Fogo Island by Saunders Architecture

Orientated towards the sea, the studios offer their residents the perfect view of elemental extremes and seasonal changes. Each one has its own unique design and is connected to one of the island’s communities While several studios stretch out over the water, some of them reach upwards, such as the tall, origami-esque Tower Studio, pictured here Orientated towards the sea, the studios offer their residents the perfect view of elemental extremes and seasonal changes. Each one has its own unique design and is connected to one of the island’s communities

Fogo Island artists' studios by Saunders Architecture

The Long Studio structure hovers on a series of stilts that lift it off the ground to frame a view of the Atlantic

Fogo Island artists' studios by Saunders Architecture

An external view of the 30 sq m Bridge Studio, one of a series of artists' studios on Fogo Island by Saunders Architecture, is located at Deep Bay on the west coast

Architecture update: Letter from Japan

Priorities have changed radically since we last took an in depth look at the Japanese architectural landscape. The country is now anxious to pull its economy out of a recession stemming from March's devastating Tōhoku Earthquake and tsunami, as well as the problems related to the stricken Fukushima nuclear plant. The natural disaster plunged the Asian nation, the world's third-richest economy, into its worst crisis since World War II, but widespread reconstruction works are now underway, with architects taking a key role in the most damaged areas, constructing temporary relief facilities as well as new sustainable master plans. The design community has also come to the fore, expressing its support with art, graphics and products in the hope of raising money. Current power shortages have forced the Japanese to limit their energy consumption, a phenomenon that architects have picked up on as a new starting point of design. Fresh ideas on living 'the old way' (a traditional Japanese house was built to resists its souring hot summers without the use of air-conditioning) are characterising new designs and the architects are making a virtue of necessity. Here, we take a look at several of the small building projects that are currently sprouting up in the country, all of which have been designed with freshly environmentally conscious minds.

'Het Huis' by Robbrecht and Daem for Middelheim Museum, Antwerp

Architecture practice Robbrecht and Daem have designed a new semi-open pavilion in the Hortiflora flower gardens of Antwerp's Middelheim Museum. Photography: Joris Casaer

'It's absolutely not a white cube,' says Belgian architect Paul Robbrecht about the new pavilion his Ghent-based practice Robbrecht and Daem(also responsible for the renovation and extension of London's whitechapel Gallery has designed for the Middelheim open-air sculpture museum in Antwerp. Pointing out the exposed columns and 'knots' where the beams have been welded into the green steel structure, he adds: 'What we really wanted to do was make a building that shows how it is built, that shows the tectonics of construction.'

 The brief for the semi-open structure was straightforward. 'It was for a pavilion that would have real contact with nature, with the landscape around it, a place where smaller or fragile works of art could be shown, or works that needed a more framed setting,' says Robbrecht. The colourful but unsettling glossy ceramic heads and urns of German artist Thomas Schutte displayed here were created especially for the pavilion's inauguration and contrast ingeniously with the smooth concrete floors, geometric lines and angles of the roof and the special 'topography' of the ceiling, which 'looks as if it's moving'.

The pavilion represents nature in architecture, says Robbrecht. Two trees have been planted at opposite ends of the space and steel lattice-patterned screens (which can be pulled across the four openings to close the pavilion at night) create extraordinary dappled effects as if light is coming through the branches of a tree. 'You could almost think it's a roof of leaves above you,' Robbrect says excitedly.

The rise of Thimas Heatherwick says a great deal about the fragmented state of visual culture, as well as our collective understanding of the way architecture and designs gets commissioned, constructed and publicised.

 To the general population,Heatherwick is now best known as the man behind the new London bus and the UK's pavilion at the 2010 Shanghai Expo. This breadth of ability implies that the studio is similar in scope to any number of big design agencies, as adept at branding, strategy and marketing as the actual art of design. But in truth, Heatherwick Studio has grown out of a very hands-on tradition, that of the artist-maker, the craftsman, the master builder and the artisan. In a world where creativity is predominantly a digital process, Thomas Heatherwick has injected an analogue sensibility.

In 2001 Heatherwick took part in the now-defunct Conran Foundation Collection show at London's Design Museum, in which a sole guest 'collector' was given £30,000 to assemble a gallery's worth of inspirational objects. The designer responded by assembling 1000 things, drawn from all spheres of life and corners of the globe, but all demonstrating an evolutionary quirk or visual eccentricity that transformed them from the familiar into the useful and unusual.

This is perhaps his most important legacy - the reintroduction of the atelier. Heatherwick Studio brings together some 80 professions, including architects, designers, technicians and writers, and their approach is unified and coherent. Of course, cross-disciplinary studios are a mainstay of modern practice, but few designers can lay claim to such a broad spectrum of experience. For this reason, Heatherwick is a tough act to imitate, let alone follow, leaving one of Britain's brightest - and still youngest - design talents with the world at his feet.