hipercroquis

por ANDREW CONTI

ARCHILAB: NEW EXPERIMENTS IN ARCHITECTURE, ART AND THE CITY, 1950-2005

THE FUTURE OF ARCHITECTURE THROUGH ITS UTOPIAN PAST

COURTESY OF THE MORI ART MUSEUM © NOX (LARS SPUYBROEK) Nox (Lars Spuybroek), Soft Office, CG, 2000

PINK BALLOON HOUSES FLOAT THROUGH A DEEP BLUE SKY AS A CITY
sprouts legs and walks to a new location. A tree speaks through
red lips on its trunk, and the Empire State Building lies
on a bed in post-coital tension with the Chrysler Building.

These images comprise a glimpse of the dreams, ambitions,
and utopian idealism of avant-garde architecture. Evolving
from every manner of experimentation and mutation within architectural
thought, these apparitions of buildings possible appear as
part of a grandiose stir of the senses at Roppongi’s Mori Art Museum.

Never an institution to shy away from heaping together an
uncountable number of artworks, the Mori crams this survey
with some of the most innovative and visionary drawings, models,
films, computer simulations, and ideas in architecture of
the post-World War II era. The result is not simply going
over the top, but jumping right off and attempting to fly
with the brazen audacity that categorizes the numerous architects
and artists whose designs are on display.

COURTESY OF THE MORI ART MUSEUM PHOTO COURTESY SAKURAI TADAHISA Daniel Libeskind, City Edge, Urban Competition, Bauausstellung, BerlinSite Model A and Site Model B, 1987

The exhibition begins with the Situationist development of
an organic and sculptural architecture in 1950s France. It
then moves into the chimerical works of groups like England’s
infamous Archigram. These works, which are now almost 50 years
old, still radiate with surprising contemporary relevance
and originality. Works like Instant City (1967) by Peter Cook,
of Archigram fame, and Haus-Rucker-Co.’s Pneumacosm (1968)
are emblematic of the best of this era as they speak elegantly
of an unrealized future.

Later rooms explore such homegrown innovators as Kenzo Tange
and Japan’s Metabolist movement. These works are juxtaposed
with Europe-based Paul Virilio and Claude Parent as well as
Yona Friedman, who examined ideas of an infinitely expanding
city and all-encompassing environmental approaches to urban
development.

Architecture superstars like Rem Koolhaas and Daniel Libeskind
share space in the next sections with artists like Gordon
Matta-Clark and Vito Acconci. The anthropomorphic skyscrapers
in Koolhaas’ print Flagrante delicto (1975) ironically
captured the new deconstructivist philosophies in architecture
of the late ’70s and early ’80s. Meanwhile, Libeskind’s
startling City Edge, Urban Competition Project (1987) model
is a refined text-covered response to West Berlin’s World
War II past.

COURTESY OF THE MORI ART MUSEUM Peter Cook (Archigram), Instant City in a field Long Elevation 1/200, 1969

A wall of pictures and text explains the oddities Acconci
added to the campus of Washington State University in a series
of comical and thought-provoking public works. The contribution
of Matta-Clark’s important “anarchitecture”
works, in which the artist cut holes into existing buildings,
are regrettably left under-explained.

The exhibition’s final rooms explore the influences of
digital technology. Here Lars Spuybroek’s morphing architecture
uses the most sensually alluring material in the whole exhibition.
Many of these computer-generated works are captivating through
their sleek technological finish, yet nothing here overpowers
the sci-fi inspired works of previous rooms.

“Archilab” is an overwhelming collection of stimulus
and material to absorb. At times the unending walls of drawings
become simple backdrops for more attention-grabbing models,
and lead to visual exhaustion. Despite this, “Archilab”
uses the seductive energy of architectural dreaming to paint
a sophisticated picture of the quest for a future utopia.

Mori Art Museum, Roppongi (Tokyo)

[obtenido en metropolis.co.jp]

Mori Art Museum: Archilab

por Jeff Michael Hammond, enero 2005

The Mori Art Museum was never an institution to do things by half, and their latest endeavor is, in effect, nothing less than an exhaustive survey of the major currents in contemporary architecture since the second half of the twentieth century. The exhibition is organized with the FRAC Centre in Orleans, France, from whose collection the majority of the exhibits have been borrowed. The FRAC Centre has been accumulating materials related to architecture and art – particularly with a view to utopian ideas in these fields – for fifty years, and for the last number of years it has been holding an exhibition and event in Orleans called Archilab. The Archilab exhibition at the Mori is the first to be held outside Europe.

Considering the vast output covered here, it is gratifying to see the strong presence of Japanese architects, whom I shall focus on in this article, reflecting their increasingly respected position in contemporary architecture since the sixties.

The first section looks at new ideas concerning architecture’s
interaction with the environment, a development typified perhaps by the curvilinear organic buildings by Chaneac and others which attempt to instigate a closer relationship between mankind and nature. Striving to redefine our concept of the city, the 1960′s British architectural group Archigram experimented with versatile, mobile living structures
made up of easily transportable, interconnected cells or units.
Archigram’s “Instant City” (1968-1970) is a floating web of balloons that could be grafted onto existing structures to make a new portable city. However, the imaginative sci-fi designs of Archigram (itself the subject of an upcoming exhibition at Art Tower Mito from January 2005)
were largely unrealized, either due to a lack of technology or simply for being too far ahead of their time for the European market. It is interesting that similarly way-out
designs by the Metabolist group of Japanese architects of the same period made it beyond the drawing board to actual construction. Perhaps this is because of an optimistic and future-oriented climate in Japan in the sixties, which had less of an aversion to mass-produced homes than the West. It would have been useful if more information was given
here on the role played by such local expectations, demands and prejudices in the inspiration and eventual outcome of architectural designs. With so much of the exhibition from around the globe, it is too easy to fall into the habit of viewing the architectural developments on display as abstract designs free of the cultural restraints that undoubtedly affected them.

Metabolist Kurokawa Kisho is probably best known for the prefab units of his Nakagin Capsule Tower, built in the Ginza district of Tokyo in 1972 and still a popular residence today. Archilab, however, concentrates on his contribution to the 1970 Osaka Expo – the Capsule House in the Theme Pavilion (otherwise known as the Takara Beautillion) – a remarkable piece of design and one of the hallmarks of futuristic
Japanese architecture. Attached to the ceiling of the Expo’s
scaffolding, self-contained units offer a complete and thoroughly modernized living environment which perhaps seems alienating for Westerners but for Japanese could well be an attractive alternative to cramped urban dwellings that provide little privacy.

Other architects who started in the Metabolist group and went on to become leading Japanese architectural figures include Kikutake Kiyonori and Maki Fumihiko. The title of Maki’s Golgi Structures of 1967 reflects the Metabolists’ concept of a dynamic, living architecture (hence their Metabolist tag) – Golgi is a biological term used in cell research. This “High Density Conceptual Urban Structure” from 1967 brings an aesthetically pleasing solution to the high-rise phenomenon in the form of a network of circular buildings fanning out variously in closed-off or half-open shapes, accommodating a large number of inhabitants. The last section looks at how recent advances in computer technology allow architects to manufacture hitherto problematic designs directly from their computers, allowing for more fluid and complicated shapes
and an imaginative use of space and materials. Here, we return to the theme that started this article – a renewed look at man’s relationship with his environment. One of the delights of Archilab is Ito Toyo’s unfortunately unbuilt plan for the “Forum for Music, Dance and Visual Culture, Ghent” in Belgium. The key theme in this work seems to be
“openness” in a variety of manifestations. Having no main entrance, the center is easily approachable from any part of the busy city center in which it is located and the glass facade also leaves the building open to sunlight. Traditional designations of Floor 1, Floor 2, etc. are replaced by multi-levelled sections at 50cm intervals that allow for
more dynamic and free use of space. Archilab is a must-see for anyone keen on contemporary architecture in general, and there is plenty to interest those looking for examples of
Japanese architects’ projects in particular. Other Japanese architects featured include Aoki Jun, Isosaki Arata, Ando Tadao, Endo Shuhei, Shigeru Ban, Abe Hitoshi and Kuma Kengo.

[obtenido en tokyoQ, life in the megalopolis]

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