About ÉKRITS

Experience in designing is nothing but practice. To head for practice, you need to find a way called method. Also, to take the right method, you want to seek for theory to pave it. And you get to theory by way of thoughts, which you gather around through experience. This is how experience will form a path like a circular ring for designing.

Even though method and theory could be generalized and shared, practice and thought would rely entirely upon personal experience. So we are resolved to move back and forth, by way of text, between practice and thought which can be read in a variegated way.

It is just like we can enjoy different perspectives while strolling around the city in our everyday life. Practice is to walk up and down the streets, looking around the city. The facial looks and bustling voices of the people around you would turn into text for practice. Thought is, in contrast, to look down on the city to see the whole. The bodies and their networks of the moving, intersecting crowds would turn into text for thought. And, just like representing the city by sketching and mapping on a single sheet of paper, we should be able to unite practice and thought, by totalizing human texts.

We hereby present this idea with the name of our place —— ÉKRITS.
(écrit is the French word which means something written.)

The text written here would encompass a group of elements involved in designing, from experience to architecture. Experience is a sketch of the city. It’s all about practice. Architecture is a map of the city. It’s a drawing made with thought.

We would like to help you gain your own experience in the course of the daily practice, and read architecture by strolling around variegated thoughts.

And we hope, over time, the relationship between you and us will also mature as a circular ring.

Written by Hiroshi Obayashi – Publisher / Editor in Chief
Translated by Noriyo Asano