Guest of the Season - Studio Okami - Architects אדריכלות ישראלית Architecture of Israel #133 May 2023 | | 74 guest of the season Okami Studio - architecture is life itself Shira Shenton Bram Van Cauter and Hans Vanassche first crossed paths during their internship at Crepain Binst Architecture, a prominent architecture firm at the time. The company had a well-structured office system, with about 70 employees, half of whom were under 30 years old. This structure became the foundation of their daily operations and remains a fundamental part of their current company, Studio Okami. Studio Okami's design philosophy identifies with Frank Lloyd Wright's organic attitude which sees architecture as an opportunity to make people understand their lives better by adding a rhythm that provides added value to the user's daily life to every building. This philosophy is expressed, deliberately or at random, in almost all of the studio projects, which are always seen as one or the another stage in a building's process, a kind of compromise between the existing and the desired planned product. In this context, the commercial name of their Antwerp Studio - "Okami" means a wolf in Japanese traditional culture, symbolizing the "spirit of the place", which according to both partners is the decisive starting point in their architecture. And not for no reason. The term, “spirit of the place” was an important point of reference in Christian Norberg-Schulz's book "Towards a Phenomenology of Architecture" (1979), focusing on the random circumstances of a particular user, in a certain place, at a certain time, that gives a particular structure its onetime meaning. Hence, the main role of architecture according to Norberg-Schulz, is to create significant places for a particular user. And for this, one should learn much from the history of the building, which is, by the way, in stark contrast to evacuation/construction projects, which tend to completely erase the old for meaningless buildings which have no binding connection between themselves and place. Although both partners have undergone different development paths, both believe that their systematic cooperation is what gives each project its uniqueness. Despite venturing off in different directions and exploring various countries to gain more experience in architecture, Bram and Hans maintained their friendship and stayed in touch. They had chance encounters, either professionally or as friends, that allowed them to reconnect and share their experiences. In 2014 Hans received a request from a prospective client and invited Bram to collaborate on their first project together. This collaboration led to the birth of Studio Okami. Bram Van Cauter and Hans Vanassche have been working together at Studio Okami for almost 10 years, completing over 40 projects during that time, sticking with the same recipe for success.
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