transmitting / slowing down Mokuhan | woodblock printing | Kenji Takenaka
Josep Coll Aumatell
/Mike Marcel Munier
The craft of Mokuhan, woodblock printing, is a dying art in Japan, as there are only 70 practicing artisans left. One print can take up to two months and the materials used, such as the wood from the Yamazakura tree, ink and hoso paper, are scarce and need extensive processing. The produced Ukiyo-e prints always depicted contemporary motives in the past. To connect the past practices with the current present, the project focuses on the printing of pop-culture motifs, inspired by David Bull, to reintroduce the craft into society.
Situated between local forests for wood sourcing and popular areas of central Kyoto, the project site is in Teramachi-Dori. It is one of the shopping arcades as a covered street in Kyoto, consisting of art galleries, cafés, markets and manga shops. The proposed project consists of a small shop, exhibition space in an existing machiya and a new workshop, woodblock archive and sawmill to process local woodblocks in an extension. The interior space is organized to transition from consumer space to craft space, slowing the visitors more and more down the further they get into the building.
A curved wooden roof is broken up by patios for various displays that also protrude out of the roof as space for the manga shelf, woodblock archive and the drying rag for the wood slabs. Further the roof shape allows it to collect the water in the patios and help support the structural weight.