{"id":153364,"date":"2025-11-25T19:08:16","date_gmt":"2025-11-25T19:08:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/153364\/"},"modified":"2025-11-25T19:08:16","modified_gmt":"2025-11-25T19:08:16","slug":"architectural-kintsugi-is-filling-buildings-with-beauty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/153364\/","title":{"rendered":"Architectural kintsugi is filling buildings with beauty"},"content":{"rendered":"

Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for free<\/p>\n

Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.<\/p>\n

Artist Wycliffe Stutchbury\u2019s installations of undulating oak shingles normally adorn the walls of a gallery, but for a 17th-century stone barn near the Black Mountains of Monmouthshire, Wales, they are less delicate artwork than a vast protective cloak. Oak panels wrap around its exterior, forming rippling fringes. They sensitively repair the structure, which had been crudely patched up with breeze blocks several decades before. \u201cI\u2019m a big believer that if something needs repairing or propping up, you should declare the changes you have made, not try to pretend they are part of the past,\u201d he says.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a chic outfit for something that stores lawnmowers and tools. But the owner saw it a canvas for the artist to experiment on an architectural <\/a>scale. Stutchbury harvested the oak from fallen branches in the surrounding woodland, machining the timber on site before \u201cstitching\u201d the delicately hewn pieces into the masonry, working intuitively, without following a preset design.<\/p>\n

\u201cI see this kind of unplanned intervention as a way to connect a building to the landscape,\u201d says Stutchbury, who has gone on to create a facade for a house in Quebec.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"AStutchbury\u2019s work on the facade of a house in Quebec, Canada \u00a9 Wycliffe Stutchbury\"Detail\u2018I see this kind of unplanned intervention as a way to connect a building to the landscape,\u2019 he says <\/p>\n

Visible mending has long been a trend in fashion. The ancient Japanese art of kintsugi \u2014 which repairs broken pottery with lacquer mixed with powdered gold, silver or platinum \u2014 has also experienced a surge in popularity. Cracks and imperfections in the built environment, however, often conjure a fear of poor workmanship or structural defects; remedial work is mostly intended to make something look as it was when it was new. But there\u2019s a movement to change how we think about repair in architecture.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Its roots are also in street art. Since 2007, Franco-German Jan Vormann has been filling cracks in buildings around the world with Lego bricks \u2014 and encouraging others to do the same through his Dispatchwork website. Street artist Ememem \u2014 dubbed \u201cThe Pavement Surgeon\u201d \u2014 transforms potholes in his home city of Lyon with mosaics. New York artist Rachel Sussman riffs on kintsugi by filling pavement and flooring fissures with tree sap resin, bronze and gold dust. <\/p>\n

For Sussman, the act is a metaphor about care. \u201cThe idea that [kintsugi] renders something more beautiful for having been broken really struck a chord with me,\u201d she says. \u201cBringing the specialness of gold into the mundane or overlooked can be a reminder to tend to our own cracks.\u201d Museums and other public organisations have invited her to burnish their flaws.<\/p>\n

\"ColorfulJan Vormann\u2019s Lego repairs on a building facade \u00a9 Belish\/Dreamstime.Colorful mosaic titled “Vocate Matrem Tuam” by Ememem embedded in cobblestones, with a person walking nearby casting a shadow.m\"Colorful\u2018Vocate Matrem Tuam\u2019, a mosaic by the French artist Ememem on the pavement of Paris \u00a9 Giuseppe Anello \/Dreamstime.com<\/p>\n

In Japan, architecture firm Tank actively encouraged cracks when it was renovating an apartment in Kyoto, eschewing modern flooring plasters for a traditional recipe prone to fissures \u2014 something \u201cusually deemed inferior work\u201d, it says. It filled those cracks in the living room floor with gold coloured epoxy-resin to transform \u201cwhat was considered imperfect into a subject of beauty\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The idea that kintsugi renders something more beautiful for having been broken really struck a chord with me<\/p>\n

Artist Rachel Sussman<\/p>\n

When creative director and stylist Liz Gardner was renovating Maison Bodega \u2014 her 1920s Minneapolis home and creative studio designed by the architect Ernest Kennedy \u2014 she ignored advice to pull out the damaged original tiles in the main bathroom. Instead she commissioned artist Jonathan Janssen to work kintsugi\u00a0magic on the walls. \u201cWe were committed to allowing time to be made visible,\u201d she says. \u201cInstead of hiding every crack or intersection of materials, we embraced them, even highlighted them, following the principle of the palimpsest.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2018, Cornwall and St Austell councils began a \u00a31.5mn National Lottery-funded initiative to regenerate historic shop fronts with contemporary ceramic installations, inspired by the region\u2019s past as a centre for china clay production. Charlotte Moore designed two facades in 2023: \u201cEdible Hinterlands\u201d, created with Maria Saeki, clads a caf\u00e9 and an apartment with hollowed glazed tiles planted with edible wild flowers, while \u201cCornubia Tropicus\u201d fronts a gift shop and home, capturing the plants that have recolonised the post-industrial landscapes around the town.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"ACreative director and stylist Liz Gardner commissioned artist Jonathan Janssen to work kintsugi\u00a0magic on the walls of her home in Minneapolis \u00a9 Dane Tashima\"Ceramic\u2018Edible Hinterlands\u2019 by Charlotte Moore, a ceramic tiled facade in Cornwall, was inspired by the region\u2019s heritage as a centre for china clay production <\/p>\n

\u201cWithout these repairs, extensive demolition works would have had to be carried out,\u201d says Moore. \u201cThey represent a slow, non-extractive method of repair and their longevity in part relies on the nature of the design and the material itself.\u201d The tiles work equally well in residential projects. <\/p>\n

But planning laws and building regulations can sometimes inhibit creative expression \u2014 particularly in conservation areas or when properties are heritage listed \u2014 as British interior designer Jonathan Reed and his artist husband Graeme Black found when reviving a derelict, Grade II-listed Regency house in the Yorkshire Dales. Almost all of its original features remained, which meant the conservation officer scrutinised every detail of their work.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you\u2019re trapped in the conservation world working on an old house, it\u2019s hard to create something of \u2018now\u2019, but all the great houses have had interventions at different times and that\u2019s what makes them interesting \u2014 joyful even,\u201d Reed says. He points to Lindisfarne Castle in Berwick-upon-Tweed, a 16th-century fort heavily modernised by Edwin Lutyens at the turn of the 20th century.<\/p>\n

\"AArtist Ruth Wilkinson\u2019s mosaic adder, made from broken pottery, slithers across the Yorkstone flag floor of Jonathan Reed\u2019s Regency house in the Yorkshire Dales <\/p>\n

Reed found small chinks in which to add a contemporary spirit, however. When he relaid the Yorkstone flag flooring over underfloor heating, crevices remained where the previous tenant had installed a heating pipe. These were \u201cbegging for some kind of intervention\u201d, so he commissioned Yorkshire-based artist Ruth Wilkinson to fill them with mosaics made from broken pottery dug up during the renovation. A series of adders now slither across the floor. \u201cThe mosaics are a bit of a folly but they\u2019re the thing that makes everybody stop and say, \u2018Isn\u2019t that fantastic?\u2019 They\u2019re so unexpected,\u201d says Reed, pointing to one snake that is coiled up in a crack at the foot of the dining table.<\/p>\n

Recommended<\/p>\n

\"Sebastian<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cAs a culture, we seem to have decided that it\u2019s better to return everything to how we imagine it was when it was first built,\u201d says Reed. \u201cBut is it not better to create something new than to reproduce something that you believe might have been there in the first place, but you don\u2019t really know exactly?\u201d<\/p>\n

Find out about our latest stories first \u2014 follow @ft_houseandhome<\/a> on Instagram\u00a0<\/p>\n