An installation created for the international exhibition Europalia Japan 89, Nave of Signs (1989) provides a perfect demonstration of the semantic and structuralist dimension of Hiromi Fujii’s architecture. Like writing, architecture is a code, a mechanism that generates meaning and is intended to be read. The point of departure for this project is a sketch of a simple cubic volume upon which a grid has been drawn. From this initial configuration, where the object can be read at a glance, Fujii developed strategies for involving the “visitor-reader” in a process of transformation of forms according to mechanics based on deconstruction. The grid that covered the cube is presented on fragments of the cube, which are the result of it having shattered; but it appears to be inverted in relation to its initial state, the solids having become voids and vice versa. The object produced still shows “traces” of its previous state. And, it is in the perception of this difference, in this “spatial stratification,” to use Fujii’s terms, between perceived state and mental reconstruction, that the visitor can semantically re-qualify the object being displayed. Unlike minimalist works for which the perceptual experience constitutes an end in itself, in this installation one is meant to perceive a sign, an original form which the fragmentation of the gaze enables the viewer to reconstruct through the interplay of differences.
