Sfera Building

The Sfera Building is a culture centre in Gion containing an art gallery, a design shop, an art book and music store, restaurants, offices and a café.
Gion is the traditional district of Kyoto. The centuries old low, wooden houses share a typical feature: the sunscreen, made of bamboo, wood or rice paper. We wanted to find a way to make a screen that did the same thing, but in a new way. We picked some leaves from a small cherry tree. In our office, we laid the cherry leaves on a light-table and photographed them. Our leaf image transformed, with the help of computers, into a punched-hole pattern. The resulting facades were a ”leaf screen” that had a monolithic appearance, yet was actually transparent: a titanium veil, creating an intricate play of light and shadow on the interior.