After the Crash: Architecture in Post-Bubble Japan

Thomas Daniell
Foreword by Hitoshi Abe, Afterword by Ari Seligmann
Princeton Architectural Press, New York

Published by Princeton Architectural Press 37 East Seventh Street New York, New York 10003 For a free catalog of books, call 1.800.722.6657. Visit our website at www.papress.com. 2008 Princeton Architectural Press All rights reserved Printed and bound in China 11 10 09 08 4 3 2 1 First edition No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission from the publisher, except in the context of reviews. Every reasonable attempt has been made to identify owners of copyright. Errors or omissions will be corrected in subsequent editions. Publication of this book was supported by a grant from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts. Editor: Linda Lee Designer: Jan Haux Special thanks to: Nettie Aljian, Sara Bader, Dorothy Ball, Nicola Bednarek, Janet Behning, Becca Casbon, Carina Cha, Penny (Yuen Pik) Chu, Russell Fernandez, Pete Fitzpatrick, Wendy Fuller, Clare Jacobson, Aileen Kwun, Nancy Eklund Later, Laurie Manfra, Katharine Myers, Lauren Nelson Packard, Jennifer Thompson, Arnoud Verhaeghe, Paul Wagner, Joseph Weston, and Deb Wood of Princeton Architectural Press Kevin C. Lippert, publisher Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Daniell, Thomas, 1967 After the crash : architecture in post-bubble Japan / Thomas Daniell ; foreword by Hitoshi Abe ; afterword by Ari Seligmann. 1st ed. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 978-1-56898-776-7 (alk. paper) 1. Architectural practiceSocial aspectsJapan. 2. Architecture Japan20th century. 3. ArchitectureJapan21st century. I. Title. NA1995.D56 2008 720.95209049dc22 2008000244

Contents

Foreword
Study on the Edge by Hitoshi Abe Acknowledgments Introduction

10 12

Genealogies and Tendencies

21 28 31 37 45

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Less Than Zero: Minimalism and Beyond Re: Contextualism Kazunari Sakamoto: Keeping the Faith The Visceral and the Ephemeral Kazuhiro Ishii: Meta-architecture

Domestic Spaces

50

53 57 60 63

The Refraction House Two Degrees of Separation The Hu-tong House Pushing the Envelope

New Prototypes

69 76 82

66

Brand Recognition: The FOB Homes System Reflecting Modern Life Living Dangerously

Public Places

91 97 102 106

88

The Sendai Mediatheque The Glass Library Immaculate Conception: The 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art Balancing Act: MVRDV in Japan

Revitalizing Metabolism

117 122 130

114

Organ: Metabolism without Megastructure Kisho Kurokawa in Malaysia Mirage City: Another Utopia

Nature and Artifice

143 147 155

140

Back to Nature Strange Attractor: Yokohama International Port Terminal Borrowed Scenery: Walking in the Footsteps of Laurie Anderson

Urban Views

186 163 170 176

160

Fitting In: Small Sites in Urban Japan Pretty Vacant: The Photographs of Takashi Homma Letter from Kyoto

Afterword
More Lines by Ari Seligmann Credits

192

Kazuo Shinohara, Tokyo Institute of Technology Centennial Hall, Tokyo, 1987, sketch

Genealogies and Tendencies

The relationships between the approaches that make up the protean landscape of contemporary Japanese architecture are best clarified by tracing their historical lineages. Comprising a variety of intertwining discourseshistorical, phenomenological, technological, functional, ritualeach design methodology evolved across many succeeding generations of teachers and employers. While drawing to some extent on aspects of Japanese tradition in their strategies of material assemblage and spatial composition, they all incorporate parallel influences from a wide range of other sourcesabove all Western modernism and Le Corbusier. An important conduit for the introduction of early modernism was Kunio Maekawa (190586), who spent 1928 and 1929 at Le Corbusiers Paris atelier, then became a mentor to Kenzo Tange (1913 2005) and by extension to Tanges students in the metabolist movement of the 1960s and their own progeny. The expressionism of late-period Corbu entered Japan via Takamasa Yoshizaka (191780), who worked for Le Corbusier from 1950 to 1952. Several of Yoshizakas students went on to form the idiosyncratic Team Zoo collective, whose work is one manifestation of a crucial yet often overlooked stream of Japanese architecture. A key figure who explicitly rejected Western influences yet appears on almost every branch of the family tree of contemporary Japanese architecture, from the most understated dirty realism to the most sophisticated diagrammatic minimalism, is Kazuo Shinohara (19252006), whose influence is present throughout this book. Across the four self-defined stylistic periods of his career, Shinohara addressed tradition and modernity, banality and mysticism, vernacular archetypes
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and futuristic sculptures. His effects on the discipline as a theorist,

designer, and teacher have been immense. Indeed, many of the former students of Shinohara, and their own successors, make up what is famously known as the Shinohara School. This term is now ubiquitous in discussions of contemporary Japanese architecture but first appeared in print in 1979 as the title of an article in the journal SD: Space Design1 that linked the work of Kazuo Shinohara to Kazunari Sakamoto, Toyo Ito, and Itsuko Hasegawa,2 all architects who have been highly influential on the following generations. The article was part of a regular series of critiques published under the byline Gruppo Specio, the pseudonym of a small group of postgraduate architecture students at Tokyo University. Gruppo Specio included Kengo Kuma and Kiyoshi Sey Takeyama, then students in the studio of Hiroshi Hara and themselves seen as part of the so-called Hara School (actually, Hara Schule, due to Haras love of the German language), which over the years has also included important contemporary figures such as Riken Yamamoto and Kazuhiro Kojima. The essays in this first section are provisional attempts to identify some of these evolving lineages and constellations of reciprocal influence.

1. Gruppo Specio, Shinohara sukuru no kenchiku [The Architecture of the Shinohara School], SD: Space Design 7901 (January 1979): 22328. 2. Sakamoto studied under Shinohara, later becoming his teaching assistant and eventually a professor at the Tokyo Institute of Technology (TIT). Hasegawa spent a period working for metabolist Kiyonori Kikutake before doing postgraduate studies at TIT, later becoming an assistant in Shinoharas studio. Ito worked for Kikutake at the same time as Hasegawa and, despite never having any official ties to Shinohara, maintained a close relationship with his circle.

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After the Crash

Less Than Zero

Minimalism and Beyond

In Hi-energy Field (30 September to 17 October, 2004), an exhibition of work by young artists held at Tokyos Tamada Projects Art Space, one of the objects on display was a table. Although completely mundane in shape and function, it was surreal in its proportions: a single sheet of perfectly flat 3-millimeter-thick (0.1 inch) steel, 9.5 meters (31 feet) long and 2.6 meters (8.5 feet) wide, supported only at its four corners by steel legs 1.1 meters (3.6 feet) high. Seemingly an optical illusion or magic trick, the extraordinary span was achieved by prestressing the tabletop and legs, giving them a slight curvature that then became straight under the tables own weight. Designed by Junya Ishigami, a young Tokyo-based architect, in a sense this table represents the culmination of a trajectory that many Japanese architects have been following for more than a decade. The post-bubble period has been dominated by architecture that tends toward simplicity, flatness, insubstantiality, and even banality. Like Ishigamis table, forms are reduced to the absolute minimum, surfaces are translucent or bleached of color, structure appears disturbingly inadequate, materiality is ignored or contradicted. With results that often seem intended as no more than temporary art installations, there tends to be an inverse relationship between formal purity and physical longevity. The overall effect is an apparent effortlessness that, of course, requires a huge amount of effort to achieve. The lucid, ephemeral beauty of this approach owes much to the buildings and concepts of Toyo Ito and Kazuo Shinohara and can arguably be traced back to sukiya carpentry and the delicate refinement of the traditional teahouse. This historical connection is most obvious in
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the essentially two-dimensional quality of the architecture. Just as the

Genealogies and Tendencies

spatial composition of traditional Japanese buildings can be almost entirely comprehended from their modular floor plans, much of this contemporary work comprises little more than flat diagrams of astonishing simplicity. These abstract schematicssimple geometric shapes, grids, spirals, parallel bands, concentric boxes, occasionally even freeform curvesare translated into built form with a minimum of articulation and elaboration. The cross sections provide almost no surprises; the spaces are effectively vertical extrusions of the plans. Designs that do display complexity in section generally have a complementary simplicity in plan, suggesting that the generating diagram has just been rotated 90 degrees. Indeed, the impact of this work is entirely reliant on the clarity of the organizational systems, although this does not necessarily imply functionalism: in many cases functional efficiency is sacrificed for the sake of maintaining the consistency of the diagram. The value of these diagrams lies in their instant comprehensibility. While defining spatial and programmatic relationships, they also act as logos or icons, graphic symbols that have a strong visual appealnotably, to competition juries, as clearly evinced in many recent prize-winning projects. For example, two new community centers, Onishi Hall (Gunma, 2005) by Kazuyo Sejima and the unbuilt Environment Art Forum in Annaka (Gunma, 2003) by Sou Fujimoto, appear to be nothing more (and nothing less) than the bubble diagrams an architect might make on the first day of design. The genius of the work lies in the materialization of the buildings without any loss of the childlike clarity present in the early sketches. The strength of this approach is even clearer in two recent competition-winning museum
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designs: the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art (Kanazawa,

After the Crash

Junya Ishigami, Table, 2004

2004) by SANAA (Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa) and the Tomihiro Museum (Gunma, 2005) by aat+ (Makoto Yokomizo). Despite being very different in their execution and experiential quality, they have an analogous planning strategy: simple geometric shapes floating within an equally simple frame. This basic arrangement has been directly translated into a physical object that simultaneously defines form, space, structure, and program. It is an approach that owes a clear debt to Itos Sendai Mediatheque (2001). Significantly, Sejima and Yokomizo both worked for Ito early in their careers. Among other projects, Sejima was in charge of the influential Pao: A Dwelling for Tokyo Nomad Women installation (1985), and Yokomizo oversaw Itos equally influential contribution to the Visions of Japan exhibition (1991) at Londons Victoria and Albert Museum. Just as these two architects have been refining and extending aspects of the work of their former employer, it is not surprising to learn that Ishigami spent five years working for Sejima, notably on the Kanazawa museum. In recent years, however, Ito has become disturbed by his own influence on this widespread fascination with luminous, weightless objects. In 1998, architecture critic Takashi Hasegawa defined what he called the transparency syndrome in houses designed by the younger generation:
Structures framed with steel or wood, extremely large openings, an unusual concern with transparency, a few vertical walls that are white and flat, neutrality everywhere, and absolutely no pretence of structural strength. . . . Overall, this series of houses gives an ephemeral, light impression, yet on the
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other hand each one looks like an undistinguished version of work by the

Genealogies and Tendencies

this page top left: Kazuyo Sejima, Onishi Hall, Gunma, 2005, plan top right: Sou Fujimoto, Environment Art Forum in Annaka, Gunma, 2003 (unbuilt), plan bottom left: SANAA, 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, 2004, plan bottom right: aat+, Tomihiro Museum, Gunma, 2005, plan

opposite Toyo Ito, Sendai Mediatheque, Sendai, 2001, concept sketch

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After the Crash

1920s avant-garde, the influence of which subtly infuses their shapes. . . . These houses are being designed by young architects who were mostly born after 1960. Faced with this type of design, my sense of taste goes numb and I lose the ability to speak.1

A few months later, Ito wrote an essay in which he quoted Hasegawas statements and acknowledged his own complicity:
Although editorial selection may play a part, houses of this flavor are certainly conspicuous. Of course, many of these characteristics apply to my own architecture, and I am aware that due to my advocacy of lightness, ephemerality, and transparency, I must bear some of the responsibility for this syndrome among my colleagues born only twenty years after me. Nevertheless, I have to sympathize with Hasegawas loss of taste and speech. I suppose this is because it seems to me that many of these houses by young architects share a feeble introversion. Of course there are some to which this does not apply, but so many have a light and transparent aesthetic sophistication throughout. However beautiful and delicate, they do not engage the exterior and are somehow negatively closed to reality. Put another way, while persisting with the critique of modernism, I think an overwhelming number of these houses fail to clearly demonstrate any criticality of their own. I think that very few attempt a positive engagement with reality.2

In the decade since he wrote this, the younger members of the Japanese avant-garde have been increasingly preoccupied with crisp, monochrome boxes. Yet Ito has indirectly responded to these trends within his own
25

work. The turning point was the completion of the Sendai Mediatheque,

Genealogies and Tendencies

the epochal project that sealed Itos reputation as the definitive architect of the cyberspace era. Developed in collaboration with Japans leading structural engineer Mutsuro Sasaki, the design was, among other things, an attempt to architecturally express the amorphousness and volatility of information flows. Ito had initially seen the resulting structural arrangement (undulating, hollow tubes supporting open, flat plates) as a future prototype for other public buildings, yet during construction he was made keenly aware of the huge physical effort required to achieve his desired floating imagery:
As the architecture progressed I began to see that it wasnt something that could be built just anywhere at any time; it was a one time proposition that could only be constructed here. That idea became stronger when I witnessed the enormous amount of welding work on the large steel tubes. . . . Mediatheque is a space made by hand, so much so that there is almost no repetition in the use of materials.3

This experience triggered a swerve toward opacity, weight, and structural expression. Itos work since then is by no means a return to conventional building types but instead has reinvigorated a design approach that, in our cyber-saturated culture, had begun to run the risk of clich. He has continued collaborating with Sasaki to develop innovative and expressive structures based on natural archetypes such as trees, mollusks, ripples, and caves. There is an overt weight and structural logic to these new designs. The pavilions of the Relaxation Park in Torrevieja (projected completion 2009), for example, celebrate their own
26

spiraling timber and steel envelopes. Designing the astonishing freeform

After the Crash