded in japanese culture i mean i love the way he talks about even a bowl of miso soup yeah it's sort of dark and mysterious with with the white tofu floating in it it's always the contrast between light and dark and um you know the way that in japan they place uh ceramic in a in a recess in a very dark corner of the house yes so and somehow that darkness uh just sort of emphasizes its jewel-like quality.

39:57Yeah. And so I based my kind of, how do you say, final dissertation when I was a student on Embrace of Shadows. But particularly on the last chapter in the book about toilets, Japanese toilets. So I wrote about this kind of his view on toilets and surfaces, finishes. So at the time, I think Tanizaki was really, he wrote those essays to oppose this kind of pressure of Americanization and modernization in Japan. You know, this kind of thing of replacing all timber surfaces and materials with stainless steel and white tiles, white polished tiles. and in the book he complains about the fact that you have to keep polishing these materials these imported materials you know to keep this sense of clean cleanliness and tidiness and shine you know and he kind of poetically and emotionally talks about you know how the sort of traditional or japanese toilet space or houses made with wood and materials that basically age so he discussed describes a lot about the idea of i suppose these days people use the term wabi-sabi but this kind of idea of elements naturally decaying and appreciating those things and appreciating the rustic qualities and and that could only happen when you haven't got like this kind of beaming light you know onto these materials and you kind of enjoy you know what you were saying earlier about like a mark on a column or yeah they become part of the aesthetic of your environment well on that then i mean we've we've talked a bit about

41:57Takero Shimazaki:natural light and we talked about mediating it with screens and things like that but in terms of artificial light how do you tend to approach that because it's really tricky one isn't it we it's clear we don't want to over light spaces we've talked about that but what are there any particular rules or or ideas that you have more and more we work with um five amp circuits or like you know plug-in plug-in light lighting yeah the idea that you can you can enter a room and you turn the light switch on and you're not dazzled by overhead lighting but it's a soft exactly yeah and so you're lighting corners and areas right yes and we notice also that more and more of our clients don't really like recessed down lighters either you know where they become very present in the ceiling design um instead you know there's a lot more discussion about look not really having any fittings in the ceiling yeah um or when we do they they are a proper artifact some sort of a feature that you really kind of engage with this the space um in ways that they're trying to hide but not actually hiding kind of yeah um lights but at the same time yeah how do you make sure that your cook cookbooks are lit and you know as we all age as well like how do you deal with a sense of seeing so it's balance but um yeah you mentioned In wabi-sabi, this word imperfection, it's so important in Japanese culture.

43:46Takero Shimazaki:How do you describe that in the context of the home? Why is imperfection something that you're drawn to? I think imperfection is comforting in the end. You know, it feels to me that it's okay that things decay and things, but also in your own way of living, it's okay that, yeah, things need repair, maintenance, upkeep. Also, you know, as children in Japan, we actually learn to clean in schools. So we, it's our, how do you say, it's part of the learning. Part of the curriculum. Part of the curriculum too. So at the end of each school day, you push all your desks and chairs at the back of the room and we all clean the floor and mop the floor and sweep and polish the windows and so on.

44:46and in a way I think about that more and more because now because it's deeply embedded into Japanese culture this idea that you look after not just your home but cities you see lots of people cleaning in cities in Japan really diligently it's like religion in Japan that it's like that god is in all of this kind of spaces that like in a public loo or department store even i find that a really interesting culture um but at the same time this kind of idea of imperfection exists in japan as well um so so it's not imperfection doesn't mean that you just sort of like you know uh live like students and just throw things on the floor and you take care of things, but you let also things decay and it's okay that they, with all due respect to students, sorry, I didn't mean it in a disrespectful way, but it's just this about like, how do you really take care of things minimally, as in sort of live minimally and take care of things and look after things, mend things, but that it's also at the same time that things have their own life and lifespan and things age and texture and character would be added to these kind of surfaces and materials.

46:26Takero Shimazaki:What I like about that I think is that if you take that approach it actually makes you less anxious because I think when we spend a lot of time trying to keep things pristine let's say a floor that's really stressful you know a floor as we know that shows up every single crumb yeah it's really hard to live with yeah whereas a floor that stood there resolutely through the centuries and has absorbed all the footfall that's gone across it yeah well that's great you don't worry about it anymore yes exactly so i think it's a really good lens for choosing what you're going to live with materially yes is thinking well is this going to cause me anxiety am I going to have to keep polishing it?

47:06Yeah. You know? And some modern materials don't let that happen at all, which is good in many ways because they stay clean. Yeah. But they don't, there's nothing that gets added to that layer, you know, in terms of memory and, yeah, it's...

47:25Takero Shimazaki:Well, that's a good point as well. There's the addition of layers on top. Yeah. Yeah. The last thing I want to talk to you about is well-being or the idea of a home supporting you, not just physically, but emotionally supporting the psyche in some way. In your view and your experience, can a flat or a house somehow contribute to the way that you feel your happiness ultimately? Can it make you happier, would you say? Absolutely, yes. I've lived in so many different spaces, sometimes in a dormitory, you know, which is not mine at all, obviously, and you live there for a year or something. But you spend your time with this act of homing, you know, making it into a home, your home environment.

48:22And what is that? You know, and I think it's, it's a sort of surrounding yourself with subjective personal things you know as much as possible but b it's also having some link to something quite objective as well i think ultimately and i think about that quite a lot as an architect now because you know i'm designing other people's houses and homes so naturally you think about something that's deeply personal for our clients You know, we imagine kind of being them in a way, living there, listening to their brief, reading their brief, understanding their brief. But at the same time, try to link that to something slightly bigger as well, like something objective.