Latent Sea: Latent Sea was one of the most imaginative, intense pieces submitted this year. It is designed to enhance our experiences of the sea, and touches all human senses: Smell, hearing, touch and even taste, as well as sight - Brief Article

Architectural Review, The, Dec, 2001

Soundings: the Latent Sea was one of the most poetic of all the pieces submitted this year, and was welcomed by the jury for its great sensitivity and inventiveness. The site is Wharf Two in the port of Onahama in the Fukushima Prefecture, Japan. The wharf is no longer used for commercial purposes, but is a public promenade, and the new installation is intended to enhance your phenomenal understanding and enjoyment of the ocean.

It has two parts, Wave, Wave, Wave and Sea-Cat Tails. The first is a giant bench 6 to 8m wide and 76m long, located at the sea end of the pier. Its gentle form, constantly changing three-dimensional curves of reinforced mesh, is positioned over a void in the wharf, so that the sounds and scents of the sea rise directly upwards. People stroll, sit or lie on the curved surfaces, each appreciating the waves below in different, personal fashion. The architects suggest that 'just as finding treasures among the driftwood that has washed ashore, the visitor collects his or her own sound out of the ocean murmur' that emerges through the metallic metaphor of the sea's surface.

Sea-Cat Tails are what the architects call 'sea stethescopes', tubes which pierce the deck of the wharf to scoop in the sounds of the water through their funnel-shaped ends. Each funnel is at a different height, and because of the random scatter of the tubes in Plan and different orientation of the funnels, each has a slightly different sound, depending on the state of the tide, and the shape and frequency of the waves: sighing or sucking, gurgling or glugging, whooshing or weeping, sometimes almost silent, susurrating and gently dripping when the funnel is above the surface.

At deck level, the Sea-Cat Tails have discs set at an angle above their belled-out mouths to reflect sounds to your ear. Each is a different height so some are appropriate for children, others are for standing adults, who have to kneel to hear the sounds of the lower ones. At night, each tail is lit from below by lamps that brighten and dim in reaction to wave activity. The whole becomes a luminous organism which gently seems to move in the rhythm of the sea. All the jury was entranced by the project's numerous layers of overlapping sensitivity.