OSO

OSO is rated 3 out of 5 in the category architecture & planning. Read and write reviews about OSO. OSO is a design office based in Tokyo. With a foundation in architecture and a wider interest in art, the aim is to think creatively about space-making across all fields. As an international office, with mixed European and Japanese backgrounds, we have been inspired by the opposing principles of Western and Japanese art: the dominance of shape and meaning against the importance of space and feeling. In Europe landscape is background, nature serves the idea, and history transcends time; in Japan landscape fuses with content, nature defines the present, and the ebbs and flows of time are cyclical and everlasting. We ask why abstraction and experience are mutually exclusive, or if concepts cannot be more immersive. We believe the mix of bold gestures and delicate textures produce environments that elicit strong, evocative responses – experiences at once monumental and ephemeral. Buildings are normally seen, interiors are felt, but we strive to do both by focusing on space. While undeniably Western in our admiration for history and its timeless canons, much of our impulses are rooted in Japanese aesthetics, whose pursuit of small to large – the fragment becoming the object – has left a lasting impression on how to think about beauty without form.