Minimalist oasis

Few things can be more pleasurable than kicking off your shoes and slowly padding through a calm, dimly lit space after you’ve braved the endless aisles of the Milan furniture fair. For those who strayed into the city’s Triennale arts centre last week the Tsunagu ‘model home’ installation by Japanese architect Kengo Kuma therefore came as a rare treat. Working with developer Mitsui Fudosan Residential, Kuma’s concept for Tsunagu – meaning ‘connect’ – creates connections between spaces that flow naturally into each other, inside and outside – with a bath placed ambitiously for northern Europeans on an external veranda (pictured above, centre) – and East and West. You pass through the bamboo screens that constitute walls via the doma – ‘earth room’ – with its agonisingly simple Tsukuba water feature created by Kenya Hara into the minimal living space. The bedroom is a place for uncluttered dreams, with its beautiful, hammock-style Western bed and fold-out wardrobe, created by Italians Fabio Calvi and Paolo Brambilla. The project, a dummy run for interior elements that could be introduced into the company’s Park Homes, is Mitsui Fudosan Residential’s first collaboration with external designers. Let’s hope there will be many more.

Tsunagu – or Connect was shown at La Triennale di Milano, Viale Alemagna 6, Milan during the Milan furniture fair