Tane Garden House

Made entirely of local materials, the compact garden house emphasizes both sustainable production and function

The Garden House by Japanese architect Tsuyoshi Tane (born 1979) is the latest building on the Vitra Design Museum campus and the first designed with the climate crisis in mind. Tane approached the building from the viewpoint he articulated in his manifesto Archaeology of the Future: “I believe that a place will always have memories deeply embedded in the ground and in history. And that this memory does not belong to the past, but is the driving force that creates architecture.” To eliminate the harmful environmental effects of modern construction, he used only above-ground materials such as stone, wood, rope and thatch, and employed local craftsmen to construct the site. Tane’s unique architectural approach is conveyed in this publication through a lively collage of statements, drawings and prototypes.