POLITesi - Politecnico di Milano

Transcription

POLITECNICO DI
MILANO
Scuola di Architettura
Urbanistica Ingegneria delle
Costruzioni Milano
Laurea Magistrale
THE ORIGINS OF ARATA
ISOZAKI’S SPATIAL
CONSTRUCTIONS: JAPANESE
TRADITION AND RUSSIAN
AVANT-GARDE.
Alessandro De Magistris
Oleg Igorevich Adamov
Marta Martinoglio
814329
A.A. 2014/2015
I dedicate this
thesis to my family
for their warm
support during my
stay abroad.
1
I
NDEX
INDEX OF IMAGES
ABSTRACT ITALIAN
ABSTRACT ENGLISH
ABRIDGEMENT ITALIAN
FOREWORD
INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER 1. BIOGRAPHY FACTS AND THEIR INFLUENCE
ON ARATA ISOZAKI’S CREATIVE ACTIVITY
1.1
1.2
1.3
The Biography of A. Isozaki: hometown
context, family and archetypal images
affected on Isozaki’s work
Work in Kenzo Tange’s Laboratory and
influence of master’s creativity
Relationship with Metabolist’s architects
and impact on A. Isozaki’s spatial
construction
2
CHAPTER 2. THE INFLUENCE OF DIFFERENT
TRADITIONS ON ARATA ISOZAKI’S CREATIVE PROCESS
2.1.
A. Isozaki’s
adoption
of
traditional architectural concepts
Japanese
2.1.1. Dissolving
natural context
in
architecture
the
2.1.2. Isozaki’s “space of darkness” and
“space of illusion” as result of Japanese
“lighting gradient” aesthetic
2.1.3. “Catch” and using natural element
2.1.4. “Mask” as a concept of border
2.1.5. Gentrification as organization of
space come from spatial arrangement of
Japanese traditional gardens
2.2. First connections to Russian Avant-Garde
art and Japanese culture
2.2.1. A. Isozaki’s approach with Russian
Formalism
2.2.2. Russian Avant-Garde concepts and
techniques
affected
the
Isozaki’s
architectural design
2.3. Western classical architecture: Palladio,
Ledoux, Boullée and the influences on
A. Isozaki’s architectural methodology.
3
CHAPTER 3. THE ARATA ISOZAKI’S SPATIAL CONSTRUCTION
AS A SYNTHESIS OF JAPANESE AND RUSSIAN AVANT-GARDE
IDEAS
3.1.
I.I. Leonidov:
“schematic
(Magnitagorsk’s project)
deployment”
3.2 A. Isozaki: “incubator” architecture (Tokyo
City Hall project)
CONCLUSIONS
RESULTS
INTERVIEWS
4.1. Hajime Yatzuka
4.2 Andrea Maffei
ARATA ISOZAKI’S CREATIVE BIOGRAPHY
BIBLIOGRAPHY
THANKS
INDEX OF IMAGES
INDEX OF IMAGES
FOREWORD
-
Figure 0.1. The Poster of the Exhibition “Ma EspaceTemps du Japon”, Paris 1978. Source: Personal
photography from exhibition 12x5=60 Arata Isozaki Watari
Museum Tokyo 2015. (p.31)
-
Figure 0.2. Plan of “Ma” Exhibition. Source: GA
Architect 15, Arata Isozaki vol.3 1991-2000, A.D.A
Edita, Tokyo, p.11. (p.31)
-
Figure 0.2. View from the exhibition. Source: GA
Architect 15, Arata Isozaki vol.3 1991-2000, A.D.A
Edita, Tokyo, p.22. (p.32)
CHAPTER 1
-
Figure 1.1. Arata Isozaki’s Joint Core System for
Shinjuku Project, 1962. Source: Isozaki, A. Arata
Isozaki./ A. Isozaki, K. Tadashi Oshima – London:
Phaidon Press, - 2009, p.15. (p.45)
-
Figure 1.2. Scheme of design process. Source:
personal scheme made in Sketch up+ Photoshop. (p.46)
-
Figure 1.3. Kenzo Tange: the Yamanashi Press and Radio
Centre, Kofu, 1967, and Shizuoka building, Ginza, 1967.
Source: Major, M. Kenzo Tange, - Budapest: Akademiai
Kiado. – 1973, p. 32. (p.46)
-
Figure 1.4. Scheme of design process. Source: my
Figure 1.5. Scheme of design process. Source my personal
scheme made in Photoshop. (p.47)
-
my
Figure 1.6. K.Tange’s Kagawa Administration Building,
Takamatsu, 1958. Source: Major, M. Kenzo Tange, Budapest: Akademiai Kiado. – 1973, p. 21. (p.48)
4
INDEX OF IMAGES
-
Figure 1.7. Kenzo Tange’s Town Hall in Kurashiki, 1960.
Source: Major, M. Kenzo Tange, - Budapest: Akademiai
Kiado. – 1973, p. 17. (p.49)
-
Figure 1.8. Scheme of design process.
personal scheme made in Photoshop. (p.49)
-
Figure 1.9. Medical Hall, Oita 1959-60. Source: Isozaki,
A. Arata Isozaki 1964-76 First – Tokyo: Kajima Institute
Publishing, Co., Ltd, - 1980, p. 32. (p.52)
-
Figure 1.10. Kiyonori Kikutake: Tower City, 1958.
Source: Koolhaas, R. Project Japan: Metabolism Talks…./
R. Koolhaas, H. U. Obrist – Koln: Taschen, - 2011, p.
343. (p.53)
-
Figure 1.11. Fumikiko Maki: Hillside Apartment Complex,
Tokyo, 1978. Source: Koolhaas, R. Project Japan:
Metabolism Talks…./ R. Koolhaas, H. U. Obrist – Koln:
Taschen, - 2011, p. 270. (p.53)
-
Figure 1.12. Library Oita Prefecture, 1962-66. Source:
Isozaki, A. Arata Isozaki./ A. Isozaki, K. Tadashi
Oshima – London: Phaidon Press, - 2009, p.53. (p.56)
-
-
-
Source:
my
CHAPTER 2
-
Figure 2.1. Hans Hollein, Vienna February 1976, sketches
of Arata Isozaki. Source: Isozaki, A. Arata Isozaki
1964-76 First – Tokyo: Kajima Institute Publishing, Co.,
Ltd, - 1980, p. 31. (p.61)
5
INDEX OF IMAGES
-
Figure 2.2. Scheme of design process. Source:
my
-
Figure 2.3. Arata Isozaki’s Concert Hall, Nara, 1992-98.
Source: my personal photography b\w July 2015. (p.65)
-
Figure 2.4. Source: my personal drawing representing the
design of A. Isozaki “Clusters in the Air” compared with
traditional Chinese “Goudong” system. (p.67)
-
Figure 2.5. Sesshu Toyo, Haboku Sansui, 1495. Sources:
Kinoshita, H. Ancien Japon. - Tokyo: Imprimerie
Kokubunsha. – 1888, p. 115. (p.69)
-
Figure 2.6. My personal Sketch up representation of A.
Isozaki’s Gunma Museum. Source: my personal scheme made
in Sketch up+ Photoshop. (p.70)
-
Figure 2.7. Concept sketch of Sou Fujimoto for house in
Tokyo. Source: Fujimoto, S. Sou Fujimoto Recent Project.
– Tokyo: GA International ADA Edita. – 2013, p. 187.
(p.70)
-
Figure 2.8. Darkness at the heart of domestic interior.
Source: Isozaki, A. Katsura Villa. – Milan: Rizzoli, 1987, p. 240. (p.74)
-
Figure 2.9. “Moon Room” in A. Isozaki’s Nagi Museum of
Art, Okayama, Japan, 1991-1994. Source: Isozaki, A.
Arata Isozaki./ A. Isozaki, K. Tadashi Oshima – London:
Phaidon Press, - 2009, p. 200. (p.75)
-
Figure 2.10. Museum in the forest, Taoyuan Coutry,
Taiwan, 2012, Sou Fujimoto. Source: Fujimoto, S. Sou
Fujimoto Recent Project. – Tokyo: GA International ADA
Edita. – 2013, p. 77. (p.76)
-
Figure 2.11. Concept of “gradient” by Sou
Fujimoto. Source: Fujimoto, S. Sou Fujimoto Recent
Project. – Tokyo: GA International ADA Edita. – 2013, p.
23. (p.76)
6
INDEX OF IMAGES
-
Figure 2.12. Scheme of Japanese and Western house’s
relationship with atmospheric events, specially with the
sun light. Source: my personal scheme made in Photoshop.
(p.78)
-
Figure 2.13. Isozaki’s Nara Concert Hall (roof as entire
building). Source: Isozaki, A. Arata Isozaki./ A.
Isozaki, K. Tadashi Oshima – London: Phaidon Press, 2009, p. 57.
-
Figure 2.14. A. Isozaki’s Tokyo Christian College.
Source: Isozaki, A. Arata Isozaki 1985-91 Third, PART1 –
Tokyo: Kajima Institute Publishing, Co., Ltd, - 1993, p.
143. (p.80)
-
Figure 2.14. Kiyonori Kikutake’s Edo Museum (living the
roof). Source: my personal photography b7w August 2015.
(p.80)
-
Figure 2.15. Arata Isozaki’s project of Oita Medical
Hall, Oita Prefectural Library, 1959/1962-1966, 19701972 (Oita Medical Hall Annex). Source: my personal
customize made in Photoshop of a picture from Phaidon.
(p.80)
-
Figure 2.16. Arata Isozaki’s project of Fukuoka City
Bank Head Office. 1968-1971, 1978-1983 (Addition).
Source: my personal customize made in Photoshop of a
picture from Isozaki, A. Arata Isozaki./ A. Isozaki, K.
Tadashi Oshima – London: Phaidon Press, - 2009, p. 38.
(p.83)
-
Figure 2.17. Arata Isozaki’s project of Kitakyushu City
Museum of Art, Fukyoka, 1972-1974. My personal customize
made in Photoshop of a picture from Phaidon. (p.84)
-
Figure 2.18. Arata Isozaki’s project of Kitakyushu
Central Library, Fukuoka, 1973-1974. Source: my personal
customize made in Photoshop of a picture from Isozaki,
A. Arata Isozaki./ A. Isozaki, K. Tadashi Oshima –
London: Phaidon Press, - 2009, p. 21. (p.84)
7
INDEX OF IMAGES
-
Figure 2.19. Arata Isozaki’s project of Fujimi Coutry
Clubhouse, Oita City, 1973-1974. Source: my personal
-
Figure 2.20. Gunma Museum of Fine Art, Takasaki, 1971-4.
99. (p.86)
-
Figure 2.21. Shukosha Building, Fukuoka, 1974. Source:
Isozaki, A. Arata Isozaki 1964-76 First – Tokyo: Kajima
Institute Publishing, Co., Ltd, - 1980, p. 170. (p.86)
-
Figure 2.22. Church Santa Maria presso San Satiro,
Donato Bramante, Milano V sec. Sources: Bruschi, A.
Bramante. – London: Thames & Hudson Ltd, - 1977, p. 200.
(p.87)
-
Figure 2.23. Teatro Olimpico, Andrea Palladio, 1580,
Vicenza. Source: Beltrami, G. Palladio./ G. Beltrami, H.
Burns. – Venezia: Marsilio. – 2008. P. 400. (p.87)
-
Figure 2.24. Tokyo branch, Fukuoka Mutual Bank, 1970-71.
Source: Isozaki, A. Arata Isozaki 1964-76 First – Tokyo:
Kajima Institute Publishing, Co., Ltd, - 1980, p. 123.
(p.88)
-
Figure 2.25. Himalaya Center, Shangai, 2008. Source:
http://www.isozaki.co.jp/.(p.89)
-
Figure 2.26. Reflection of building in Kyoto Concert
Hall. Source: my personal photography b/w July 2016.
(p.89)
-
Figure 2.27. Mito Tower’s steps stair detail. Source: my
personal photography b/w July 2016. (p.92)
-
Figure 2.28. Detail Kyoto Concert Hall’s square. Source:
my personal photography b/w July 2016. (p.92)
8
INDEX OF IMAGES
-
Figure 2.30.
Nannerini, G.
Nannerini, M.
editrice, 1996,
Sundial of Disney Center. Source:
Arata Isozaki, Opere e Progetti/ G.
Faiferri, D. Mandolesi. – Roma: Cdp
p. 211. (p.93)
-
Figure 2.31. Scheme of design process. From Ise Shrine’s
fence to an urban building which is the result of a
fence plus the building its self. Source: my personal
scheme made in Sketch up+ Photoshop. (p.93)
-
Figure 2.32. Arata Isozaki’s building for Bjornson
Studio, Los Angeles 1989. Sources: Koshalek, R. Arata
Isozaki, Quattro Decenni di Architettura. - Milano:
Rizzoli, 2005, p. 237. (p.94)
-
Figure 2.33. Villa Gamberaia, Florence. Nineteenth
century. Geometrically ordered space in the landscape.
Sources: Drew, P. Architecture of Arata Isozaki. –
London: Granada, 1982, p. 118. (p.96)
-
Figure 2.34. Heavenly Dragon Temple, Kyoto. XIV century.
Harmony of water and stone. Sources: my personal
photography b/w July 2016. (p.98)
-
Figure 2.35. Boboli Garden, Florence. XVI century.
Statue of Andromeda. In the tradition of Renaissance
stone has human form. Sources: my personal photography
b/w September 2014. (p.99)
-
Figure 2.36. Temple of the Saiho Ji, Kyoto. XVI century.
In Japanese tradition statues are carved by natural
elements. Sources: my personal photography b/w July
2016. (p.99)
-
Figure 2.36. A. Isozaki’s Ukichiro Nagaya Museum Ice and
Snow Kaga. Source: Koshalek, R. Arata Isozaki, Quattro
Decenni di Architettura. - Milano: Rizzoli, 2005, p. 86.
(p.8). (p.100)
-
Figure 2.37. Scheme showing an example of Japanese
painting and the taste of asymmetry. The poem in sets on
the lower corner leaving the center empty. Sources: my
9
INDEX OF IMAGES
personal customize made in Photoshop of a picture from
Wright. (p.103)
-
Figure 2.38. Plan Villa Katsura formed by man pavilions
scattered on the territory with a large pond in the
center. Sources: my personal customize made in Photoshop
of a picture from Isozaki, A. Katsura Villa. – Milan:
Rizzoli, - 1987, p. 72. (p.104)
-
Figure 2.39. Ceramic Park Mino, Gifu, 1997-2000.
Sources: my customize made in Photoshop of a picture
from Koshalek, R. Arata Isozaki, Quattro Decenni di
Architettura. - Milano: Rizzoli, 2005, p. 15. (p.105)
-
Figure 2.40. Melnikov’house 1927-1929. Sources:
personal photography b/w September 2015. (p.106)
-
Figure 2.41. Arata Isozak’s sketches of Melnikov House
during is visit in Moscow. Source: Personal photography
from exhibition 12x5=60 Arata Isozaki Watari Museum
Tokyo 2015. (p.113)
-
Figure 2.42. Isozaki: the Seven Operation of Manner. 1)
Amplification,
2)
packaging,
3)
severing,
4)
transferral, 5) projection, 6) fuseki (or chess-man), 7)
response. Source: GA Architect 6, Arata Isozaki 19591978, A.D.A Edita, Tokyo. (p.114)
-
Figure 2.43. Black square, Malevich 1915. Source:
Catalog Novaia Tretiakovskaia Gallery Moscow. (p.116)
-
Figure 2.44. Setting of black square in the corner of is
studio instead of the traditional Russian icon to
symbolize a new starting. Just a black point for the new
beginning. Catalog Novaia Tretiakovskaia Gallery Moscow.
(p.14)
-
Figure 2.45. Arata Isozaki’s Hiroshima collage,
“Electric Labirinth”,1968. Source: GA Architect 15,
Arata Isozaki vol.3 1991-200, A.D.A Edita, Tokyo. (p.15)
my
10
INDEX OF IMAGES
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Figure 2.46. “Incubation process” performance, 1990
(concept from 1962). Sources: Isozaki, A. Unbuilt. .Tokyo: Toto, – 2001, p. 81. (p.1)
-
Figure 2.47. Giulio Romano: Palazzo del tè detail.152434. Sources: my personal photography b/w November 2014.
(p.126)
-
Figure 2.48. Skukosha Building, Fukuoka, 1974-5.
Sources: Drew, P. Architecture of Arata Isozaki. –
London: Granada, 1982, p. 31. (p.128)
-
Figure 2.49. «Victory of the sun» opera, Luna Park,
Saint Petersburg 1913. Sources: Meriggi, M. Una città
Possibile Progetti di Leonidov 1926-1934./ M. Meriggi,
O. Macel, D. Schmidt, Ju. Volcok. - Milano: Mondadori
Electa. – 2007, p. 15. (p.128)
-
Figure
2.50.
“Arkitekton”,
Malevich,
1926
.
“Arkitekton”: “Monolithic view of materialized idea.
Lazar Kiedekel, 1927. Sources: Catalog “Malevich”,
Eugenia Petrova e Giacinto Di Pietrantonio. Exhibition
in Bergamo 2 October 2015 to 17 January 2016,p. 80.
(p.131)
-
From Figure 2.51. to Figure 2.58. Sources: my personal
scheme made in Sketch up+ Photoshop. (p.132)
-
Figure 2.59. Scheme underlining the Old and the New site
of Ise Grand Shrine, Mie Prefecture. Sources: my
Isozaki, A. Japan-ness in Architecture. – Massachusetts:
The MIT Press, – 2011, p. 256. (p.136)
-
Figure 2.60. Arata Isozaki’s project for New Marijinsky
Theatre, 2002. Sources: GA Architect 6, Arata Isozaki
1959-1978, A.D.A Edita, Tokyo. (p.136)
-
Figure 2.61. Beijing building, 2003. Sources: GA
Architect 6, Arata Isozaki 1959-1978, A.D.A Edita,
Tokyo. (p.137)
11
INDEX OF IMAGES
-
Figure 2.62. Shanghai Pudong Villa, 2004. Sources: GA
Architect 6, Arata Isozaki 1959-1978, A.D.A Edita,
Tokyo. (p.138)
-
Figure 2.63. “Controrelief”, Tatlin, 1923. Tatlin’s
concept of «explosion» and «floating fragments».
Sources:
my
personal
photography
b/w
Novaia
Tretiakovskaia Jenuary 2015. (p.139)
-
Figure 2.64. Isozaki‘s project Moca Cafa, Beijing, 2003.
Sources: GA Architect 6, Arata Isozaki 1959-1978, A.D.A
Edita, Tokyo. (p.140)
-
Figure 2.65. «Future city», Lazar Kiedekel, 1927.
Source: my personal customize made in Photoshop of a
picture from Meriggi, M. Una città Possibile Progetti di
Leonidov 1926-1934./ M. Meriggi, O. Macel, D. Schmidt,
Ju. Volcok. - Milano: Mondadori Electa. - 2007. (p.142)
-
Figure 2.66. Horizontal Skyscraper for Moscow, El
Lissitzky1, 1924 and Arata Isozaki’s sketch (Cloud
Props). Source: my personal customize made in Photoshop
of a picture from thesis Konovalova Nina Anatolieva,
Preservation and Development of historical traditions in
modern architecture of Japan: on a material of World
exhibitions. 3th chapter: Russian Avantgarde and
Japanese metabolism. (p.144)
-
Figure 2.67. Image from A+U Architecture and Urbanism,
Architecture of Ambivalence 1972. Isozaki explain the
design process for Gunma Museum of Modern Art. Source:
A+U Architecture and Urbanism, Architecture of
Ambivalence 1972, Tokyo. (p.147)
-
Figure 2.68. Ledoux, House of Four Families. Source:
Drew, P. Architecture of Arata Isozaki. – London:
Granada, 1982, p. 70. (p.148)
12
INDEX OF IMAGES
-
Figure 2.69. Isozaki, Nakayama Residence, Oita 1964.
61. (p.148)
-
Figure 2.70. Scheme showing the employing of cube module
of Ledoux to design Nakayama Residence. Source: m
-
Figure 2.71. Boullèe, Royal Library. Source: Drew, P.
Architecture of Arata Isozaki. – London: Granada, 1982,
p. 32. (p.151)
-
Figure 2.72. Yano House, Kawasaki 1975. Schematic
diagram: the house is composed of two opposed semicylinders one within the other. Source: Isozaki, A.
Arata Isozaki 1976-84 Second – Tokyo: Kajima Institute
Publishing, Co., Ltd, - 1986, p. 55. (p.151)
-
figure 2.73. Traditional Japanese haniwa dwellings.
Source: my personal photography Tokyo National Museum,
Ueno, August 2015. (p.152)
-
Figure 2.74. Kenzo Tange’s Hiroshima Peace Monument,
1955. Source: Major, M. Kenzo Tange, - Budapest:
Akademiai Kiado. – 1973, p. 31. (p.153)
-
Figure 2.75. Fujimi Country Clubhouse, near Oita 1972-4.
Source: Isozaki, A. Arata Isozaki./ A. Isozaki, K.
Tadashi Oshima – London: Phaidon Press, - 2009, p. 66.
(p.153)
-
Figure 2.76. Palladio, Villa Poiana Maggiore. Source:
Beltrami, G. Palladio./ G. Beltrami, H. Burns. –
Venezia: Marsilio. – 2008. P. 33. (p.154)
-
Figure 2.77. Scheme of comparison between Villa Poiana’s
rhythm of windows and the two façade of Fujimi Country
Clubhouse. Source: my personal scheme made in Photoshop.
(p.155)
-
Figure 2.78. Scheme showing Arata Isozaki’s Tsukuba
Center building, Ibaragi, Japan, 1979-83 and the gold
13
INDEX OF IMAGES
section used for the proportions. Source: my personal
-
Figure 2.79. Michelangelo Buonarroti’s Campidoglio
Square, Rome, 1534-38. Source: Argan, G. Michelangelo. –
Firenze: Giunti. – 1987, p. 45. (p.156)
-
Figure 2.80. Scheme presenting the design method of
Piazza del Campidoglio, a “positive” space, to a “nonsquare” of Tsukuba Center. Source: my personal scheme
made in Sketchup+ Photoshop. (p.160)
-
Figure 2.81. Kenzo Tange’s Tokyo Metropolitan Government
Building, Shinjuku, Tokyo, 1988-1991. Source: Major, M.
Kenzo Tange, - Budapest: Akademiai Kiado. – 1973, p. 17.
(p.161)
CHAPTER 3
-
Figure 3.1. Leonidov’s Magnitogorsk project, 1928.
Source: De Magistris, A. La casa cilindrica di
Konstantin Melʹnikov, 1927-1929. – Torino: Celid. –
1998, p.37. (p.163)
-
From Figure 3.2. to Figure 3.5. My personal scheme made
in Photoshop. (p.164)
-
Figure 3.6. Arata Isozaki’s Tokyo City Hall project of
80’s. Source: Isozaki, A. Unbuilt. - .Tokyo: Toto, –
2001, p- 32. (p.167)
-
From Figure 3.7. to Figure 3.10. Source: my personal
scheme made in Photoshop. (p.169)
-
Figure 3.11. Scheme represent fractal grid of Isoaki’s
project New Tokyo City Hall. Source: my personal scheme
made in Sketchup+ Photoshop. (p.171)
14
INDEX OF IMAGES
-
Figure 3.12. Scheme representing the historical building
phases. Source: my personal customize made in Photoshop
of a picture from Isozaki, A. Katsura Villa. – Milan:
Rizzoli, - 1987, p. 31. (p.174)
-
Figure 3.13. Scheme showing the angle view of each room
facing the pond. Source: my personal customize made in
Photoshop of a picture from Isozaki, A. Katsura Villa. –
Milan: Rizzoli, - 1987, p. 33. (p.175)
-
Figure
3.14.
Scheme
representing
the
diagonal
arrangement on some elements of the house. Source: my
Isozaki, A. Katsura Villa. – Milan: Rizzoli, - 1987, p.
38. (p.176)
-
Figure 3.15. Diagonal aesthetic of Isozaki’s Tokyo City
Hall project. My personal customize made in Photoshop of
a picture from Isozaki, A. Unbuilt. - .Tokyo: Toto, –
2001, p. 11. (p.177)
-
Figure 3.16. Interior of Imperial Katzura Villa. Source:
my personal customize made in Photoshop of a picture
from Isozaki, A. Katsura Villa. – Milan: Rizzoli, 1987,
p.
57.
(p.178).
15
ABSTRACTS
ABSTRACT ITALIAN
L’architetto giapponese Arata Isozaki è una
figura artistica che si definisce “ponte” fra
due culture esteticamente e filosoficamente
molto lontane: quella Orientale e quella
Occidentale. Il suo gesto architettonico,
figlio di un’epoca storica (quella del boom
economico) che ha permesso una libera
espressione del suo pensiero, è plasmato da
una moltitudine d’influenze culturali ed
artistiche.
Profondo
conoscitore
della
cultura tradizionale giapponese e studioso
della
cultura
occidentale,
Isozaki
si
presenta come una delle figure più attive nel
panorama sia giapponese sia internazionale,
subito dopo la celebrità del suo maestro
Kenzo Tange. Pochi dei suoi contemporanei si
sono spinti fuori dal territorio nipponico
per, sia esportare l’architettura giapponese,
sia, provocatoriamente, per riproporre le
tradizioni
del
luogo
straniero.
Un’ atteggiamento ai limiti del didattico
che non vuole solamente presentare un gusto
architettonico
ma
piuttosto
legarsi
strettamente
alla
cultura
del
sito.
A. Isozaki ha speso molte parole per
descrivere il suo processo creativo e le sue
influenze (maggiormente in lingua giapponese)
ma senza mai, a parere anche di Rem
Koolhaas2, dichiarare le origini delle sue
2
Koolhaas, R. Project Japan: Metabolism Talks…./ R.
Koolhaas, H. U. Obrist – Koln: Taschen, - 2011. P.43.
16
ABSTRACTS
scelte architettoniche mostrandosi tramite
una maschera inespressiva che nulla svela. Ne
risulta una conoscenza, a mio parere,
superficiale e ormai datata di quello che ha
influenzato lo spazio architettonico di
Isozaki.
Questa
tesi
si
pone
dunque
l’obiettivo di analizzare gli ingredienti
della sua “cucina” di progetto. Tramite uno
studio di ricerca in Giappone, grazie
all’aiuto del Professore Makoto Kikuchi3, ho
studiato
i
principi
dell’architettura
tradizionale
giapponese
per
ritrovarli
nell’architettura di Isozaki. A Mosca sono
stata guidata dal Professore Oleg Igorevich
Adamov per approfondire le Avanguardie russe
e trovarne le citazioni nei progetti
dell’architetto giapponese. Attraverso uno
studio separato delle influenze ne deriva
l’analisi di un solo progetto come sintesi di
vari flussi culturali.
La seguente tesi si dota anche di una serie
d’interviste di stretti collaboratori di
Isozaki: Hajime Yatzuka4 e Andrea Maffei5. Il
seguente materiale è stato di grande aiuto ad
affrontare un tema come l’architettura
giapponese la quale si basa su concetti
metafisici e religiosi lontani dalla mia
personale cultura Europea.
3
Makoto Kikuchi, Master of Engineering,
Professor of Shibaura Institute of Technology.
Associate Architect of Arata Isozaki from 1978
to 2000.
4
See note 77.
5
See note 115.
17
ABSTRACTS
ABSTRACT ENGLISH
The Japanese architect Arata Isozaki is an
artistic figure who defines himself a
"bridge" between two aesthetically and
philosophically divergent cultures: Eastern
and Western. His architectural gesture, son
of an historical era that allowed a free
expression of his thought, is produced by a
multitude
of
cultural
and
artistic
influences.
Connoisseur
of
traditional
Japanese culture and appreciator of Western
culture, Isozaki is presented as one of the
most active figures in both Japanese and
international scene immediately after the
figure of his master Kenzo Tange. Few of his
contemporaries have gone out of Japanese
territory
for
both
exporting
Japanese
architecture, and provocatively, revive the
traditions of the foreign place. A didactic
attitude that doesn’t wants to present just
an architectural style but rather tightly
bind to the site culture. Isozaki has spent
many words to describe his creative process
and its influences (mostly in Japanese) but
never, even in the opinion of Rem Koolhaas6,
declare the origins of its architectural
choices leaving an expressing mask as typical
for Japanese. The result is a knowledge in my
opinion superficial and out-dated about what
has influenced his architectural space. The
aim of this thesis is to analyze the
ingredients of his “kitchen” design. Through
6
See note 2.
18
ABSTRACTS
a research in Japan, helped by Professor
Makoto
Kikuchi,
I
studied
traditional
Japanese architecture principles to find them
in the architecture of Isozaki. In Moscow I
have been led by Professor Oleg Adamov
Igorevich to deepen Russian Avant-Garde and
to find citations in Japanese architect's
projects. Through a separate study of the
influences the result is an analysis of one
project as a synthesis of different cultural
streams.
The following thesis presents also few
interviews to the closest collaborators of
Isozaki: Hajime Yatzuka, Andrea Maffei and
Makoto Kikuchi. The following materials has
been great help to deal with an issue like
the Japanese architecture which is based on
metaphysical and religious concepts far from
my own European culture.
19
ABSTRACTS
ABRIDGEMENT ITALIAN
Arata Isozaki si può definire come operatore
di
trasmissione
e
traduzione
d’idee
occidentali quando si trova in Giappone e di
concetti giapponesi quando lavora in un
contesto occidentale.
Questo atteggiamento non è però un dogma per
l’architetto ma piuttosto una volontà di
riproporre la cultura del sito che si presta
ad ospitare la sua architettura.
Vengono
citati
concetti
di
tradizione
giapponese come: l’ estetica dell’“oscurità”
e del “vuoto”, la “leggerezza”, il “ma” come
spazio-tempo, abbinati talvolta a caratteri
occidentali di “corporalità”, “monumentalità”
e “forma”. Frequente Isozaki fa riferimento
all’Avanguardia
russa
la
quale
viene
apprezzata dall’architetto nella sua forma e
riprodotta anche in territorio russo a
ricordo della cultura passata (Teatro di
Marijinski a San Pietroburgo).
Nonostante
A. Isozaki
abbia
largamente
scritto della propria attività progettuale
attraverso lo studio di ricerca in Giappone
ho constatato la quantità nettamente maggiore
di
informazioni
destinate
al
pubblico
giapponese. L’approccio dell’architetto in un
contesto d’ influenze “Giapponese-EuropeoRusso”,
soprattutto
di
relazione
con
l’Avanguardia russa, non è stato ancora
20
ABSTRACTS
completamente esplorato. Un progetto di
ricerca che ne riveli le influenze culturali
ed artistiche dell’Avanguardia russa e della
tradizione giapponese che hanno affetto la
creatività di Isozaki è necessaria.
Molti concetti e tecniche di progettazione di
Isozaki come “moltiplicazione”, “frattalità”,
“maschera”,
“generazione
di
forme”,
“architettura invisibile”, sono tutt’oggi
attuali nel contesto contemporaneo e possono
essere
utilizzate
nell’educazione
architettonica come nella pratica.
I ricercatori russi non hanno approfondito
alcuna tesi sul processo creativo di Arata
Isozaki e le sue connessioni con la cultura
avanguardista. La tesi che più si avvicina
alla presente ricerca è stata redatta dalla
dottoranda
presso
Moscow
Institute
of
Architecture N. A. Konovalova7 "Historical
and contemporary traditions in Japanese
architecture
in
examples
of
world
exhibitions".
Nel terzo capitolo classifica e compara
alcuni progetti avanguardisti russi con
progetti del Metabolismo giapponese citando
A. Isozaki. L’analisi avviene a livello di
similitudini di forme e idee ma non a livello
di approccio e processo.
7
Phd student from Moscow Institute of
Moscow. Research made in Japan under Hajime
Yatzuka (see note 76) tutor.
21
ABSTRACTS
Altri ricercatori russi come A.V. Ikonnikov8,
A.V. Ryabushin9, V.I. Loktev10 sono autori di
tesi sull’architettura Metabolista con alcuni
riferimenti a Isozaki (il quale non si è mai
definito
appartenente
alla
corrente
matabolista).
L’obiettivo è dunque quello di identificare
l’entità
e
i
termini
d’
influenza
dell’Avanguardia russa e della tradizione
architettonica
giapponese
nel
lavoro
architettonico
di
Isozaki,
basandosi
sull’analisi della sua posizione teorica e di
spazio costruito.
Il primo approccio alla ricerca consiste nel
mostrare un quadro di contesto in cui
l’architetto fonda le sue origini. Esso si
compone dell’ambiente familiare, del periodo
storico, dei primi studi ed il successivo
lavoro presso lo studio di Kenzo Tange,
nonché la vicinanza al movimento Metabolista.
8
A.V. Ikonnikov (1926-2001 Moscow). Soviet and
Russian historical researcher. Phd in Moscow
University
of
Theory
and
History
of
Architecture.
9
A.V. Ryabushin (1931-2012 Moscow). Soviet and
Russian
historical
critic,
director
of
Institute of Theory and Urbanism in Moscow.
10
V.I. Loktev artist and architect, author of
a whole series of futuristic projects of cities
and as a pioneer of a new architectural
direction Metamorphic architecture of cosmical
space. Professor in
Moscow Architectural
Institute.
22
ABSTRACTS
Ne segue un elenco dei principi della
tradizione architettonica giapponese cari
all’architetto spesso citati nelle sue
architetture. Vengono inoltre trattati i
primi
incontri
con
la
cultura
dell’Avanguardia
russa
partendo
da
un’informazione contestuale di rapporti tra
Russia e Giappone per arrivare alle citazioni
personali di Isozaki. Tra le influenze
vengono menzionate anche quelle con la
cultura occidentale attraverso Palladio,
Boullèe e Ledoux.
Nell’ultimo capitolo si procede all’analisi
di un singolo progetto di Isozaki che viene
analizzato
come
sintesi
dell’influenza
dell’Avanguardia russa e della tradizione
architettonica giapponese.
I limiti della ricerca si protraggono fino
all’approccio architettonico di Isozaki, al
processo creativo e alle tecniche relative
alla progettazione.
Sono dunque parte del materiale di ricerca:
progetti, tabelle analitiche, diagrammi,
modelli,
schizzi
preliminari,
dipinti,
disegni,
fotografie,
interviste,
lavori
teorici e tutto ciò che può aiutare a porre
la basi per delineare il processo creativo e
di progettazione di Arata Isozaki.
23
FOREWORD
FOREWORD
“We have to underline some differences in
the fundamental pillars of the universes of
Asia and the West. Since ever for us beauty
is essentially solar and radiant, so hide it
would be a contradiction; it is accompanied
almost necessarily to a certain need of
radiance; is the smile of being. When Hegel
says that "Beauty is in the spiritual essence
that is external materially" plays in the
most exquisite deep faith of the West.
Another aspect interprets Keats when he said:
"Beauty is truth, truth beauty". The beauty
must not only shine, but is also connected
with the truth. All our aesthetic thought,
from Aristotle to Croce, focuses ultimately
on relations with true beauty. And so our
city is proclaimed in squares and avenues,
colonnades and palaces, cathedrals and arches
exedras. Their beauty expands in the sun, is
built, organic. They are linked with social
and technical, but also the dialectic and
geometry”.11
According to Fosco Maraini, the occidental
idea of beauty is an unveiled beauty,
revealed in the light of the sun in all its
truth, does not have any mystical and hidden.
In Japan, the beauty is initiatory, it is
worth, is the award of a long and sometimes
11
Fosco Maraini, Ore
Corbaccio, 2000) p. 57.
giapponesi
(Milano:
24
FOREWORD
painful search, is the final intuition,
possession jealous. The beauty which is
straight beautiful is itself spirit of
vulgarity. It can be called the smile of
being. In oriental concept he beauty which is
only shining, and which is beautiful in
itself has the spirit of vulgarity. Latent,
hidden beauty is more valued in Japan. Being
is
always
concealed,
if
necessary
aristocratic.
The historical relations of this concept,
rather than the true and the intellect, leads
us
with
the
concept
of
illumination
12
(Satori ), taste and heart (Kokoro13). In a
sense it can be said romantic vision of
beauty; from another point of view it can be
said that beyond the beauty, being always
hidden, is necessarily aristocratic.
Then pull over the city, the place where
everybody daily lives, the public land, the
idea of beauty would be a nonsense. Japanese
cities are simple tools of life and work,
temporary agencies serving the values only as
a convenience. The beauty of course there is
but you have to look for it, and perhaps
finally be given to discover it; then, once
12
Satori (悟) is a Japanese Buddhist term for
"comprehension;
awakening,
understanding".Commonly
translated
as
enlightenment.
13
Kokoro (心) means "heart; mind; mentality;
emotions.
25
FOREWORD
purchased, it refreshes you with refinements
unimagined
elsewhere,
including
inmates
gardens and temples, or villas, where you
really realize the more perfect communion
between man and his surroundings.
“It’s beauty as an island, time, whispered
word, moment; it is pure quality, the thrill
which will then always longing”14.
Arata Isozaki is an architect in between two
culture: Western and Eastern. I admire how
greatfully he interpret himself in Japanese
context as well as in Western context, so I
decided to I inception the reading of the
following thesis point out the different on
the concept of beauty on these two cultures,
since Isozaki has always defined himself as
artist before architect and engineer.
Although his figure as an architect is not
reducible to "Japanese architect" but to
"architect working in Japan," as he likes to
remember in his interviews, I felt it was
important to show right from the beginning
the distance between the western and eastern
taste an aspect that, as Westerners, we have
always considered as the foundation and
starting point fixed and indisputable for the
arts and architecture.
Arata Isozaki is defined as a great
connoisseur of western culture and it shows
14
Fosco Maraini, Ore giapponesi,(
Corbaccio, 2000) p. 57.
Milano:
26
FOREWORD
in the multitude of the West references
visible in its architecture, and away more
and more from the pure Japanese style of his
contemporaries. How likes to call himself, "a
bridge between East and West" Arata Isozaki
introduces first in Japan and dialogues
Western forms but sometimes his performances
are covered with a veil of orientalism. It
will therefore be in this thesis that will be
dismantled
and
scientifically
cut
its
architecture trying to understand the origin
of stylistic choices and the method of
composition.
Mentioning Francesco Dal CO :” (…) this
Japanese architect entertains a rapport with
architecture, and one could add with “beauty”
in general which is similar to that ‘hatelove’ relationship which the young monk in
Kyoto, the protagonist of Mishima’s story,
had with Kinkaku-ji, the Golden Pavilion15 (
he burned it because the beauty of the
Pavilion was unsustainable for him. ed. )”.16
15
Kinkaku-ji (金閣寺), "Temple of the Golden
Pavilion" is a Zen Buddhist temple in Kyoto,
Japan. It is one of the most popular buildings
in Japan. Kinkaku-ji's history dates to 1397,
when the villa was purchased from the Saionji
family. In 1950, the pavilion was burned down by
a monk, Hayashi Yoken, who then attempted
suicide
behind
the
building.
The
present
pavilion structure dates from 1955, when it was
rebuilt.
16
Isozaki Arata. Arata Isozaki Opere e Progetti
(Roma: Cdp editrice, 1996) p.23.
27
FOREWORD
Another important difference between Japanese
and Western architecture is the centres on
the spatial quality of ‘emptiness’. For
Japanese architect spatial emptiness denotes
the
Buddhist
paradox
of
substantial
existence.17
In Buddhist thought the basic meaning of
existence is expressed in the truly nonexistent which is called ‘ma18’. ‘Ma’ is
literally defined as “the natural interval
between two or more things” existing in a
continuity or “the gap between two things”.
By comparison the word ‘ma’ does not
differentiate between Western understandings
of time and space. Rather it describes both
time and space through a notion of interval.
This usage is the basis for understanding all
spheres of the environment, life and art to
the extent that architecture, fine art,
music, drama and gardens in Japan can be
called “the art of ma”.
The metaphysically perfect spaces of Kazuo
Shinohara inspired a generation of young
Japanese architects, among them Toyo Ito,
with the concept ‘emptiness’ or ‘ma’. The
Japanese and Western interpretations of
17
Kazuo Shinohara, ‘The Japanese Conception of
Space’, in The Japan Architect, (Tokyo: 1964)
p.39.
18
Ma (間) is a Japanese word which can be
roughly translated as "gap", "space", "pause"
or "the space between two structural parts.
28
FOREWORD
‘emptiness’ are fundamentally different. In
the West ‘emptiness’ convey such negative
associations as inner conflict, torment and
spiritual
disintegration,
whereas,
for
Japanese ‘emptiness’ denotes the very essence
of existence.
Explains Gian Carlo Calza: "Grasp the real
vacuum value may serve to divert attention
from the concept note of emptiness that can
leave inconvenience, “horror vacui”, a
concept more familiar to us, to" silence ".
The silence evokes a feeling of peace,
tranquility,
serenity,
non-thinking,
no
jumble of noises or worry.(...) If we swing
our experience between the concept of
emptiness and the silence, here it is that
the vacuum is no longer a negative:
pictorially vacuum can be a fog that
interrupt the vision of a mountain, but also
becomes the illusion of a world that is there
and that the observer can imagine and it is
trying to imagine that takes a process of
personal training: you make an effort, you
become creative. "
The appreciation of vacuum descended from
some religious experiences alien to Japanese
tradition oldest.19
In 1978, Arata Isozaki was the designer of
the exhibition "MA - space-time in Japan"
held at the Decorative Arts Museum for the
19
Gian Carlo Calza, Stile Giapponese,( Torino:
Einaudi, 2002) p. 11.
29
FOREWORD
Festival d' Automne in Paris. This first
retrospective showed that boldly as the
Japanese, there is no difference between the
two concepts of time and space as perceived
by Westerns.
Figure 0.1.The Poster
of the Exhibition “Ma
Espace-Temps du Japon”,
Paris 1978.
Arata Isozaki offered visitors an exposition
where the representation of the sacred and
profane intermingled. The visitor was thus
faced throughout exposure to the fragile
border between the traditional and the avantgarde feature of contemporary Japanese
culture.
30
FOREWORD
Figure 0.2. Plan of “Ma” Exhibition.
To make the presentation of this concept in
the context of this exhibition, seven
expressions space had been cleared in a
separate
room
so
that
each
visitor
presentiment space aurally, visually and
sensual. The seven concepts of expression of
Ma had been selected in the vocabulary of
Japanese tradition. Every word, sort of
recognition
of
space
and
time,
was
represented by an artistic form.
Figure 0.2. View from the exhibition. A path
made by stones is showing how ‘ma’ can be
31
FOREWORD
realized spatially. The architect, trough design
of path, can regulate the fast of visitor’s
walking and so the ‘ma’. Is also visible a moon
platform and an unavailable stair which is
frequently used by Isozaki to create a space of
illusion.
32
INTRODUCTION
INTRODUCTION
Actuality of research
Japanese architect Arata Isozaki (b. 1931)
calls himself as a "bridge between East and
West". For Japanese architects he became some
kind of operator that broadcasts and
translates ideas of Western culture. On
another hand, for Western architects he shows
and explains ideas of Japanese traditions. In
his works he combines Japanese features –
"hiddenness", "secretiveness", "duration of
perception" – and western features –
"openness", "corporeality".
Architecture of Russian Avant-Garde as an
"art of constant beginning", where "concrete"
meets "virtual", "objectivity" "abstract"
gets close to Isozaki. For him it becomes an
example of link between architectural ideas
of East and West and a source for his
creative inspiration. He constantly refers to
Russian
Avant-Garde
in
his
project
argumentation, works and interviews.
Architecture of Isozaki is seemingly known
and well theoretically covered. However his
architectural approach in the context of
"Japanese-European-Russian" influences and
especially relationship with ideas of Russian
Avant-Garde is not fully explored. A special
research revealing influences of Russian
Avant-Garde ideas and their effects on
Isozaki's creativity is becoming necessary.
Moreover many ideas and design techniques of
33
INTRODUCTION
Isozaki – "multiplicity", "fractal", "mask",
"flow",
"form
deployment",
"invisible
architecture" are still relevant today and
could be used in architectural education and
practice.
Degree of problem and development of research
Russian researchers have not done a separate
study of Isozaki creative process and its
relationship with the Russian Avant-Garde.
The closest to the work is the study of N. A.
Konovalova20 "Historical and contemporary
traditions in Japanese architecture in
examples of world exhibitions". In the third
chapter, she classifies and compares some
projects of the Russian Avant-Garde and
Japanese Metabolism rather on the level of
similarity of individual ideas and forms, but
not at the level of the approach and process.
Other Russian researchers A.V. Ikonnikov21,
A.V.
Ryabushin22,
V.I.
Loktev23
made
20
Phd student from Moscow Institute of Moscow.
Research made in Japan under Hajime Yatzuka (see
note 76) tutor.
21
A.V. Ikonnikov (1926-2001 Moscow). Soviet and
Russian historical researcher. Phd in Moscow
University
of
Theory
and
History
of
Architecture.
22
A.V. Ryabushin (1931-2012 Moscow). Soviet and
Russian historical critic, director of Institute
of Theory and Urbanism in Moscow.
23
V.I. Loktev artist and architect, author of
a whole series of futuristic projects of cities
and as a pioneer of a new architectural
34
INTRODUCTION
researches
on
Metabolism
architecture,
featuring some parts about Isozaki. They
found and explored some ideas specific for
Metabolism, such as a "group form", "capsule
modeling", "doubling the surface of the
earth", "the idea of incompleteness", "the
idea of the core", as well as connection of
Metabolism and Buddhism. However Isozaki
never considered himself as a Metabolist
(although relied on them), kept a distance
with
them,
tried
to
make
his
own
architectural approach.
On the other hand Isozaki has spent many
words about his creative process, through
books and articles, in particular the "About
My Method", issued in 1972 on A+U, number 1.
Isozaki divides his method in seven manners:
"to multiciplity", "to pack", "to cut", "to
transcript", "to project", "to place", and
"to response". But the fact remains that this
research work on its process of design is
dated.
Aim of research
Basing on the analysis of theoretical
positions and spatial constructions of A.
Isozaki to identify the impact of Russian
Avant-Garde ideas and Japanese traditions on
his architecture, reveal the character of
their correlation.
direction Metamorphic architecture of cosmical
space.
Professor
in
Moscow
Architectural
Institute.
35
INTRODUCTION
Tasks of research
– to make analysis of crucial facts of A.
Isozaki creative biography and show creative
relationship with Kenzo Tange and Metabolism;
– to explore and classify influences of
Japanese traditional culture, Russian AvantGarde art and architecture and Western
culture which A. Isozaki cited in his spatial
constructions;
- through a comparative analysis between one
of
A.
Isozaki’s
project
and
an
I.I. Leonidov’s one, identify characters of
influences from Russian Avant-Garde and
traditional Japanese architecture.
Boundaries of research
Studied only architectural approach of A.
Isozaki, processes, and techniques relating
to his design.
Object of research
Considered the projects, analytical charts,
diagrams,
models,
preliminary
sketches,
collages, drawings, paintings, photographs,
interviews, theoretical works of A. Isozaki
everything that gives the material that form
the basis of the architect's design process.
36
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER
1.
BIOGRAPHY FACTS AND
THEIR INFLUENCE ON
ARATA ISOZAKI’S
CREATIVE ACTIVITY
“The Metabolists had no skepticism toward
their utopia. I thought they were too
optimistic...”
Arata Isozaki.
37
CHAPTER 2
1.1
The
Biography
of
Arata
Isozaki:
hometown context, family and archetypal
images affected on Isozakis’s work
Arata Isozaki was born 1931 in city of Oita
on the North coast of the island of Kyushu ,
where many of his project were built. As the
architect Kenzo Tange, who was born in
Imabari, a village on the nearby island of
Shikoku, Isozaki grown up in a small
provincial city far from Tokyo.
Kyushu influenced Isozaki’s development in
more subtle ways, for it is not too fanciful
to detect in his career some of those
southern traits which in the past have set
its people apart from northern Japanese. Some
part of Isozaki’s independence of mind,
rebelliousness,
openness
to
Western
influences, and conservative attachment to
ancient Japanese archetypes comes from this
southern personality. The inhabitants of
Kyushu are notably more extroverted and
lively then their northern counterparts. The
remoteness of Kyushu enabled the central
government to isolate, and thereby, to
control, the introduction of new knowledge
and technology outside Japan. In the
development of cultural and trade contacts
with
China,
Kyushu
was
of
singular
importance. Besides the approach of the
Portugal to Japan in sixteenth century was
from South, and it was to Kyushu that they
came bringing Christianity. For this reason,
38
CHAPTER 2
Kyushu, so remote from the center of
political power, yet so exposed to foreign
contacts, has played a crucial role in the
introduction of new knowledge, technology,
and culture to hermetic Japan. The exposure
of Kyushu to powerful new influences and
technology from China and West, combined with
its distance from the capital meant that any
rebellion was costly and difficult to put
down. These factors encouraged a degree of
independence and progressive attitudes which
have at times flared into open rebellion.
So the specialized role of Kyushu in Japanese
history, its exposure to new cultural
influence, coupled with its remoteness and
independence, throws some light on the
spiritual climate of Isozaki’s architecture
and may go some way in explaining his
appetite for Western architecture, his
independence of mind, and his rebelliousness.
Isozaki’s capacity for absorbing Western
architectural motifs is unmatched by his
contemporaries.
Isozaki is a prolific essayist and writer and
his involving in writing is something he
shared with his father Soji Isozaki, who was
a leading figure of “haiku”24 poets from
Kyushu. Isozaki’s involvement in the creation
of new meanings in architecture is consonant
with his name Arata, which means ‘newness’.
24
Haiku (俳句) is a very short form of Japanese
poetry, which consists in in three phrases of
5, 7, and 5 on respectively.
39
CHAPTER 2
An important feature to understand Isozaki’s
attitude towards architecture is his idea of
architecture as “events” instead of an “inert
objects”. It means a constant referring to
the history and so events, orbiting each
building. In his book Japan-ness (MIT Press,
2006) he cited three earlier architectural
events by nicknames: “Ise”, “Chogen,” and
“Katsura,” corresponding respectively to Ise
Southern
Gatehouse
of
Grand
Shrine25,
Todaiji26 (directed by the monk Chogen) and
Katsura Imperial Villa27.
25
Ise Grand Shrine (伊勢神宮), located in the
city of Ise, Mie, Japan, Shinto shrine is
dedicated
to
the
goddess
Amaterasu.
The
architectural style of the Ise shrine is known
as
shinmei-zukuri
(神明造, is
an
ancient
Japanese architectural style typical of holiest
Shinto’s shrines) characterized by extreme
simplicity and antiquity: its basic principles
date back to the Kofun period (250-538 C.E.).
The Shrine buildings use a special variant of
this style called Yuitsu-shinmei-zukuri (唯一神
明造?),
which
may
not
be
used
in
the
construction of any other shrine. The old
shrines are dismantled and new ones built on an
adjacent site to exacting specifications every
20 years at exorbitant expense, so that the
buildings will be forever new and forever
ancient and original. The present buildings,
dating from 2013, are the 62nd iteration to
date and are scheduled for rebuilding in 2033.
26
Todaiji (Great Eastern Temple) is one of
Japan's most famous temples and a landmark of
Nara. Located in Nara Park, in central Nara,
Todaiji was constructed in 752 as the head
temple of all provincial Buddhist temples of
40
CHAPTER 2
After years, having visited outstanding
buildings around the world, he conceded that
his faith to constructive genius of Great
South Gate has only been strengthened. Every
summer time, on his way to hometown, he has
been used to revisit this place try to
grasping new inspirations.
The Great South Gate of Todaiji holds some
features which are recognizable in Isozaki’s
architecture as such eclecticism, out of
scale volumes and pure geometric shapes.
Todaiji, Ise and Katsura were likewise
constructed
amidst
turmoil,
yet
their
construction was miraculously achieved though
much disturbed by external conditions. Thus
Isozaki affirms we should never treat
architecture as mere “object” but rather as
“event”.
1.2. Work in Kenzo Tange’s Laboratory and
influence of master’s creativity
After graduating from Architecture Department
of University of Tokyo, Isozaki attended the
post-graduate course under Kenzo Tange of
Japan. The monastery Todaiji was founded by
Emperor Shomu(724-749) when Nara was the
capital of Japan. After most of the buildings
were
destroyed
in
1180,
Todaiji
was
reconstructed under the abbot Shunjobo Chogen
(1121-1206) in a style he saw in China.
27
See note 77.
41
CHAPTER 2
P.h.d which he doesn’t complete. At that time
Tange was assistant of professor Eika
Takayama28 , both prominent figures in
Japanese history. Takayama, president of the
Society of Urbanism, had participated in the
project for Daido and reconstruction of
Tokyo; Tange was destined to become the
protagonist
of
architecture
and
urban
Japanese. This period of environment was
challenging for intellectual maturation of
Isozaki, quickly became Tange ‘s assistant.
Arata Isozaki’s architectural ideologies
developing started with Tange, and extended
including the personality of Kunio Maekawa29,
student of Antonin Raymond30 and Le Corbusier.
28
Takayama Eika (1910-1999 Tokyo).
professor at University of Tokyo, colleague of
Kenzo Tange, architect and master designer.
Masterplan for the Technopolis Tsukuba Science
City (1961) and the Komazawa Olympic Park
(1964).
29
Kunio Maekawa(14 May 1905 – 26 June 1986)
was a Japanese architect especially known for
the Tokyo Bunka Kaikan building (concert hall
located in Ueno Park, Tokyo, 1961), and a key
figure of modern Japanese architecture.
After graduation in 1928, he travelled to
France to apprentice with Le Corbusier. In 1930
he returned to Japan and worked with Antonin
Raymond (a student of Frank Lloyd Wright) and
in 1935 established his own office Mayekawa
Kunio Associates.
30
Antonin Raymond,(10 May 1888, Bohemia- 21
November 1976 Pennsylvania), was a Czech
American architect. Raymond was born and
studied in Bohemia (now the Czech Republic),
working later in the USA and Japan. His initial
work with American architect Frank Lloyd
42
CHAPTER 2
Many of the best Japanese talents, among them
Sachio Otani31 (who later designed the Kyoto
International Conference Hall), Fumihiko
Maki32, and the Metabolist member Kisho
Kurokawa33, were students at that time in
Tange’s seminar. Isozaki collaboration with
Wright, with whom later worked on
Imperial Hotel. Along with British
Josiah Conder, Raymond is recognized
the fathers of modern architecture in
the Tokyo
Architect
as one of
Japan.
31
Sachio Otani (1924 Tokyo-2013) was a noted
Japanese architect. In 1946 graduated from the
University of Tokyo. He began his career in
Kenzo Tange's studio, where he helped design
the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum (1955). In
1960 he started his own practice, and has subsequently designed a number of memorable buildings including Kyoto International Conference
Center.
32
Fumihiko Maki( 1928 in Tokyo)is a Japanese
architect who. in 1993 received the Pritzker
Prize for his work, which often explores
pioneering uses of new materials and fuses the
cultures of East and West.
33
Kisho Kurokawa (1934-2007) was a leading
Japanese architect and one of the founders of
the Metabolist Movement. Kurokawa studied architecture at Kyoto University, graduating with
a bachelor's degree in 1957. He then attended
University of Tokyo, under the supervision of
Kenzo Tange. With colleagues, he cofounded the
Metabolist Movement in 1960s. Among his famous
projects the early Nakagin Capsule Tower
(Ginza, Tokyo, 1970–1972) and later The National Art Center, Tokyo, Roppongi, Tokyo, 2000–
2005).
43
CHAPTER 2
Kenzo Tange lasted until 1963 and till that
date the young architect took part in
interpreting at the outstanding engagements
like “1960 Master Plan for New Tokyo” and the
Yoyogi National Gymnasia of Tokyo.
Tange influenced Isozaki not least by his
mastery of forms, but himself was in turn
influenced by Isozaki, who in addition to
being an excellent draughtsman was also a
fertile source of ideas. Isozaki’s “Join
Core” project for example, inspired such
Tange project as 3D city planning, the
Tsukuji Re-urbanization Plan, the Yamanashi
Press and Radio Centre, Kofu, and the
Shizuoka Building in Ginza.
Figure 1.1. Arata Isozaki’s Joint Core System for
Shinjuku Project, 1962.
44
CHAPTER 2
Figure 1.2. Scheme of design process:
1. Rise up trunks above the city where elevators
are housed inside the cylinders.
2. Link the “joint core” structurally by long-span
trusses which accommodate office space and expand
these structures for a comprehensive proposal of a
“City in the Air”.
Figure 1.3. Kenzo Tange: the Yamanashi Press and
Radio Centre, Kofu, 1967, and Shizuoka building,
Ginza, 1967.
45
CHAPTER 2
Figure 1.4. Scheme of design process:
1. Elevate and grouped together in a bundle solid
service towers (elevators and staircases.
2. Adjusted horizontal slabs, clipped or removed
in order to satisfy the changing conditions of the
people.
Tange realized the principle of Isozaki‘s
“core system” compacting in a single site or
even, as regards Shizuoka building in Ginza,
in a single trunk element.
In the years between 1955 and 1958 Tange
designed
several
buildings
with
an
exaggerated trabeation expression, mostly
evident
in
the
Kagawa
Administration
Building, Takamatsu, 1958, and the Town Hall
in Kurashiki,1960.
Figure 1.5. Scheme of design
process.
46
CHAPTER 2
Figure 1.6. K.Tange’s Kagawa
Administration
Building,
Takamatsu, 1958.
Figure 1.7. Kenzo Tange’s Town Hall in
Kurashiki, 1960.
These projects preceded Isozaki’s three parts
division first manner and must invariably
have influenced him. The Oita Medical Hall
was designed in 1959 while Isozaki was still
a member of Tange’s atelier and it contains
the
most
explicit
of
all
lsozaki’s
interpretations of the sacred pillar. The
Medical Hall provides an important link with
47
CHAPTER 2
the burgeoning
auditorium has
the oval tube,
elevated above
sturdy legs.
mega structure movement. The
been taken from a length of
and the fragment so obtained,
the surrounding city on four
Figure 1.9. Medical Hall, Oita 1959-60.
1.3 Relationship
with
Metabolist’s
architects and impact on Isozaki’s spatial
construction
Although Isozaki belongs to the same
generation as the Metabolists Noboru Kawazoe,
Kiyonori Kikutake34, Fumihiko Maki, Masato
34
Kiyonori Kikutake (192 –2011) was a prominent
Japanese architect known as one of the founders
48
CHAPTER 2
Otaka and Kisho Kurakawa, he never at any
time formally joined the Group. During an
interview in 1971 with James Stirling Isozaki
conceded: “Some of our tendencies are the
same, but I always felt differently. I never
became a member of the Metabolism35 Group”36.
of the Japanese Metabolist group. He was also
the tutor and employer of several important Japanese architects, such as Toyo Ito. Kikutake is
known for his "Marine City" project of 1958,
which formed part of the Metabolist Manifesto
launched at the World Design Conference in Tokyo
in 1960 under the leadership of Kenzo Tange.
Among his famous projects: Edo-Tokyo Museum, Tokyo 1993.
35
Metabolism (新陳代謝) was a post-war Japanese
architectural movement that fused ideas about
architectural megastructures with those of organic biological growth. It had its first international exposure during CIAM's 1959 meeting and
its ideas were tentatively tested by students
from Kenzo Tange's MIT studio. During the preparation for the 1960 Tokyo World Design Conference a group of young architects and designers,
including Kiyonori Kikutake, Kisho Kurokawa and
Fumihiko Maki prepared the publication of the
Metabolism manifesto. They were influenced by a
wide variety of sources including Marxist theories and biological processes. Their manifesto
was a series of four essays entitled: Ocean
City, Space City, Towards Group Form, and Material and Man, and it also included designs for
vast cities that floated on the oceans and plugin capsule towers that could incorporate organic
growth. Although the World Design Conference
gave the Metabolists exposure on the international stage their ideas remained largely theoretical.
49
CHAPTER 2
Isozaki
has
maintained
an
ambivalent
relationship with Metabolism ever since he
was asked to joined them when they came
together,
named
their
philosophy
and
published their manifesto at the 1960 World
Design Conference. He refused. Yet he
participated in the Metabolistis’s 1962
exhibition “This will be your city” in Tokyo,
shered many of their ideas throughout the
60’s, and worked with them on Expo ’70 in
Osaka. Outside Japan, Isozaki was often
mistaken a member of the Metabolists, though
he remained independent and critical of the
unquestioning “progressivism” he thought they
proclaimed. When Metabolists dreamt of
renewal, Isozaki spoke of ruins. He preferred
to keep the company of artists, filmmakeres,
and writers rather than fellow architects.
Whilst Isozaki’s aims differed from those of
the Metabolist Group it is equally clear that
he was strongly influenced by the Group’s
conception of form, particularly Kiyonori
Kikutake’s
schemes.
Isozaki’s
early
Some smaller, individual buildings that employed the principles of Metabolism were built
and these included Tange's Yamanashi Press and
Broadcaster Centre and Kurokawa's Nakagin Capsule Tower. The greatest concentration of their
work was to be found at the 1970 World Exposition in Osaka where Tange was responsible for
master planning the whole site whilst Kikutake
and Kurokawa designed pavilions.
36
Isozaki
Arata,
“Interview
Starling”, Japan Architecture
August, 1971, 17.
with
James
and Urbanism,
50
CHAPTER 2
buildings, notably the early mega skeletal
series, are not pure mega structures; what
interested Isozaki was the adaptation of
Metabolism’s mega-aesthetic to the scale of
the individual building, enlarging members.
The origin of tubular hall of the Medical
Hall,
Oita
1959-60,
and
the
hollow
hypertrophic beams of the Oita Prefectural
Library, is constant with the appearance of
similar cylindrical tower structures in the
early
Metabolism
project
of
Kiyonori
Kikutake.
Figure 1.10. Kiyonori Kikutake:
Tower
City,
1958.
Kikutake
introduced the cylindrical core in
his early Metabolism proposal.
Fumihiko Maki’s influence can be noticed in
Isozaki’s Gunma Museum which pays tribute to
Makis’s
Apartment
Complex,
Tokyo.
The
consistent international Modernism of Maki’s
early work has given way to an eclecticism
51
CHAPTER 2
which
conforms
to
the
new
Mannerist
sensibility that is much closer in style to
Isozaki.
Figure 1.11. Fumikiko Maki: Hillside
Apartment Complex, Tokyo, 1978. A
conscious
affinity
between
the
architecture of Isozaki and Maki in the
1970s.
Figure 1.12.
1962-66.
Library
Oita
Prefecture,
52
CHAPTER 2
The early ‘60s project of Oita Library refers
to metabolism themes like human body’s
circulation system as Isozaki explained.
“The project still showed the influence of
Metabolism, was originally conceived as
"growing architecture ". (...) The basic
structural system is designed to allow the
extension
of
the
spaces
walkable
to
accommodate those dimensions. (...) The
original inspiration for the project was an
analogy with the human skeleton (concrete
structure), with the circulatory system
(pipes),
and
with
the
muscles
(the
composition of the interior space), with
obvious affinity interconnections between
trunks, arms and plates underlying the "joint
system
central".
This
building
was
constructed with concrete unfinished concrete
brut,
widely
used
in
Japanese
Neobrutalism”37.
Isozaki and the Metabolist Group have little
in common, for where the Metabolist viewed
urban
as
essentially
a
matter
of
technological adjustment, though this was
given a thoroughly Japanese interpretation by
means of analogies with growth in nature and
cell
replication,
Isozaki
was
largely
uninterested in change or in technology for
its own sake except where technology served
to reinforce his aesthetic interests. The
37
Arata
Isozaki,
Architettura,
trad.
Rizzoli, 2005)p 35.
Quattro
Decenni
di
L.
Zarri(
New
York:
53
CHAPTER 2
idea of a change of skyline of the entire
city was a possible thought in a city like
Tokyo where the urban context is in a
continuous metamorphosis. “While in Western
cities there is a drawing of the city and the
streets and the contexts has the precise
points of reference, the city as Tokyo are
presented as systems with undifferentiated
urban characteristics and always different,
which could continue indefinitely in any
direction. The buildings are demolished and
quickly replaced by others, with new forms
and functions, in a time span of about twenty
years.. These cities have no real consistency
as European cities, instead keeping the
temporariness, and the precariousness of a
micro infrastructure”.38
Therefore Isozaki and members of the
Metabolisms developed a concept of purely
organic city development (aggregation of
various towers) and each member has referred
to a natural element such as marine colonies,
DNA structure or as Isozaki to vegetal
elements, particularly trees.
38
Andrea Maffei, Le opere, i progetti e gli
critti Toyo Ito,( Milano: Electa 2001)p 77.
54
CHAPTER 2
1. Kiyonori Kikutake’s “Marine city” 1958.
The shapes of the towers refers to rock barnacle shells colonies and the intent was to
create a floating metropolis in the ocean;
self-sustainable, flexible, clean and safe,
earthquake-proof, impervious to flooding and
away from urban sprawl on the main land.
55
CHAPTER 2
2. Noriaki Kurokawa’s “Helix city” 1961.
3. Arata Isozaki’s “Clusters in the Air”
1961.
56
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER
2.
THE INFLUENCE OF
DIFFERENT TRADITIONS
ON A. ISOZAKI’S
CREATIVE PROCESS
“I had two ideas at the moment: to start
from zero and Malevich.”
Arata Isozaki.
57
CHAPTER 2
A clear idea of Isozaki’s profile was
describe by Hans Hollein39. “(..) What is
Isozaki’s colour? Black or white? Of course
black and white. But here I would add another
dimension, mixture. Black and with transforms
into grey. He is really grey. This is not
meant derogatory. With a more poetic
metaphor, Isozaki would call this “twilight”.
Twilight equalizes, and this equalizing of
heterogeneous elements is a fundamental
phenomenon of Isozaki’s architecture that is
why he can do marble halls and robots and
computer cities. It is architecture of
dissolving but subsequent resolving.
That is why he can easily absorb a variety of
influences without being derivative, but
always highly original”.40
Isozaki himself, for instance in his
comprehensive documentation in A+U in 1972,
has indicated whom he considers the figures
or the realizations, the buildings partaking
on the boards of the “eternal” game.
39
Hans Hollein (1934–2014) was an Austrian
architect and designer and key figure of
postmodern architecture. Some of his most
notable works are the Haas House and the
Albertina extension in the inner city of
Vienna. In 1985 Hollein was awarded the
Pritzker Prize.
40
Hans
Hollein,
in
Arata
Isozaki
Part
1,(Tokyo: Kajimi Institute Print., 1993) p.22.
58
CHAPTER 2
They are : Michelangelo, Stirling, Van Allen,
Peruzzi, Ledoux, Neumann, Loss, Hoffmann,
Venturi, Piranesi, Wright, Charreau, Hollein,
Kiesler, Borromini, Le Corbusier, Pichler,
Tange, Malevitch, Mies va der Rohe, Fuller,
Kahn, Terragni, Magritte, Sinan, Johson,
George de la Tour, Duchamp, Sullivan and De
Chirico.
Isozaki himself declare:” An architectural
work is hardly the product of one person’s
effort. Even if it is designed, drafted,
supervised, and executed by a single
architect, innumerable factors outside the
architect’s control are inevitably involved
in the process"41.
41
Ishii Kazuhiro, Arata Isozaki Part 1,(Tokyo:
Kajimi Institute Print., 1993) p. 31.
59
CHAPTER 2
Figure 2.1. Hans Hollein, Vienna February
1976, sketches of Arata Isozaki.
2.1 Arata Isozaki’s adoption of
traditional architectural concepts
Japanese
From initial formal viewpoint Isozaki’s works
are basically conceived not in the Japanese
sense
of
proportions,
but
rather
in
Renaissance like purely geometrical patterns
such
as
squares
and
circles.
His
architectural expression does not depend on
columns,
beams
and
other
structural
components, but consists of heavy masses
composed
of
concrete
walls.
Japanese
60
CHAPTER 2
lightness is dispensed with, and instead a
heaviness that lodges in the ground prevails.
Through deeper analysis it’s notable that the
formal approach is partly to traditional
Japanese shapes (heaviness of roof and trunk
as backbone) how much deeper are respected
spatial principles of Japanese architecture.
-Columns like trunk of the house
The construction columns for the project
‘City in the Air’, appropriates the elaborate
brackets and monumental expression of the
Great South Gate of the Todaji, 1199.
This raises an important question concerning
the role of sacred expression in Isozaki’s
architecture.
In Japan the sacred implied by large scale
and the suggestion of strength and, in this
case, the width of trunk column is not merely
structural needs but also a sign of spiritual
power.
Tange made a great play of trabeation beam
forms in the 1950s and Isozaki inherited
something of this in his early work. However,
Isozaki went much further than Tange in
giving his beams a superhuman expression,
inasmuch as the process of hypertrophy is
allowed to proceed to the point where instead
of the beams being mere an element of
construction, they now begin to include
interior space. The dimensions of Isozaki’s
beams are by now superhuman, and the
61
CHAPTER 2
expression of strength, which or so long had
been the hallmark of Japanese architecture,
acquired, under the influence of Brutalism,
“an unprecedented monumentality in the Iwata
Girl’s High School, the Oita Library and the
Kitakyushu Museum of Art.
Isozaki transformed the primitive archetype
of the central sacred pillar when he made it
the basis for his invention of form. Indeed
the ancient sacred dimension was obscured and
overlaid by turning it on its side,
increasing its scale, and hollowing out its
interior so that it now becomes a hollowedout vessel and container of human activities.
In trabeated mega skeletal and tunnel form,
square and semi-cylindrical tubes are laid
next to one another and the underside left
open to produce more extensive conventional
spaces. In the Oita Medical Hall 1960 the
auditorium is located at the first floor
‘flattened oval beam; later, in the Iwata
Girls’ High School, 1964, the teaching spaces
are formed within a series of vertically
stacked beams. The Oita Prefectural Library,
1966, marks a further stage in the
application of the modified sacred pillar.
Here the trabeated form is achieved by
stacking square tubular beams of concrete
between a central spine and transverse beams
supported on columns. On the outside, the end
profiles imply that the interior space is
made up of a number of isolated square tubes,
whereas, it is evident once inside that the
beam soffit has been omitted and the inverted
62
CHAPTER 2
‘U’ profiles of beams used to cover a more or
less open interior.
Figure 2.2. Scheme of design process. From
structural pillar of Japanese Pagoda to a
horizontal living pillar. Kitakyushu Museum
of Art and Oita Library
63
CHAPTER 2
-Respect of traditional shapes
Figure 2.3. Arata Isozaki’s
Concert Hall, Nara, 1992-98.
In the project of Nara concert Hall, Isozaki
proceeds with a series of references to
majestic temple residing in the city of Nara,
the Great Buddha of Todaiji Temple. Having to
juxtapose with it, Isozaki copied size
reaching
the
same
height.
The
most
significant reference, however, it can be
seen in the choice of treatment of the
exterior.
Isozaki,
in
fact,
processed
surfaces as single big roof, witnessing the
highest
devotion
to
the
Japanese
architectural tradition. Tiles floors of the
same dark grey of old roofs. Moreover outer
shape is 90 degrees rotated ellipse or a
clothoid curve, a curvature which consistent
64
CHAPTER 2
with the forms of the ancient temples.
-Traditional wooden
brackets systems.
joinery
and
“Tokyo42”
Isozaki in Clusters in the air project evokes
the structural elements found in traditional
Japanese wooden structures, such in the
“masuhijiki” (ancones) and “tokyo” (capitals)
of Nandaimon Gate43, Todaiji Temple in Nara.
he system is Chinese in origin and is called
“Dougong”44.
The Tokyō (斗栱) is a system of supporting
blocks and brackets (elbow wood) supporting the
eaves of a Japanese building, usually part of a
Buddhist temple or Shinto shrine. The use of
Tokyō is made necessary by the extent to which
the eaves protrude, a functionally essential
element of Japanese Buddhist architecture. The
system has however always had also an important
decorative function. Like most architectural
elements in Japan, the system is Chinese in
origin (on the subject, see the article
Dougong) but has evolved since its arrival into
several original forms.
43
The existing Nandaimon (Great South Gate)
was constructed at the end of the 12th century
based on Song Dynasty style (960–1279), after
the original gate was destroyed by a typhoon
during the Heian period. The current building
was finished in 1709. Until 1998, it was the
world's largest wooden building.
44
Dougong (斗拱) is a unique structural element
of interlocking wooden brackets, one of the
most important elements in traditional Chinese
architecture.
42
65
CHAPTER 2
Figure
2.4.
My
personal
drawing
representing the design of A. Isozaki
“Clusters in the Air” compared with
traditional Chinese “Goudong” system.
2.1.1 Dissolving architecture in the natural
context
Nature offers many images of emptiness that
usually can’t perceive. In Western painting
clouds are substantially vision and not
allude to anything, stand for themselves, or
at most a weather condition and serve to
build solid, such as Tiepolo’s paintings;
while in China and Japan the clouds are
something in between the visible and the
invisible. Those are a break in the vision,
and serve to stimulate in the viewer an
attitude of inquiry, creative. One of the
most famous paintings of Japan, the landscape
in ink broken (Haboku- Hatsuboku45) painted by
45
Haboku (破墨) and Hatsuboku (溌墨) are both a
technique employed in ink wash painting, as
seen in landscape paintings, involving an
66
CHAPTER 2
Sesshu Toyo (1420-1506) lends itself very
well to this kind of analysis because the fog
and clouds are empty vehicle.
But the vacuum effect is designed to undo or
upset the sense of distance, so as to induce
read more clearly the first floor, while the
fog get the observer be prospectively
affected not so significant. So the vacuum
effect allows you to place emotionally the
importance of the objects depicted in the
space, creating a hierarchy of relationships
different from that to which we are
accustomed to in the West, and that is
architecturally
based
on
progressions
conceptual, rational; not here, it is more
sentimental.46
Gunma Museum of Isozaki plays a role of blank
white sheet in a natural context, surrounded
by forest that instead express itself fully.
Located within a park, for its reflective
surface and chromatically homogeneous skin,
it is visible around the green as a
cancellation and subtraction of this.
abstract simplification of forms and freedom of
brushwork. The two terms are often confused
with each other in ordinary use. Generally,
haboku relies on a layered contrast black, gray
and
white,
whereas
hatsuboku
utilizes
"splashes" of ink, without leaving clear
contours or outlines. In Japan, these styles of
painting were firmly founded and spread by the
Japanese painter Sesshu Toyo.
46
Gian Carlo Calza, Stile Giapponese,( Torino:
Einaudi, 2002) p. 29.
67
CHAPTER 2
As also visible in Sou Fujimoto47’s sketches,
architects
of
the
next
generation,
architecture in Japan is never in the first
plan in its context. Building, since
traditional architecture, should be at first
compatible with nature, which is the real
protagonist in landscape. Architecture lies
fragilely on the ground, adopting a basic
aspect and shapes (bare of any ornaments), so
it can be the background of nature. The Gunma
Museum has a potential space that would not
be so sensitive and deep except that the
building allows nature in the first place to
show itself.
47
Sou Fujimoto (1971) is a Japanese architect
graduated from the University of Tokyo in 1994,
and established his own office, Sou Fujimoto
Architects, in 2000. Noted for delicate light
structures and permeable enclosures, Fujimoto
designed several houses, and in 2013, was selected to design the temporary Serpentine Gallery pavilion in London.
68
CHAPTER 2
Figure 2.5. Sesshu Toyo, Haboku Sansui, 1495.
Figure 2.6. My personal Sketch up representation of A.
Isozaki’s Gunma Museum.
Figure 2.7. Concept sketch of Sou Fujimoto for house in
Tokyo.
69
CHAPTER 2
2.1.2 Isozaki’s “space of darkness” and
“space of illusion” as result of Japanese
“lighting gradient” aesthetic
The domain par excellence of mysticism and
art, in Japanese culture, serves to promote,
both for the artist and the viewer, a
connection
with
the
undifferentiated,
Satori48. At these depths it is located the
sources of aesthetics connected to nature,
which informs not only the gardens, religious
practice and ritual but art in general.
According to Japanese culture the Satori are
hidden in the deep darkness and is from there
that is possible to catch them, mystically.
From this point is possible to understand the
deep worship of Japanese for penumbra and
almost deep darkness which is a main features
traditional Japanese houses.
It was between 1960 and 1970 that Arata
Isozaki passed through a sombre period of
dejection started as a student, working for
the Masterplan of Tokyo in with Kenzo Tange
and culminating at the Open Day of Expo Osaka
1970. For the previous occurrence, still
student, he confesses that he met the real
darkness during a nervous breakdown. Telling
48
Satori (悟り) is a Japanese Buddhist term for
awakening, comprehension; understanding. Satori
is often used interchangeably with kenshō. It
refers to the perception of the Buddha-Nature
or emptiness. According to some authors, kenshō
is a brief glimpse, while satori is considered
to be a deeper spiritual experience.
70
CHAPTER 2
about his second experience of meeting
darkness he asserted:"For months I was sick
in bed, (...). It was then that I realized
that I had to leave the studio of Tange and
put me on my own. Addressing the melancholy
hospital, I resolved to make the dark bases
of my theories space and time.(…)During my
professionally participation in national
event Expo '70 the only vocabulary allowed
was Modernism. This situation gave me a great
nervous tension and ruined me physically. In
those circumstances colors blurred and I
started to see just empty. The substance lost
ground and turned into shadow. I had the
sensation that the twilight, the time of the
devil, was dropped on the world. I decided
that from that moment in the design of the
buildings would have chased the void as far
as possible, to bring the physical objects to
the non-color, and made this procedure a
method.”49
Those confessions are related to an inner
psychology emotional state rather than a
space talk, but still are ancient foundation
of Japanese spiritual culture.
During this psychologically moment of his
life, Isozaki deepened the theme of darkness
in his architecture.
49
Arata
Isozaki,
Architettura,
trad.
Rizzoli, 2005) p. 75.
Quattro
Decenni
di
L.
Zarri(
New
York:
71
CHAPTER 2
The “Space of Darkness" essay (1964) by
Isozaki provides the surest basis for an
interpretation of his role and work, although
subsequent writings of 1974 (“Rereading In
Praise of Shadows”) and 1980 (”Rethinking
Space of Darkness) offer additional clues and
pointers. All three make reference to the
compelling even if short didactic work by the
now internationally celebrated novelist and
essayist Junichiro Tanizaki50 entitled “Praise
of Shadows”51.
Tanizaki's
ostensible
theme
was
the
overemployment
of
artificial
means
of
lighting in prewar Japan, whether in public
places, on the Kabuki stage52, or at night in
towns. More than anything, he was against the
tendency to brighten domestic interiors
unduly. A high degree of illumination
contradicted cultural usage which had evolved
over centuries and in accordance with which
human life and especially household ritual
proceeded in a state of semidarkness.
50
Jun'ichiro Tanizaki (1886–1965 Tokyo) was
one of the major writers of modern Japanese
literature. He was nominated for the Nobel
Prize in Literature.
51
In Praise of Shadows is an essay on Japanese
aesthetics by the Japanese author and novelist
Jun'ichiro Tanizaki. Originally published in
1933 in Japanese. The theme is the comparisons
of light with darkness used to contrast Western
and Asian cultures.
52
Kabuki (歌舞伎), is a classical Japanese
dance-drama theatre.
72
CHAPTER 2
Figure 2.8. Darkness at the heart of
domestic interior.
Isozaki admits that he himself is out of
sympathy with Tanizaki’s rejection of the
bright, shiny implements of daily modern
life, but then, even Tanizaki claimed that it
would be impossible for a modern Japanese to
exist under the conditions sketched in his
essay. It is, rather, the speculation that
“In Praise of Shadows” provokes which is
Isozaki's theme in his “Space of Darkness"
essay. In European practice generally and not
only in baroque examples, such as the
Transparent at Toledo already mentioned-light
and shadow are treated as "independent
opposing elements.” While dramatic effects
are obtained under these conditions, light
and shadow never mix physically, as they
appear to do in Japanese spaces.
“Space," then, such as it exists in Japanese
buildings, is conceived of simply as the
73
CHAPTER 2
“degree of intensity of light".
It can be called space as a gradient. This
feature is visible in modern Japanese
architecture and in Isozaki as well.
Figure
2.9.
“Moon
Room”
in
A. Isozaki’s Nagi Museum of Art,
Okayama, Japan, 1991-1994.
74
CHAPTER 2
Figure 2.10. Museum in the forest, Taoyuan
Coutry, Taiwan, 2012, Sou Fujimoto53.
53
As the Japanese architect Sou Fujimoto says,
“gradiation” will became the keyword for the
future of Japanese architecture. For instance,
there are infinite colorific degrees between
white and black, and innumerable values between
1 and 0. Gradiations lay dormant in diverse
places.
They
can
be
found
in
between:
interiority and exteriority; architecture and
urbanism; furniture and architecture; private
and public; theatre and museum; house and
streets; matter and space; morning and night;
comprehensibility and incomprehensibility. The
idea of graduation will herald the immense
possibilities of architecture.53
Figure 2.11. Concept of “gradient” by Sou
Fujimoto.
75
CHAPTER 2
As the novelist Tanizaki explained :”In the
temples of Japan a roof of heavy tiles is
first laid out, and in the deep, spacious
shadows created by the eaves the rest of the
structure is built. Nor is this true only of
temples; in the palaces of the nobility and
the houses of the common people, what first
strikes the eye is the massive roof of tile
or thatch and the heavy darkness that hangs
beneath the eaves. Even at midday cavernous
darkness spreads over all beneath the roof’s
edge, making entryway, doors, walls, and
pillars all but invisible. The grand temples
of Kyoto Nishi Honganji and the farmhouses of
the remote countryside are alike in this
respect: like most buildings of the past
their roofs give the impression of possessing
far greater weight, height, and surface than
all that stands beneath the eaves.” 54
Making spaces to live, Japanese first spread
a parasol to throw a shadow on the earth, and
in the pale light of the shadow they set
together a house.
There are of course roofs on Western houses
too, but they are less to keep off the sun
than to keep off the wind; even from without
it is apparent that they are built to create
as few shadows as possible and to expose the
interior to as much light as possible.
54
Junichiro
Tanizaki,
In
praise
of
shadows,(Tokyo: Leete'S Island Books,1977) p.
11.
76
CHAPTER 2
If the roof of a Japanese house is a parasol,
the roof of a Western house is no more than a
cap, with as small a visor as possible so In
Japanese tradition there is no use of glass,
concrete, and bricks, for instance, made a
low roof necessary to keep off the driving
wind and rain. The way in which, from
ancestors, forced to live in dark rooms,
presently came to discover beauty in shadows,
ultimately to guide shadows towards beauty’s
ends. And so it has come to be that the
beauty of a Japanese room depends on a
variation of shadows, heavy shadows against
light shadows, it has nothing else.
Figure 2.12. Scheme of Japanese and
Western
house’s
relationship
with
atmospheric events, specially with the
sun light. In Wester houses shadow and
light never mix physically, as they
appear to do in Japanese spaces.
A Japanese room might be likened to an inkwash painting, the paper-paneled shoji55 being
the expanse where the ink is thinnest, and
the alcove where it is darkest. Essentially
55
Paper shoji: traditional translucent paper
over a frame of wood.
77
CHAPTER 2
the space called alcove is an empty space
marked off with plain wood and plain walls,
so that the light drawn into it forms dim
shadows within emptiness. There is nothing
more. Were the shadows to be banished from
its corners, the alcove would in that instant
revert to mere void. Describing the beauty of
darkness J. Tanizaki declared: ”This was the
genius of our ancestors, that by cutting off
the light from this empty space they imparted
to the world of shadows that formed there a
quality of mystery and depth superior to that
of any wall painting or ornament. “
Modern
Western
civilization
appears
determined to banish this darkness the
objective of this effort, is to seek only
luminosity
and
Visual
clarity
(more
functionalization in architecture).
The essential architectural tool whom create
the darkness is certainly the building's
roof, which in Japanese tradition has an high
symbolical importance.
Isozaki formally translates the roof under
which is formed the space of darkness as a
single building. This is the case of Nara
Concert Hall and. Tokyo Edo Museum, symbol of
modernism by Kiyonori Kikutake clearly shows
this quote of tradition. The living space, in
this case the museum exhibition, is located
in the only "container "roof. This volume is
in fact appears as the silhouette of a
typical Japanese extruded roof, standing on
four vertical supports.
78
CHAPTER 2
Figure 2.13. Isozaki’s Nara Concert Hall (roof as entire
building).
Figure 2.14. A. Isozaki’s Tokyo Christian College.
Figure 2.14. Kiyonori Kikutake’s Edo Museum (living the
roof).
79
CHAPTER 2
-Space of darkness space of illusion.
Isozaki explained the concept of darkness,
which is so far for Western sense of beauty
with
these
words:”
Darkness
as
a
consciousness
space
of
imaginary
and
illusionary world. A reflection of reality
associated with depth psychology, magic, and
symbols”.56
His aim is therefore to grasp and show the
concept of darkness in is architecture, as a
personal sphere of one who lives a certain
space.
Architecturally Isozaki mainly equips with
two instruments to achieve the effect of
semi-darkness: lack of artificial light and
double walls system. The first is also used
by the architect trough a limited use of
openings, or if any, arranged longitudinally
in lower part of facade, as seen in the Kyoto
Concert Hall.
His buildings, like most in Japanese
territory, comply with opening times that do
not exceed, for the great majority of cases,
5 p.m., so as not to incur problems of
artificial light. As shown in the Museum of
Modern Art in Gunma Prefecture, the architect
provided skylights in showrooms spread
through an opaque material, daylight comes
56
Arata Isozaki, Japan-ness in Architecture
(Cambridge: MIT Press), 2006 p.66.
80
CHAPTER 2
faintly to the work of art.
Concerning the second tool used to obtain a
mystical atmosphere of darkness he showed a
particular predilection to the use of double
wall structures. So in his architecture
‘walls’ play a protagonist role, they embrace
darkness inside. Of Particular salience in
this regard was the way he composed his
double walls for the Oita Prefectural Library
and the headquarters building of Fukuoka
Mutual
Bank.
Typical
of
Isozaki’s
architectural construction methods prevailing
in the 1960’s, the first example is composed
of a central zone delineated by twin walls
which corresponds to the buildings core, and
to which the necessary rooms are attached
according to the program. In the case of
Fukuoka City Bank Head Office, this concept
has been developed on an even greater scale.
project of Oita Medical Hall, Oita
Prefectural Library, 1959/1962-
81
CHAPTER 2
1966, 1970-1972 (Oita Medical Hall
Annex).
Figure 2.16. Arata Isozaki’s project of
Fukuoka City Bank Head Office. 1968-1971,
1978-1983 (Addition).
Under this same category of tendency should
also be included his use of tubular details
in squares cross-sections (Oita Prefectural
Library, Kitakyushu City Museum of Art) and
semi-circle cross-sections (Fujimi Country
Club House, Kitakyushu Central Library).
All these buildings possess an empty
longitudinal spine bounded by two thick walls
with
whom
the
buildings
spread
out
perpendicular to the spine. Darkness space
diminishes the spectator’s awareness of the
surrounding
enclosure
and
focuses
his
awareness on this individual consciousness.57
57
Ishii Kazuhiro,”A guide to the world of
Arata Isozaki”, in Arata Isozaki Part 1,(Tokyo:
Kajimi Institute Print., 1993) p. 32.
82
CHAPTER 2
Figure 2.17. Arata Isozaki’s project
of Kitakyushu City Museum of Art,
Fukyoka, 1972-1974.
Figure 2.18. Arata Isozaki’s project
of
Kitakyushu
Central
Library,
Fukuoka, 1973-1974.
83
CHAPTER 2
Figure 2.19. Arata Isozaki’s project of
Fujimi Coutry Clubhouse, Oita City, 19731974.
The state of darkness is intended by Isozaki
also as a state of illusion. Thus, writes
Isozaki:”I am now convinced that we must
replace
darkness
with
a
metaphor
of
illusoriness. As it gradually becomes a part
of this overall illusoriness, darkness floats
free and assumes a very different quality
from what Tanizaki had in mind." Isozaki's
concern, therefore, was the evolution of a
working method for confronting this new space
of illusion.
This term is a fundamental component of
Isozaki’s irony and wants to heightening the
spectator’s mistrust of his perceptions, an
awakening of feeling that is no firm ground
anywhere beneath his feet. This perception
increases the individual’s alienation from
reality. Two examples of deliberate illusion
in Isozaki’s architecture deserve mention.
They are the reverse perspective large marble
platform at the end of the entrance lobby of
the Gunma Prefectural Museum of Modern Art,
and the fake doors in the entrance lobby of
the Shukosha building.
84
CHAPTER 2
Figure 2.20. Gunma
Takasaki, 1971-4.
Museum
of
Fine
Art,
The irrational reverse perspective of the
marble stepped platform is meant to awaken a
feeling of uncertainty and alienation from
reality.
Figure 2.21. Shukosha Building, Fukuoka, 1974.
85
CHAPTER 2
During
Renaissance
the
discovery
of
prospective was used as an aid of realism in
painting, however, architects were quick to
realize that perspective could be manipulated
to control the perception of depth. Bramante
introduced a false perspective in the
sanctuary of S. Satiro, and an impressive
perspective effect is produced in the Scala
Regia by the convergence of the rising barrel
vault. Palladio constructed a series of
exaggerated perspectives in the permanent
scenery of the Teatro Olimpico.
Figure 2.22. Church Santa Maria
Donato
presso
San
Satiro,
Bramante, Milano V sec.
86
CHAPTER 2
Figure 2.23. Teatro Olimpico, Andrea
Palladio, 1580, Vicenza.
In the entrance lobby of the Gunma Museum of
Modern Art the marble platform converges to
spectators instead of vanishing in the
distance, as is more usual, and this result
in a sculptural paradox. Here the perspective
effect is used in an irrational way that
contradicts normal vision.
In Tokyo branch of the Fukuoka Sogo Bank and
on façade of the recent Himalaya Center of
Shangai an anagram involves the transposition
of the letters to form a new word are used to
construct the façade. The vault of Fujimi
Country Clubhouse was projected in a shape of
question mark. The contradiction in scale
enhances the quality of illusion, unreality
and ambivalence. To increase the depth the
vault is a doubled black on itself in a
seemingly arbitrary fashion.
87
CHAPTER 2
Figure 2.24. Tokyo branch, Fukuoka Mutual
Bank, 1970-71. Letters have been used
structurally to construct the street
façade
Figure 2.25. Himalaya Center, Shangai, 2008.
88
CHAPTER 2
2.1.3 “Catch” and using natural element
Nature is at the heart of traditional life in
Japan, just as in the foundation for the
architectural
forms
and
construction
materials of traditional Japanese buildings.
The ancient Japanese sought their symbols and
divine images in nature, in rocks, trees, and
water. This way of looking at nature is still
at the very core of the Japanese spiritual
today.
Nature is not constant or stationary but
temporary and changing, like the never ending
cycle of the seasons. Then, the Japanese
believe that nature, in spite of violence,
always contains an element of harmony or
order.
In this respect, a room, and so a building,
is nothing but a springboard or steppingstone
from which man can enter the more expansive
world of nature. Traditionally, the focus of
each room was the Shinto58 ancestral altar or
the special alcove known as the to ko no ma
alcove.
58
Shinto (神道), also called kami-no-michi, is
the ethnic religion of the people of Japan.
Shinto today is a term that applies to the
religion of public shrines devoted to the
worship of a multitude of gods (kami). Onethird participants who claimed not to believe
in religion had a Buddhist or Shinto altar in
their home.
89
CHAPTER 2
The tea ceremony rooms, or “chashisu”, of the
aristocracy and were also extremely small for
this reason, because they allowed their user
to find deeper communion with nature.
Entering through a small, square door called
“nijiriguchi”, which requires bending low to
pass through and symbolically separates the
small, simple, quiet inside from the crowded,
overwhelming outside world. From the tea room
was permitted to users to view the moon,
symbol of the great void.
In Japanese architecture the space is a space
that is given by Nature, is not that which is
based
upon
a
human
will
to
three
dimensionality, but a leaning toward or
sinking into Nature59.
Isozaki, as every Japanese architect, used
his own vocabulary of shapes and tools to
include natural essence in his buildings. It
is not a prerequisite to forcibly incorporate
natural elements in the architecture but it
is the only known way by the Japanese to
create an architectural space.
The principles frequently recalled by Isozaki
and his translation into architectural forms
can be summarized as:
1.
Natural change of a body subjected to
weathering. As in Japanese tradition, the
true symbol of nature, the moon, could be
59
Arata Isozaki, Japanness,(
MIT Press, 2011), p. 47.
Massachusetts:
90
CHAPTER 2
fully observed only in its reflection in a
pond (as in Villa Katzura’s design), Isozaki
provides often adjacent building a film of
water, so that, at the blowing of the wind,
the reflection of this change.
Figure 2.26. Reflection of building in
Kyoto Concert Hall
2.
The imperfection of the raw material.
Use of materials not fully drafted but left
in their natural state in parts.
91
CHAPTER 2
Figure 2.27. Mito Tower’s steps stair
detail. Stones are cut just on the
upper part while the perpendicular part
is left in its natural imperfections.
Figure 2.28. Detail Kyoto
Hall’s square. Benches and
place are massive rocks.
Concert
sitting
92
CHAPTER 2
3.
Natural periodic cycle time. As present
in many Tange ‘s buildings, also for Isozaki,
the
presence
of
the
"time"
factor
materializes in a large sundial.
Figure 2.30. Sundial of Disney Center.
2.1.4. “Mask” as concept of border
The main features on the Japanese fence is
that set a limit to infinity on the outside
(becoming a symbol of security and faith) and
inside create a universe in miniature, a new
infinity of is own60. This is the concept of
the multi fences of Ise Shire which were
erected to symbolize the border between
forest and sacral place.
According to this relation with the fence,
Japanese contemporary buildings seem to be an
single object deriving from a merge of
building with fence. The result is often a
60
Teiji Itoh, Architettura Giapponese,(Milano:
Silva Editoriale d’arte, 1963), p.67.
93
CHAPTER 2
blanked façade bereave of any details closer
to the image, as Isozaki is used to name, a
mask.
Figure 2.31. Scheme of design process. From Ise Shrine’s
fence to an urban building which is the result of a fence
plus the building its self.
From 1968 to 1989 Isozaki projected an
architecture where the exterior shell was
constructed out of references. It was a
strategically adopted stance taken when the
world seemed in abeyance and history seemed
missing. Rem Koolhaas, who contributed to the
book Arata Isozaki 30 an essay entitle
“Beyond Ma(sk)” characterizes this as a mask
Isozaki wore. Koolhaas seems to regard the
Japanese as a people who express themselves
only through a mask as on a Noh stage61.
Isozaki’s
61
interpretation
of
Ise
Shrine’s
Noh (能), is a major form of classical
Japanese musical drama that has been performed
since the 14th century. Emotions are primarily
conveyed by stylized conventional gestures
while the iconic masks represent the roles such
as ghosts, women, children, and old people.
94
CHAPTER 2
fence as security is the basic concept of his
architecture during 70s and 90s. As he
asserted “The outside world is savage and
will readily invade the building and crush
one to death. For one’s own protection, one
must build a shell. Buildings were originally
shelters in the sense that they protected one
from the elements. However, today, buildings
need to be shells and to protect one from the
even more deadly and powerful force of the
urban environment. 62In subsequent works,
shells have been used as masks. The
Kitakyushu Central Library (1974) is an early
work; more recent works involving masks
include Domus: Interactive Museum about
Humans (1995) and Nara Centennial Hall
(1998).
Figure 2.32. Arata Isozaki’s building for Bjornson
62
Arata Isozaki, GA Architect 15,vol.3,(
Tokyo: A.D.A Edita, 1991-2000), p 110.
95
CHAPTER 2
Studio, Los Angeles 1989.
The result of denial of public and privilege
of private space leads a creation of
comfortable mini universe in the inner
private space. To create it Japanese
tradition showed many manner of rescaling
objects to preserve preciously inside houses.
The construction of the garden, as well as a
bonsai or a bonseki (ancient Japanese art of
creating miniature landscapes on black
lacquer trays using white sand, pebbles, and
small rocks), an arrangement of flowers or a
tea
ceremony,
is
always
creating
a
"microcosm".63 The theme of micro universe
inside the building is constant in Isozaki’s
architecture, through using of small garden
or meditation places as in Okanoyama Museum
Graphic Art (1982-4). But the action of
rescaling objects in order to create a micro
universe (reducing) in Isozaki’s creative
process behave also on the other direction
(enlarging). As him self declare, there are
many exemples of this manner. "In my thirty
years of activity or widely sought often
simple procedure that turns objects into
architecture. The electronic robot (Expo '70,
Festival Plaza), the cubic structure (the
Museum of Modern Art, Gunma), wave signs
mentioned (Tsukuba Center Building), the
63
Jiro Takei and Marc P.
Records of Garden Making,(
Publishing, 2011) p. 101.
Keane Sakuteiki
Rutland: Tuttle
96
CHAPTER 2
tetrahedron (Art Tower Mito), the sundial
(Team
Disney
Building):
architectural
languages
are
historically
recognized
everywhere.”64
2.1.5 Gentrification as organization of space
come from spatial arrangement of Japanese
traditional gardens
Japanese garden is at the antipodes of
geometric garden, Italian style. The flower
can only be flower just where there will be
flowerbeds, the gravel roads where it is
decreed (characteristic path), the tree where
expected to be hedge or row. This is a
process of artificiality; man imposes its law
in what basically despises matter, for
celebrate what especially interests him,
their thoughts. In oriental garden, however,
there is an external and abstract schema that
position from outside on the ground and that
things have to fill; things are dynamic and
naturally changeable. The Western garden is
hierarchical; man, animal statues, plants,
soil and water. The oriental garden is
fusion; man-leaf, sun-joy, water-thought. It
can be synthesized as a “lack of hierarchy”.
Two conceptions of the garden: similarities
and contrasts
64
Arata Isozaki and K. Tadashi Oshima, Arata
Isozaki, (New York: Phaidon Press, 2009)p.36.
97
CHAPTER 2
Figure
2.33.
Villa
Gamberaia,
Florence.
Nineteenth
century.
Geometrically ordered space in the
landscape.
Figure 2.34. Heavenly Dragon
Temple,
Kyoto.
XIV
century.
Harmony of water and stone.
98
CHAPTER 2
Figure
2.35.
Boboli
Garden,
Florence. XVI century. Statue of
Andromeda. In the tradition of
Renaissance stone has human form.
Figure 2.36. Temple of the Saiho Ji,
Kyoto. XVI century. In Japanese
tradition statues are carved by
natural elements.
Japanese gardens do not have to see the hand
of man. The aim of those is fusion of man
with nature and therefore a messy and
asymmetrical arrangement, full of unexpected
99
CHAPTER 2
angles. While in Western culture the
protagonist is the man, anthropocentric
system, in East culture Nature is at the
center of the system.
Reproduction landscape is the fulcrum of
garden’s aesthetics and its main aim is the
effect of immensity of the garden in a small
space.
“Japanese visit gardens, essentially cosmoscentric, to dive spiritually in the flow of
the absolute (...).Western visit gardens,
normally highly anthropocentric, builted as a
celebration of the domain of the humans on
the whole”.65
In the garden vegetation, although important,
is somehow considered auxiliary to the
compositions of stones. It is composed mainly
of trees and shrubs; plants and flowering
trees. The buildings and gardens enhance each
other
and
are
articulated
in
close
relationship; the latter follows the layout
of the buildings, which will incorporate the
views making it one of the architectural
elements. The bearing elements of the
structures, extremely ductile, are the roof
and the support pillar and the walls, for the
most part consist of sliding, allow a total
interpenetration of the interior space with
the outside; the transition is mediated and
65
Fosco Maraini, Ore
Corbaccio, 2000 p. 18.
giapponesi
(Milano:
100
CHAPTER 2
enhanced by the veranda that surrounds the
building.
This relation between interior and outside is
organized
in
a
sequence
of
specific
viewpoints which, combined together, create a
scenario. In Japanese traditions the path
made by different size of stones, as in Villa
Katzura, was designed to conduct the visitor
trough different scenarios, looking from the
garden to direction of house or to panoramas
in the garden itself. A more complex scenario
was thought from inside to outdoor, trough
using small size of patios or trough the
shadows of trees on semitransparent walls.
The aim was to let the visitor feel
surrounded by nature even inside the house.
The tendency to organize the vision as
articulated
in
the
process
space-time
sequences, typical of Japanese mentality,
manifested in numerous artistic expressions:
in depictions of painted scrolls, folding
screens with several doors and sliding doors.
In the specific case, it follows in a
conception of the fence as a path, which
results in the tea garden.
Isozaki
frequently
includes
in
his
architectural composition a large empty space
filled by a thin steel wires representing
trees able to slightly move according to the
blow wind. Those are works of the Japanese
sculptor Aiko Miyawaki, Isozaki’s wife.
Isozaki adopted also in his architecture
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CHAPTER 2
nijiriguchi66 windows, long horizontal cuts
set in the lower parts of the wall, from
where is possible to gaze the garden and the
traditional roji67.The aim is to have a
constant relationship with the surrounding
nature and enhance its value from different
views.
Figure 2.36. A. Isozaki’s Ukichiro Nagaya
Museum Ice and Snow Kaga.
66
Square
door
called
nijiriguchi,
or
"crawling-in entrance," which requires bending
low to pass through and symbolically separates
the small, simple, quiet inside from the
crowded,
overwhelming
outside
world.
From
inside, through nijitiguchi, is possible to
gaze the roji garden path.
67
Roji (露地), dewy ground, is the Japanese
term used for the garden through which one
passes to the chashitsu (architectural spaces
designed to be used for tea ceremony).
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CHAPTER 2
Gentrification.
The universe structure, come from Chinese
origin, deeply assimilated by the Japanese
culture,
based
on
triadic
compositions
(vertical),
Earth
principle
of
Heaven
(horizontal) and Human (diagonal). The dynamic
that characterizes life processes was in fact
created by the breakdown of static state
represented by the symmetry. The Japanese
aesthetic is based on the principle of harmony
as a dynamic equilibrium, obtained mainly
through asymmetrical provisions that refer to
the vision of life now mentioned. Talking about
aesthetic Japanese culture is at the antipodes
harmony of Palladian symmetry. This attitude is
visible in any artistic expressions (paintings,
gardening, theatrical stage arrangements and
architecture). Is a system which privilege a no
center
composition
that
may
be
called
gentrification.
Figure 2.37. Scheme showing an example of
Japanese painting and the taste of
asymmetry. The poem in sets on the lower
corner leaving the center empty.
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CHAPTER 2
As Isozaki explain Tokyo itself is a no
center city, where the religious center and
the city center are split in two different
poles of the urban territory, all elements
have the same importance, there is no
hierarchy. The result is a city with many
centers, a fragmentary urban organization.
Analyzing traditional residence and temples
planimetry is visible that they are like a
dissemination of pavilions in a naturally
rich
in
vegetation.
Their
appearance
dimensions are radically different from the
bodies of unit buildings, often monumental,
featuring classical Western architecture. The
key issue is the presence of specific
architectural elements of the garden: smaller
pavilions of various types as covered
galleries (suiwatadono), bridges and, in a
later period, the tea pavilions. These
pavilions are not arranged in geometric or
random, but according to a particular
aesthetic
intention
addressed
to
the
interpenetration with the natural rhythms.
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CHAPTER 2
Figure 2.38. Plan Villa Katsura formed by man pavilions
scattered on the territory with a large pond in the
center.
Isozaki adopted himself the atomized space
settlement. In the project for Ceramic Mito
in Gifu the fractured quality of the exterior
form is heightened in order to avoid the
creation of a ‘whole’. The plan follows
traditional ceremony manners, a variety of
heterogeneous pavilions are integrated with
the surrounding natural context.
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CHAPTER 2
Figure 2.39. Ceramic Park Mino, Gifu,
1997-2000.
The gentrification attitude is visible in many
Japanese expressions from art filed to food
arrangement.
As
Roland
Barthes
wrote:
“Occidental food, heaped up, linked to a
certain operation of prestige, tends toward the
heavy, the grand, the abundant the copious; the
Oriental follows the converse of movement, and
tends toward the infinitesimal: the cucumber’s
future is not its accumulation or its
thickening, bit its division, its tenuous
dispersal (…) there is a convergence of tiny
and the esculent”68.
The fragmentation of the parts it may be called
“fractal69”
referring
to
arrangement
of
68
Roland Barthes, The Empire of Signs, tran.
Richard Howard (New York: Hill and Wang, 1983)
p.20.
69
A fractal is
mathematical set
a natural phenomenon or a
that exhibits a repeating
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CHAPTER 2
Clusters
in
the
Air
and
Matabolist’s organic projects.
many
others
In conclusion is confirmed that Isozaki
mentioned Japanese traditions as principles
rather that formal plasticity. While, as we
shall see in the course of the argument,
Isozaki refers expressly to other cultures
(Russian Avant-Garde and Western) in a merely
formal order. Regarding Japanese culture, he
evokes a more spiritual doctrine than formal.
2.2. First connection between Russian AvantGarde art and Japanese culture
Japanese art was gradually transformed in the
Meiji period of the late 19th century and
early 20th century after the Meiji (18681912) restoration which heralded Japan's
entry onto the global stage.
The J. Rimer70’s book “A hidden fire, Russian
and Japanese cultural encounters” explain how
pattern that displays at every scale. It is
also known as expanding symmetry or evolving
symmetry.
70
J. Thomas Rimer (1933) is an American scholar of Japanese literature and drama. Professor
Emeritus of Japanese Literature, theatre, and
art at the University of Pittsburgh. Rimer has
written about Classical Japanese literature,
as well as modern Japanese drama, and has
translated several works. He has written several works for a popular audience, and has been
107
CHAPTER 2
the discussion of the Russian icon painter
Yamashita Rin71 (the war prints of the RussoJapanese conflict) and the work and theories
of Bubnova72 introduce the varied ways in
which Russia affected Japan during these
historically important years.
From the mid-nineteenth century, Japan was
aggressively
entering
the
modern
industrialized world and striving to become
equal of the economic and military power of
the West. During these years Japanese engaged
in a great deal of experimentation and
reaching out to new ideas. New kinds of art
were being attempted, and art was being put
to uses features of traditional Japan and
West.73
Perceptions of Japan as a closed and
traditional society changed in the aftermath
of the Meiji restoration. There was a rush to
modernize and industrialize Japanese society.
Some artists were beginning to recognize the
hegemony of industrial society and its
credited with making Japanese drama more accessible to Americans.
71
Yamashita Rin (1857-1939) was a painter of
icons for the Japanese Orthodox Church. Studied
in Russia, and her work can be found in over
forty churches across Japan.
72
Varvara Bubnova (17 May 1886 – 28 March
1983) was a Russian painter, graphic artist
(master of lithography) and pedagogue.
73
James Rimer, Hidden fire, Russian and
Japanese
Cultural
Encounters,
(Standford:
Stanford University Press, 1995).
108
CHAPTER 2
profound implications for art and culture. It
spawned a counter culture in Japan with a
tendency to rebellion by those who saw in
modernism progressive opportunity but also
its tendency for alienation. However it was
Russian artist David Burliuk74 who translated
to Japanese audiences developments in Russian
art. On October 14th he organized an
exhibition in Tokyo entitled “The first
Exhibition of Russian Paintings in Japan”.
Burliuk was Father of Russian Futurism and he
was a keen student of Japanese culture and
much like his idol Gauguin he immersed
himself in Japanese culture and art.
As well as the Russian futurist David Burliuk
and Victor Palmov75, the development of a
modern art movement in Japan during the 1920s
owed much the presence of Vasvara Dmitrievna
Bubnova. She was a contributing member, and
other talented artists living in the capital,
74
David Davidovich Burliuk (1882– 1967) was a
Russian
and
Ukrainian
Futurist,
NeoPrimitivist, book illustrator, publicist, and
author
associated
with
Russian
Futurism.
Burliuk is often described as "the father of
Russian Futurism". Traveled through United
States, Siberia and Japan.
75
Victor Palmov (1888–1929) was a RussianUkrainian
painter
and
Avant-Garde
artist
(Futuristand Neo-Primitivist) from the David
Burliuk circle. In 1920–1921, together with David Burliuk, he travelled to Japan.
109
CHAPTER 2
such as Mikhail Matiushin76, Olga Rozanova77,
and Pavel Filonov78, joined, as did major
Moscow futurism painters, including Kasimir
Malevich79 and Vladimir Tatlin80. Some of the
76
Michael Vasilyevich Matyushin (1934 in
Leningrad) was a Russian painter and composer,
leading member of the Russian Avant-Garde.
Matyushin's view of art and society and the two
became a seed for the Russian Cubo-Futurism
movement evolving parallel to Italian Futurism.
Produced the experimental theatre show Victory
Over The Sun, an opera by Velimir Khlebnikov,
and Kazimir Malevich (stage design).
77
Olga Vladimirovna (1886– 1918,Moscow) was a
Russian Avant-Garde artist in the styles of
Suprematism,
Neo-Primitivism,
and
CuboFuturism. In 1912 Rozanova started a friendship
with the Futurist poets Velimir Khlebnikov and
Aleksei Kruchenykh. In 1916 joined the group of
Russian avant-garde artists Supremus that was
led by Kazimir Malevich.
78
Pavel Nikolayevich Filonov (1883–1941) was a
Russian Avant-Garde painter, art theorist, and
poet. During the years 1913 to 1915, Filonov
was close to Vladimir Mayakovsky, Velimir
Khlebnikov, and other Futurists.
79
Kazimir Malevich (1878_1935). Painter and
theoretician, studied in Moscow, was a pioneer
of geometric abstract art and the originator of
Avant-Garde Suprematism movement.
80
Vladimir Tatlin (1885-1953) Soviet avantgarde painter and architect. He studied in icon
art in Moscow. Although colleagues at the
beginning of their careers, Tatlin and Malevich
quarrelled fiercely and publicly at the time of
the “0.10” Exhibition in 1915 (long before the
birth of Constructivism), also called "the last
Futurist exhibition".
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CHAPTER 2
earliest translations of Aleksei Gan’s81
Kostructivism and other Avant-Garde writings
were translate into Japanese. Two major
Japanese architects, Imai Kenji82 and Murano
Togo83, met with Russian avant-gardists like
Vladimir Tatlin and Aleksei Gan in the late
1920s. Murano Togo was also impressed by
Iakov Chernikhov84’s publications during his
stay in Leningrad.
The events of the Revolution compelled
Bubnova to return to the front line of the
art world: she took part in the famous debate
on construction and composition in the INKhUK
(Institute of Artistic Culture) in Moscow
between January and April 1921. She attended
meeting as a member of the Institute of First
81
Aleksei Gan (c.1895– 1940) was a key figure
in the development of Constructivism after the
Russian Revolution. In 1921, Gan was one of the
seven artists, including Alexander Rodchenko
and his wife Varvara Stepanova, who announced
themselves as the first Working Group of
Constructivists.
82
Kenji Imai (1895- 1987 Tokyo) was a Japanese
architect, travelled to USSR, Scandinavia,
Italy and Spain in 1926.
83
Togo Murano(1891– 1984) was a Japanese
architect he was recognised as a master of the
modern interpretation of the sukiya style
(Katsura Imperial Villa, Kyoto is an example,
see note 99).
84
Yakov Georgievich Chernikhov (1889 Ukraine–
195 Moscow) was a constructivist architect and
graphic designer. His books on architectural
design published in Leningrad between 1927 and
1933 are amongst the most innovatory texts (and
illustrations) of their time.
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CHAPTER 2
Public Collections held in the Monumental Art
Section at INKhUK headed by Kandisky. During
these meetings she made friends with such
important artists as Rodchenko, Varvara
Stepanova, and Liubov Popova.
Another personality which collaborate to
spread Avant-Garde ideas in Japan was the
Japanese artist, playwright, novelist and
drama producer Tomoyoshi Murayama (1901 –
1977)
Initially
drawn
to
the
genre
of
Constructivism as typified by the work of
Wassily
Kandinsky,
he
later
became
dissatisfied
with
the
detachment
of
Constructivism from reality and developed his
own style by using a collage of real objects
to provoke concrete associations.
In 1925 he founded the magazine "Architecture
International", whose title is borrowed from
an essay of the same name by Walter Gropius.
Meanwhile been published some studies devoted
to the problem of the relationship between
art and machine.
In
1926
he
published
the
Studies
“Constructivists”, which spreads awareness of
the Avant-Garde movements, from Futurism to
Expressionism,
from
Cubism
to
Russian
Constructivism.
“During the decay 1960-1970 in Japan the left
side ideology become popular among students
and many were reading about Marx, Lenin and
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CHAPTER 2
Trotsky as well”85. Arata Isozaki visited
Moscow in 1990 and he been to Konstantin
Melnikov86’s House located in Staraya Arbat.
He visited it with Victor Melnikov and Kisho
Kurokowa as well.87
Figure 2.40. Melnikov’house 1927-1929.
85
Interview Hajime Yatsuka, Tokyo 22 July,
Shinjuku, Tokyo.
86
Konstantin Stepanovich Melnikov (1890–1974)
was a Russian architect and painter. His
architectural work, compressed into a single
decade (1923–1933), placed Melnikov on the
front end of 1920s Avant-Garde architecture.
Although
frequently
associated
with
the
Constructivists, Melnikov was an independent
artist far from Constructist’s ideas.
87
See note 19.
113
CHAPTER 2
Figure 2.41. Arata Isozak’s sketches of Melnikov
House during is visit in Moscow.
2.2.1. Arata Isozaki’s approach with Russian
Formalism.
“The first approach of Arata Isozaki with
Russian Formalism88 was his meeting in New
88
Russian Formalism originated in 1915-16; it
had its apogee in the early twenties and was
suppressed about 1930. Both the American and
Russian critical movements are contemporaneous
with a great modernistic literature. The
Formalists
found
themselves
to
be
contemporaries of Mayakovsky and Khlebnikov,
revolutionaries both in art and in politics,
whereas
the
most
influential
literary
contemporaries of the American New Critics were
T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound. “We, the Futurist
poets”, declare the manifesto called Word as
Such88, “thought more about the Word than about
the
Psyche,
mercilessly
abused
by
our
predecessors. Let us rather live by the word as
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CHAPTER 2
York with Eisenmann when, during his
occasion, the American architect presented
him the book of Formalism “Prison of
Language: A Critical Account of Structuralism
and
Russian
Formalism”
by
Frederic
Jamenson”89.
Isozaki affirmed “The philosophy formulated
firmly modernist architecture fused function
and form, supporting a kind of utopian
progress,
and
led
to
the
so-called
International Style, which was supposed to be
universal. I felt that this should have been
and that the reconstruction would have to
start from where the architectural discourse
was reduced to zero. My doctrine of "Manner",
influenced by Russian formalism, was an
attempt to put the automatic movement of
such than by our own experiences”. This
aggressive anti-psychologism may strike one as
inconsistent with the position taken by leader
of Western European Futurism, F.T. Marinetti.
In his famous Technical Manifesto of Futurism
Literature,
Marinetti
insisted
that
the
principal aim of the new poetry was to express
the modern sensibility in the language of the
mechanical age.
“What really matters is form: If there is a new
form, there must also exist new content. It is
form that determinate content”. Primacy of form
over content, this was the battle cry of early
Russian Futurism.
89
Interview Hajime
Shinjuku, Tokyo.
Yatsuka,
Tokyo
22
July,
115
CHAPTER 2
forms at the centre of the architectural
approach”.
His idea of "Manner" (meaning its design
steps issued in essay “Mannerism”, 1979) was
affected by the Russian formalism and the
discovery of language that leads him often
cite Noam Chomsky90, from whom he takes the
views on the signs division in pragmatic,
semantic and syntactic. 91
Figure 2.42. Isozaki: the Seven Operation of Manner. 1)
Amplification,
2)
packaging,
3)
severing,
4)
90
Avram Noam Chomsky(1928) is a American
linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist,
historian,
logician,
social
critic,
and
political activist. Sometimes described as "the
father of modern linguistics," Chomsky is also
a major figure in analytic philosophy, and one
of the founders of the field of cognitive
science.
91
Arata
Isozaki,
Quattro
Decenni
di
Architettura,
trad.
L.
Zarri(
New
York:
Rizzoli, 2005)p. 66.
116
CHAPTER 2
transferral, 5) projection, 6) fuseki (or chess-man), 7)
response.
1)
Amplification.
Isozaki
hypothesized
an
infinite grid in three dimensions, according to
the formula 1:1:1. The grid was thus capable of
ensuring production of perfectly ”neutral" and
lucid spaces, which engendered a sensation of
suspension or weightlessness.
2) Packaging was, by contrast, conceived of as an
outright rejection of the Modern Movement’s
insistence on spatial homogeneity (i.e., the
ideal of continuity between a building's interior
and exterior).
3) Severing, Isozaki discovered, was a technique
that operated in terms of both time and space.
Spatially,
severing
implied
a
break
in
development and extension of any of the various
material infrastructures which are a part of
modern buildings. Thus, various ducts and beams,
which would normally remain hidden, are thrust
into visibility, although the process can be
either real or symbolic, as in the Gita
Prefectural Library.
4) Transferral relates to the selection process
which human beings anywhere in the modern world
must exercise with respect to image transmission.
Electronically transmitted pictures, for example,
are characterized by extreme diffusion of meaning
in accordance with the famous phrase “the medium
is the message.” Through so-called transferral,
the image in question can either be made to fit
into your hand or blown up to the scale of an
entire building.
5) Projection entails the production of virtual
images, usually (though not always) in an ordered
series. A warping or unbalancing effect takes
over,
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CHAPTER 2
as in an exploded diagram; thus the whole need no
longer take precedence over the parts in the
controlled, Renaissance fashion.
6) The word fuseki came from an old text on
gardening and involves the concept of “interval"
(ma). The latter term will shortly become for
Isozaki a kind of shorthand notation for an
entire constellation of themes related to socalled Japanese space/ time. Fuseki originally
referred to placement of stepping-stones in a
Japanese garden, though its present day use is
restricted to deployment of pieces in the game of
go.
7) The seventh and final aspect of “manner”
Isozaki chose to call response, and here he
refers once again to information transmission
processes.
So Isozaki articulates the idea of use the
pure geometric shape of cube. According to
the grammar of Chomsky the main structure,
the text, is produced by the transformation
of the deep structure of grammar through
manipulations
produced
by
subtraction,
omission, etc.
Rhetorical manipulations such as suppression,
the juxtaposition, the deviation can also be
found in works such as the Fukuoka branch of
the bank in Saga, in the Museum of Art
Kitakyushu, 1974, in the project for the
Tokyo City Hall in 1985, the new library
Departmental Oita and museum in Gunma.
Evoking Roland Barthes: “Does there exist any
system of objects of any dimension that can
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CHAPTER 2
do without articulated language? Is not the
word the fatal rely of any signifying
order?”92.
2.2.2. Russian Avant-Garde concepts and
techniques affected Isozaki’s architectural
design
The term of “Russian Avant-Garde” was
assigned to radical innovative movements that
started in the prewar years of 1907–1914 and
it came from the foreground of the Russian
revolution and matured during the first postrevolutionary decade.
During this period between the Revolution and
1932 Avant-garde ideas clashed with the newly
emerged state-sponsored direction of the
Socialism Realism moment in arts.
As I have already mentioned, reporting words
from Professor Hajime Yatsuka, in Japan in
1960, thirty years later the end of AvantGarde, left side ideology become popular
among young students and many were reading
Russian writers such as L. N. Tolstoy, F. M.
Dostoevsky and A. P. Chekhov. At that time
Japan was still trying to overcome the
psychological and human disaster of the
atomic bomb. Many architects were enclosed in
a possible urban planning of reconstruction,
first Kenzo Tange.
92
Roland Bartes, Système de la mode (Paris,
1967), p. 9.
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CHAPTER 2
The members of the movement Metabolist had
embarked on a highly optimistic ideology
parallel to other utopian movements, such as
for instance the British movement Archigram93.
At that time Arata Isozaki was in a moment of
pessimism toward the modern movement and deep
criticism of the utopian optimism of
architect group Metabolist.
In an article issued on Global Architecture
Document 77, published in 2004 Isozaki
declared his interest during 70’s on Kazimir
Malevich and Vladimir Tatlin’s creative
methods.
The exhibition “Electric Labyrinth” for the
14th Triennale di Milano, 1968, Isozaki showed
a ruined megastructure introduced into the
93
Archigram was an Avant-Garde architectural
group formed in the 1960s, based at the
Architectural Association, London that was
Neofuturistic, anti-heroic and pro-consumerist,
drawing inspiration from technology in order to
create a new reality that was solely expressed
through hypothetical projects. The main member
of the group was Peter Cook. The pamphlet
Archigram was printed in 1961 to proclaim their
ideas. Committed to a 'high tech', ‘light
weight’, infra-structural approach that was
focused towards survival technology, the group
experimented with modular technology, mobility
through the environment, space capsules and
mass-consumer imagery. The works of Archigram
had a Neofuturistic slant being influenced by
Antonio Sant' Elia's works. Buckminster Fuller
and Yona Friedman were also important sources
of inspiration.
120
CHAPTER 2
devastated landscape of Hiroshima, is the
earliest example; later on the exhibition
“Incubation Process” in 90s, presenting the
project “City in the Air”, 1960-62. In those
two landscapes reduced in rubbles Isozaki
intended to depict the zero point, the
“tabula rasa94” as he asserted “I had two
94
Japan 1944-1945. By the end of the war, the
tabula rasa Japan experienced in Manchuria 12
years earlier arrives, shockingly, in its own
cities: US firebombing destroyed 50 percent of
Tokyo, 60-80 percent of 17 other cities, and 99
percent of Toyama. Then, on August 6, 1945, the
United States drops the atomic bomb on
Hiroshima; Nagasaki is destroyed three days
later. In the immediate aftermath, future
Metabolist Kenji Ekuan and Atsushi Shimokobe
(working for the Tokyo police) visit
Hiroshima’s ruins; Tange, together with Sachio
Otani and Takashi Asada visit the following
years. Tange Lab, an experimental architecture
studio forming at Tokyo University, starts
producing new masterplans for ground zero in
Hiroshima and destroyed districts of Tokyo, but
discovers that erasure of the erasure of the
urban fabric does not necessarily produce a
tabula rasa where anything is possible: there
is a bizarre mixture of flatted city and an
intact land ownership system that makes radical
planning still difficult. Modernist repertoires
of urban planning cannot apply; new ideas will
be required. The Japanese trauma associated
with land- saturated on its own mountainous
archipelago, then liberated in foreign
territories, now scorched at home- forms a
critical backdrop for growth of a new
generation of architects that will become the
Metabolists..
121
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ideas at the moment: to start from zero and
Malevich.”95
Referring to Malevich’s work he declared:”
The first time I confronted zero degree of
architecture was 1970, around the time the
Cultural Revolution failed. I myself first
thought of the idea of reduction to zero
degree in the early 1970s. I began to feel
that there must be some inherent law that
generated form from within. The automatic
generation of form and the design process
thus overlapped, as I described in “About My
Method” (1972)”. And he continued:” I wrote
that the first things to emerge from a zero
degree condition were “the circle and the
square”. These I translated into three
dimensions, into square frames and spheres
for example. I developed them into works such
as the “Gunma Prefectural Museum of Fine
Arts” (1972) and the semicircular vault of
“Kitakyushu Central Library” (1974).96
Melevich’s “Black Square on White97” is
believed to be a substitute for a Russian
icon. It all began with an exhibition held
95
28.06.2005 “Starting from the destruction”,
Russian newspaper.
96
Arata
Isozaki,
Global
Achitecture
77,
(Tokyo: A.D.A. Edita,2004) p.58-59.
97
Malevich’s “Black Square” was like a slogan
signifying the final point and death of
traditional figurative art and beginning of new
abstract art. The initial point of a new world
based on the laws of language of simplest
elements and spatial relation.
122
CHAPTER 2
in 1915 in Petrograd entitled “0.10” (Zero
Point Ten). “Black Square on White” appears
in an upper position in a corner of his
room, where various compositions are
displayed. This was traditionally the
position an icon would occupy in a room in
Russia. The idea that this was meant as a
substitute for an icon is corroborated by
the fact that the photograph of Malevich’s
deathbed shows the same painting hung above
his head. The painting also appears on his
grave. Before his death Malevich told: “
Finally I’ll see the wonderful world of
Suprematism”.
Malevich made traditional faces and human
figures more and more abstract until in the
end he reduced everything to a black
square. This painting was his starting
point; one might say it was the beginning
of what is known as Suprematism. “Zero
Point Ten” meant the show was an exhibition
of zero degree by ten artists.
Various
episodes
have
been
related
concerning the “0.10” exhibition. There was
a long standing rivalry between Malevich
and Tatlin.
During preparation, a curtain was hung so
the two men would not have to speak to each
other. Tatlin created a works called the
“Corner Relief” an early example of what
today would be called the spatial
Vladimir’s collages. Malevich on the other
hand created a two-dimensional work of zero
degree. Subsequently, Tatlin stressed
production through material technology,
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CHAPTER 2
quasi- natural laws of plastics; his work
eventually
prepared
grounds
for
Constructivists aesthetic connected to
functional attitude to a form creation and
search for expressive and mighty (powerful)
constructions. On the contrary, Malevich
reduced everything to zero level. From
there, he took to explore what might be
described as the artificial, quasimechanical generation of form according to
the new laws of art and his own artificial
language of forms. The two artists who were
in the same place at the same time
subsequently took very different paths in
art.
Figure
2.43.
Black
square, Malevich 1915.
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CHAPTER 2
Figure 2.44. Setting of black square in the
corner of is studio instead of the traditional
Russian icon to symbolize a new starting. Just a
black point for the new beginning.
The new forms generated from rabbles ground
in
Isozaki’s
exhibitions,
“Electric
Labyrinth” and later “Incubation Process”,
where pure interpretation on the expressing
his forms as Malevich expressing his idea of
basic forms. Isozaki himself affirmed:”
Malevich undertook studies of how a basic
form called “Arkitekton” facilitates the
development of design. It seemed to me that
the attempt I made to reveal the generative
process of form in “About My Method” had
already been tried. My work was like a
follow-up experiment but the forms produced
were entirely different from those of
Malevich.”98
98
Nota1,p. 65.
125
CHAPTER 2
Within the project “Clusters in the Air”
(1962) Isozaki starts from “tabula rasa” bold
earth surface from a ruined landscape and
grows as a tree to create a new city layer
using the simplest initial shapes and entire
project is treated as symbols of human
activity.
“Electric Labirinth”,1968.
Hiroshima
collage,
Figure 2.46. “Incubation process” performance, 1990
(concept from 1962).
The metaphor of ‘ruins’ used to describe the
zero point, the “tabula rasa” is very
frequent in Isozaki’s concepts. It’s a
suggestive of a feeling of instability and
the untrustworthiness of the material world.
As we can see on the walls of the Giant Hall
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of the Palazzo Tè brutish giants overbalance
and fall amid the crashing stones. Lest the
psychological import of the scene escape us,
Giulio Romano dropped every third triglyph
around the courtyard to reinforce the
atmosphere of impending disaster and ruins.
We can think about two things implied by the
‘ruins’ metaphor. Firstly, it is connected
with a state of anxiety and uncertainty, and
secondly it symbolizes the loss of wholeness,
integration and balance.
The split travertine facing of the Shukuoka
building is used in much the same fashion as
Giulio Romano’s dropped triglyph to express
the theme of decay and disintegration.
Recalling Filippo T. E. Marinetti, Italian
poet and founder of the Futurist movement,
Isozaki say:” Ruins are the state of our
city, and the future city will itself became
a ruin one day”. That means a city in a
constant process of interchange a constant
rebirth, regeneration of the structure.
For
Malevich
and
Tatlin,
it’s
very
characteristic to interpret form destruction
as momentary act, explosion as destruction of
the world basics. Arata Isozaki, on the other
hand, treats such as destruction as a process
lasted long time, and an architect interfere
into this process in the middle and he had to
make a next step in this situation of
interchange.
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Figure 2.47. Giulio Romano: Palazzo del tè detail.1524-34.
Figure 4.48. Skukosha Building, Fukuoka, 1974-5. In much
the same way as Giulio Romano’s dropped triglyph the
supported sloping travertine facing is used by Isozaki
to express decay and disintegration.
In Russia during first half of XX century a
theatrical Futurist performance premiered
took place at the Luna Park of Saint
Petersburg,.as a symbol of the new artistic
and intellectual era. It was the "Victory of
the Sun" (1913) with a prologue added by
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Velimir Khlebnikov99, and the stage was
designed by Kasimir Malevich. The performance
has become famous as the event where Malevich
made his first "Black Square" painting (in
1915) and it was intended to underline the
end of the old Russian artistic era to
welcoming a new starting point and the “New
Sun” (new vision of the reality. This event
can be compared to Isozaki’s performance
"Incubation Process", both praise the end of
the previous era to impose themselves with
new basic forms at the beginning of a new
“day”.
Isozaki explained:” I created a simulation
model. There, the architect only needed to
provide tools. He did not need to make
drawings. Computers were still not very
advanced at the time, so I used nails, wires
and an aerial photograph. Observers were
asked to drive nails wherever they liked into
the photograph and other people were then
asked to connect those nails with wires as
they saw fit. This model was intended to show
that countless individuals, strangers to each
other, acting according to their own separate
logic, try to establish interrelationships in
a place and end up creating something. I felt
99
Viktor
Vladimirovich
Khlebnikov
(1885–
1922), was a poet and playwright, a central
part of the Russian Futurist movement.
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that this was similar to the way the city in
reality was created”.100
Figure 2.49. «Victory of the sun» opera, Luna Park,
Saint Petersburg 1913.
In both performance Isozaki and Malevich
tried to presented the concept of New. For
Malevich the world should be presented anew,
in a different manner where clear elements
are
reduced
to
absolute
geometrical
configuration
or
material
without
any
indication on previous culture. Sunlight
create so a tissue of opera discussion.
Isozaki otherwise wanted to create and add
some unified structure, a new layer floating
on “tabula rasa101”.
100
Arata Isozaki, Global Achitecture 77,
(Tokyo: A.D.A. Edita,2004) p.64-65.
101
“Tabula rasa” as not finished process of
decay, disintegration with some ruins including
parts of the previous forms.
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CHAPTER 2
Figure
2.50
“Arkitekton”,
Malevich,
1926
.
“Arkitekton”: “Monolithic view of materialized idea.
The principle of variable organic growth, development
through split-multiplication repetition.”
Lazar Kiedekel, 1927.
Isozaki directly quotes the Malevich ‘s
artistic work in designing New Museum of St.
Petersburg Marijiski in 2003. “In the
competition for Mariinky Theater, I took a
position close to that of, not Tatlin, but
Malevich. That is because I know from my own
work that reduction to zero always ends up
propagating various icons. Malevich helps us
understand that truth. The Suprematist idea
of the generation of form. Once form is
recognized as an icon, then that ties in with
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historical conditions; form begins a process
of automatic generation.”102
The manner used by Isozaki for the New
Marijinski Theatre in Saint Peterburg to
animate the Malevich composition, to present
it in the moment of explosion, were those
following:
Figure 2.51.
1.Explode the elements from Malevich’s
composition to have got them as the separated
entities with specific characters,
Figure 2.52.
2.Assembling the elements
initial composition,
102
See note 4, p. 58-59.
in
a
compact
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Figure 2.53.
3.The elements start moving according to the
movable Suprematism trajectories.
Figure 2.54.
4.Alternating variants of composition,
Figure 2.55.
5.Stress the elements
bringing away,
setting
closer
and
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Figure 2.56.
6.Development of inner spaces (spaces between
the plates),
Figure 2.57.
7.Adding few three-dimensional elements,
Figure 2.58.
8.Materialization of form and introductions
of tectonics.
Confirmation of the new Malevich’s state of
composition as icon.
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If the formative process starts with
Malevich’s painting as a reference source,
the concept of designing an Avant-Garde style
building (Theatre Marijinski II) standing
close to classical style building ( Theatre
Marijinski I) come from Japanese ideas of
ritual re-building shrines every few years.
The most striking example is sacred Ise Grand
Temple. This sacred building is composed by
two alike structures standing on next to the
other. One of them is dismantled and rebuilt on an adjacent site every 20 years, so
that the buildings will be forever new and
forever ancient and original and follow the
vital cycle.
The method of juxtapose the New and the Old
Marijinsky Theatre is the same approach of
the traditional cyclical conception of vital
buildings in Japan. “The building is not
static but changes constantly”, as stated A.
Isozaki.
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CHAPTER 2
Figure 2.59. Scheme underlining the Old and
the New site of Ise Grand Shrine, Mie
Prefecture.
Figure 2.60. Arata Isozaki’s project for New Marijinsky
Theatre, 2002.
Isozaki’s referring to Malevich is visible
also in other project like primary sketches
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for Beijing building and plans of Shanghai
Pudong Villa. In the first project Isozaki
retraced the automatic generation process of
the basic form “Arkhitekton" to focus
entirely on a condensing format. Shifting the
planes, surfaces and fixed for a moment in
which they could arrange, aggregate another
compositions. It’s also visible a referring
to De Stijl style used only primary color
slong with black and white.
Basic
patterns
of
circle/cross/square
referred to Malevich’s works are applied to
the Villa Pudong.
Figure 2.61. Beijing building, 2003.
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Figure 2.62. Shanghai Pudong Villa, 2004.
Isozaki cites in his influences also Vladimir
Tatlin103’s “Controrelief”, underlining the
substantial different which distinguished him
(supporter of Constructivism and treedimensional objects) from Kazimir Malevich
(founder of Suprematism movement which
favored
two-dimensional
art).
Isozaki
asserted “Constructivism emerges through
Tatlin. Through Constructivism, Stalinism
comes into being, culminating in the Palace
of the Soviets in Moscow. That process is
repeated in history and my project “Cafa
Moca” is an example”.104 Isozaki asserted:
“Tatlin,
whose
compositions
suggested
floating fragments of industrial products,
has taken another direction: the integration
of
architecture
with
real
life
and
technology, which was to become the basis of
Russian Constructivism”105. He also reported
the imagine of the Flying Machine in his
104
See note 5.
Arata Isozaki, Arata Isozaki
Phaidon Press, 2009)p. 228.
105
(New
York,
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references which is the synthesis of
Tantlin’s work: plastic deformations of the
material elements, incorporation of a man
into animal machine skeleton, an aggregation
of bones, stressed skin a masculine effort of
a quasi-animal machine.
Figure 2.63. “Controrelief”, Tatlin, 1923. Tatlin’s
concept of «explosion» and «floating fragments».
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Figure 2.64.Isozaki‘s project Moca Cafa, Beijing, 2003.
In Mosca Cafa project Isozaki applies the
Tatlin’s exploding and compenetration of
object seen in "Controrelief". The energy of
shift was used by Isozaki to create a place
that is far from conventional white cube
serving modern art. The entire volume is not
intended as massive body but as infra-space
across several juxtaposed curved surfaces. A
metallic framework at roof level sews
together the edges of the facade whose
individual parts seem to all be placed in
tension. The entire material is stressed in
a twisting motion that breaks the whole
creating a final object in a state of pure
static tension. While Tatlin can be
simplified as a craftsman who worked with
natural materials putting them in stress,
Isozaki kept from him some figurative
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imagines of twisted surface connected by
cable in tension but ignoring the nature of
the components which was a fundamental step
for Tatlin.
“Floating Worlds and Future Cities” is a
utopian project which will be inspiration
guideline for many future architects,
included Isozaki. Different historical time
but
similar
cultural
context
prompt
Khidekel106 and Isozaki on the same will to
evolve vertically above the old city.
But while Khidekel has always represented
the horizontal structure of skyscraper raise
on a first layer of wild nature layer (first
modern ecological manifesto), Isozaki never
mentioned a virgin earth ground but rather a
second city layer.
106
Lazar Khidekel (1904-1986) studied under
Marc
Chagall,
Kazimir
Malevich
and
El
Lissitzky at Vitbesk School of Art and later
moved
in
Moscow.
His
personality
was
fundamental to introduce the architectural
view in the Suprematism’s ideas.
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CHAPTER 2
Figure 2.65. «Future
Kiedekel, 1927.
city»,
Lazar
"With the elongated appearance of each
monochromatic
volume
a
new
form
of
revolution
was
achieved.
Khidekel
architectural
visions
transcended
the
rhetorical games of the revolution by
developing complete cities out of sublime
architecture.
Long
before
Friedman’s
Architecture Mobile, Constant’s New Babylon,
and Isozaki’s Clusters in the Air, Khidekel
imagined a world of horizontal skyscrapers
that through their Suprematist weightless
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dynamism seemed to float ad infinitum across
the surface of earth."107
The Isozaki sketches that represent the
project of El Lissitzky108, Horizontal
Skyscraper,
representing
the
vertical
supporting parts in white, almost to
disappear, and he titled them "Cloud Props".
The intent of Isozaki is to get inspired by
the
El
Lissitzky’
theme
Horizontal
Skyscraper, for what concern the concept of
"rising". But the Russian architect was
referring to the following topics:
1. Create a system of high-rise buildings in
downtown Moscow that worked together and not
individually;
2. To grow horizontally as it is this to
which man is accustomed, rather than
vertically.
Levitation is a concept that appears
frequently in Isozaki’s projects of 60’s.
One that best relates to the theme is
"Clusters in the air". But the difference
with El Lissitzy ‘s Horizontal Skyscraper is
107
Cruz Garcia & Nathalie Frankowski, Pure
hardcore icons: A Manifesto on Pure Form in
Architecture (London: Artifice,2013) p.35.
108
El Lissitzky (1890-1941) was a Russian
artist, polemicist and architect. He was an
important figure of the Russian Avant-Garde,
helping develop Suprematism with his mentor,
Kazmir
Malevich,
and
designing
numerous
exhibition displays and propaganda works for
the Soviet Union.
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the desire of Isozaki to represent a modular
skyscrapers intersect each other, creating a
single system, expectation that El Lissitzy
had predicted only on a semantic level.
Figure 2.66. Horizontal Skyscraper for Moscow, El
Lissitzky109, 1924 and Arata Isozaki’s sketch (Cloud
Props).
In summary is confirmed a thought that Arata
Isozaki has got the most close resembles to
Russian Avant-Garde within the utopian
outlook on the world. The first step of
Russian Avant-Garde is to destroy the "old
world" (Pre-Revolutionary Russian social
organization) and to form a “new world”
based on the new principles of life and new
architectural language. This situation of
destruction is similar to a certain extent
to Japanese situation the Second World War.
The idea of "zero degree", artistically
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materialized
by
Malevich,
but
felt
ideologically by many Avant-Garde artists,
is borrowed from Isozaki as a "starting
point" for the “new future”. In the
reconstruction of the new world, it does not
refer to the new modern culture, but rather
to the cultural traditions. So there
appearing forms belonging to abstract world.
Artists created a new language of art and
grammar (Russian Futurism) of artistic and
architectural forms. Both Avant-Garde and
Isozaki
draw
their
architectural
vocabularies
from
the
traditional
languages. In Russia the Avant-Gardists were
referring to a traditional symbols find in
Russian villages such as so called, "izba"
(a traditional Russian wooden country
house).
Isozaki
deals
with
ancestral
Japanese
principles
embodied
in
the
Imperial Villa Katzura. Both also cite
fervently the traditional forms of universal
heritage (pure geometrical Platonic shapes).
2.3.
Western
classical
architecture:
Palladio, Ledoux, Boullée and the influences
on A. Isozaki’s architectural methodology
Isozaki
has
practiced
till
80’s
an
architectural purism based on fundamental
geometrical forms such as the cube and
cylinder, not unlike in many respects the
anti-Baroque principles of Claude-Nicholas
Ledoux (1736-1806).
The relationship between Isozaki and the
French revolutionary architects of the late
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eighteenth century arises partly because both
represent attempts to develop new principles
in opposition to the dominant style of the
preceding period Mannerism as an antiRenaissance trend, Neo-Classicism as an antiBaroque110 and so Isozaki’s Individualism as
anti-Modern.
Admittedly, this over simplifies the issues,
nevertheless it is equally true that
contemporary architecture has aligned itself,
with periods of transition in which there is
a struggle to break free of a preceding and
fundamentally classical phase of development.
The Nakayama Residence and Clinic, Gita, 1964
illustrates the close similarity between
Isozaki’s
manner
and
the
anti-Baroque
architecture of the French Revolution. A
leading principle of that architectural
revolution was the method of repetition of
inorganic composition-additive form. The
110
Instead of complex geometry of Baroque,
elementary geometrical solids such as the cube,
the cylinder, the pyramid, and even, the
sphere,
were
introduced
to
develop
new
organizations.
The
independence
of
the
constituent elements is expressed by their
simple repetition, or by dramatic antithesis, a
kind of composition ad infinitum. In contrast
to the Baroque, the revolutionary composition
of the eighteenth century had as its aim the
concept of the independence of the individual
elements.
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elemental cube may be repeated at the same
size, or alternately in a different size.
Figure 2.67. Image from A+U Architecture and Urbanism,
Architecture of Ambivalence 1972. Isozaki explain the
design process for Gunma Museum of Modern Art.
The connection between the Nakayama Residence
and the anti-Baroque compositional modes of
architecture can be demonstrated by comparing
its composition by Ledoux, the House of Four
Families.
Figure 2.68. Ledoux, House of Four Families.
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Figure 2.69. Isozaki, Nakayama Residence,
Oita 1964.
Ledoux’s designs consist in:
1. Employ the motif of a cube and set four of
them on a base of square.
2. Set on each corner four smaller cubes or
belvederes.
3. Repeat the motif four times.
4. Leaving
belvederes.
a
cruciform
void
between
the
Thus, the theme of reverberating cubes is
generated in the third dimension (z axes).
The motif of a cube surmounted on each corner
by four smaller cubes or belvederes was taken
up by Isozaki in the Nakayama Residence.
1. Set four cubes of 36 m cubes, surmounted
by four additional 18 m cubes.
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2. Between large cubes leave a cruciform void
(on which took place the small cubes mounted
over the crossing in the same pattern as the
large cubes).
3. Hence the small cubes, which in Ledoux’s
scheme are belvederes, become skylights.
4. Raise the structure on concrete columns to
have an open ground floor for the Clinic.
Inside the Residence the space is structured
round a central living room subdivided by a
centrifugal arrangement of free-standing
furniture elements to allow the interior to
be changed.
Figure 2.70. Scheme showing the employing of cube module
of Ledoux to design Nakayama Residence.
If Claude-Nicolas Ledoux is the chief
inspiration for additive cubic form, then
Étienne-Louis Boullée supplies the leading
historical
antecedent
for
Isozaki’s
elaboration of continuous cylindrical form.
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For in analysing the historical sources of
each mode it is apparent that a single design
by Boullée, the Library Hall, was decisive.
The principal compositional element of the
design is a large barrel vault. A tremendous
tension
develops
from
the
contrasting
arrangement of such units as colonnades and
the book stacks, and the barrel vault.
Figure 2.71. Boullèe, Royal Library.
The design was an important influence on Isozaki’s
adumbration of the barrel vault in such work as the
Kitakyushu Library.
The primitive hut archetype is a recurring
idea in Isozaki’s work.
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CHAPTER 2
Figure 2.72. Yano House, Kawasaki 1975.
Schematic diagram: the house is composed of two
opposed semi-cylinders one within the other.
In Isozaki’s Yano House project the elevation
of the lower vertical cylindrical wall evokes
the facial features of a clay “haniwa”111.
Saddle-shaped roof were typical of the
“haniwa” dwellings for nobles and Kenzo Tange
elected to commemorate this house type in the
hyperbolic paraboloid shaped arch of the
Hiroshima-Peace Memorial.
111
The Haniwa (埴輪) are terracotta clay
figures which were made for ritual use and
buried with the dead as funerary objects during
the Kofun period (3rd to 6th centuries AD) of
the history of Japan. Haniwa were created
according to the “wazumi” technique, in which
mounds of coiled clay were built up to shape
the figure, layer by layer.
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CHAPTER 2
Figure 2.73. Traditional Japanese haniwa dwellings.
Figure 2.74. Kenzo Tange’s Hiroshima Peace Monument,
1955.
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CHAPTER 2
Figure 2.75. Fujimi Country Clubhouse, near
Oita 1972-4.
The vault is doubled back on itself in a seemingly
arbitrary fashion to increase the depth.
Of all Isozaki’s buildings, the Fujimi
Country Clubhouse near Oita is the most
Palladian. It comes closest to realizing the
ideal Palladian villa. Isozaki’s recreation
of the Platonic archetype is imbued with
sophistication and witty allusion, but a
detailed comparison instantly reveals the
historical references to Palladio’s Villa
Poiana Maggiore and Malcontenta to be more
implicit than real. Isozaki is more concerned
to draw attention to such relations than he
is to studiously repeat the specific
Palladian motifs. The two end sections of the
severed barrel vault preserve the traditional
wall treatment of solid pierced by vertical
openings with a central emphasis and balanced
subsidiary accents on either side, but the
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specific
patterns
of
these
important
elevations can only be seen to resemble the
Palladian original in a general way.
Figure 2.76.
Maggiore.
Palladio,
Villa
Poiana
Figure 2.77. Scheme of comparison between
Villa Poiana’s rhythm of windows and the
two façade of Fujimi Country Clubhouse.
Nevertheless, in a subtle way Isozaki manages
to recall the essence of the ideal Palladian
villa. The barrel vault roof of the Clubhouse
is a joke on the golf club metaphor is raised
above and suspended over the main lounge and
dining hall on the second floor which is
placed on an elevated base that isolates it
from the landscape. The isolation of the
building from its setting is increased by the
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white stucco walls and the fluid whale-like
humped shape of the barrel vault. Isozaki
chose to express the Western origin of golf,
and such associations as leisure and rural
gentility by giving it a Palladian form.
Figure 2.78. Scheme showing Arata Isozaki’s
Tsukuba Center building, Ibaragi, Japan,
1979-83 and the gold section used for the
proportions.
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CHAPTER 2
Figure
2.79.
Michelangelo
Campidoglio Square, Rome, 1534-38.
Buonarroti’s
For he project of Tsukuba Civic Centre,
planned for completion in 1982, Isozaki
enclosed an inverted Surrealistic version of
Michelangelo’s Piazza of the Campidoglio on
two sides by a concert hall, hotel and shops.
The fenestration of the buildings is a
mixture of Ledoux and Michael Graves. Thus,
the porch adjoining the concert hall and the
plaza entrance of the hotel are inspired by
elevations from Ledoux’s Royal Saltworks at
Arc et Senans. Ledoux’s bandaged column
shafts are repeated in the entrances of the
hotel and the gateway to the concert hall.
The Tsukuba Center is presented as a
composition of elements mentioned by various
sources that overlap in a fragmentary way. A
very Japanese approach in interpreting
aspects
of
the
Western
tradition,
"eclecticism schizophrenic" is defined by
Isozaki. The method in fact reminiscent of
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the traditional Japanese architecture and
gardens projects employing principles of
composition
not
compositional
and
not
hierarchical. We find a mixture of present
classical and modernist elements. The central
square of Tsukuba Center does not reflect the
principle on which it was based but its being
is turned over and is "embedded" in the soil
thus forming a void.
Isozaki explains that this solution to
eliminate literally the square and then the
center, was his reaction to being forced to
confront the nation.
The impression of those who live in the place
is the absence of a scenario dictated by the
architect but the look passes hectic from one
item to another without conceiving the
hierarchy.
Mentioning Francesco Dal Co:” The outcome is
a paradoxical assembling of ruins, so
exceptionally accomplished as to appear ‘deep
freeze’ presences, where the contraposition
between the arbitrary formal choice, as
opposed to the obsessive perfection of the
fabric detailing, produces strident themes
where it is impossible to not notice
cacophonous notes, and an over predisposition
for kitsch”.112
112
Arata Isozaki, Opere e Progetti,( Roma: Cdp
editrice, 1996) p. 75.
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As Francesco del Co states, there are many
themes assembled together and Isozaki himself
explained it as a combination of “sezione
aurea” and “ying and yang”.”... I have
refined my design approach in a tribute to
the golden section, that is the Western
method of establishing divisions, and the
philosophy of yin and yang, the method
Eastern correspondent. Given my experience of
superimposing the West and Japan to create
gaps in the interpretation and construction,
I was able to design ambivalently, to produce
something that was neither Eastern nor
Western, but both together. (...) I used a
central patio cashed and I placed the
exhibition galleries in two adjacent wings,
distributed according to section auras. This
composition creates a vortex that stimulates
a process flow like a path, important
projects of Oriental Japanese gardens. This
achieves spatial divisions both Eastern and
Western.
Architectural shapes projected on the ground
are based on Platonic solids, but at the same
time allude to historical precedents such as
the pyramids, the Palladium, the type of
building and so on. (...). My goal was rather
to dismantle architectural styles apparently
integrated and separate them, so that, at the
time when they were appeared in ruins, was
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created
a
suspension”.113
schizophrenic
state
of
In the essay “La Pizza Italiana”, Sustainable
Design, January 1965, Isozaki had already
denied any contemporary meaning to the idea
of community and excluding that the square
can still have a meaning. He had the
opportunity to express their theoretical
hypotheses with the Festival Plaza Expo in
Osaka. But after the disappointment suffered
in Osaka, in the early Seventies he claims to
want to "withdraw from the city" and that's
the beginning of a negation of the public
place that will take place ten years later
with the design of a "non-square" (1979-1983
Tsukuba Centre Building, Ibaragi, Japan).
113
Arata
Isozaki,
Architettura,
trad.
Rizzoli, 2005)p.24 .
Quattro
L.
Zarri
Decenni
di
(New
York:
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CHAPTER 2
Figure 2.80. Scheme presenting the design
method of Piazza del Campidoglio, a
“positive” space, to a “non-square” of
Tsukuba Center.
At the same way in 1988 Kenzo Tange conceived
the New Town Hall in Tokyo. The architect,
winner of the competition, revisits the tower
of Notre Dame in Paris to evoke an urban
symbolism but omits the “navata”, the central
space reserved for the public; it is a result
of a commercial building, no different from
its neighbor.
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CHAPTER 2
Figure
2.81.
Kenzo
Tange’s
Tokyo
Metropolitan
Government
Building,
Shinjuku, Tokyo, 1988-1991.
The Western architectural influence is the quote
by Isozaki of Western architectural archetypes.
References to "piazza italiana", the "volta" of
Boullè and the cubic forms of Ledoux, are a clear
intention of Isozaki to returne a didactic
information to Japanese visitor. It may be deduce
that Isozaki used an ambivalent attitude in the
80s. In Japanese territory he referred to a
Western architecture, while in Europe and America
and used Japanese archetypes (Olympic Games Main
Sports Hall Sports Hall Sant Jordi, Barcelona,
Spain and several private houses in California).
161
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CHAPTER
3
.
THE ARATA ISOZAKI’S
SPATIAL CONSTRUCTIONS
AS A SYNTHESIS OF
JAPANESE AND RUSSIAN
AVANT-GARDE IDEAS
162
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Arata Isozaki often refers to the work of the
Russian architect Ivan Leonidov. Through
images of his projects there are some, but
rare quotes, evokes Leonidov’s architecture.
Here I relate to two projects: Magnitagorsk
(I. I. Leonidov), and Tokyo City Hall (Arata
Isozaki) presenting more or less similar
concepts in some extent and applications, but
dissimilar and discordant at the same time.
3.1. I.I. Leonidov schematic
(Magnitagorsk project)
deployment
Figure 3.1. Leonidov’s Magnitogorsk project, 1928.
Leonidov stand out clearly in a design of
some guidelines parallel along which, as a
later stage, would be located the residential
complexes, clubs and theatres, united by
traffic highway, parks and landing points for
airships.
In Leonidov’s creative process there is a
phase of "Entering the field uniform" with
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the introduction of a geometric network and
the overlap with a natural landscape.
In the example of settlement planning for
Magnitogorsk Leonidov superimposes with an
orthogonal grid the natural relief, leaving
intact the sources and trees. In the
beginning of design the whole area was simply
lined in square cells. Then he displaced the
square architectural volumes checkerboard,
alternating green spaces. In this picture we
can gradually replace some architectural
forms with other (pyramids, cones, cones
curved).
Simplifying design steps to Magnitogorsk:
Figure 3.2.
1. Appearance of sketches that have no
defined shape, semi-geometries, with
the addition of terms.
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CHAPTER 3
Figure 3.3.
2. Introduction of the geometric grid superimposed on the natural landscape.
The geometric network makes the idea of
an imaginary grid of precise coordinates, which penetrates deep within a
forest environment and lively mix of
architectural composition.
Figure 3.4.
3. Localization of indefinite forms in
cell grid. In the world of Leonidov
this geometric network serves as a
mounting table for the semi-geometric
images. These will displace in the grid
cells, "germinating" and saturated with
meaning and individualize them.
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CHAPTER 3
Figure 3.5.
4. Replacing indefinite forms with regular
geometric figures getting from archetypal images. The recreation of the
historical forms. 114
The composition for Leonidov is not a dogma,
but just a scheme. There could not be a literal or final reference to the concrete landscape as well as there could not be an ultimate form. The architect does not attempt to
make a final, "frozen" form. The task of architect is to identify, outline the form. According to Leonidov a task of architect is to
make a "pure scheme which, activating and
stimulating, is getting architecture growth".
He made scheme of architecture deployment,
predict and guide a development. It seems to
be so whatever form will be, will be and the
form is not paralyzed in its final borders.
114
Oleg I.Adamov, "L’immagine-la geometria-la
forma architettonica: il processo creativo di
I.I.Leonidov“, Una città Possibile Progetti di
Leonidov 1926-1934, ed. O. Macel, M. Meriggi,
D. Schmidt, Ju. Volcok (Milano: Mondadori
Electa, 2007) P.80.
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It is self-sufficient and acquires a certain
freedom and independence of its layers from
the architect.
3.3 Arata Isozaki “incubator” architecture
(Tokyo City Hall project)
Figure 3.6. Arata Isozaki’s Tokyo City Hall project of
80’s.
In project for Tokyo City Hall the grid is
growing seizing a 3d form.
“The urban infrastructure, which had been a
two-dimensional grid in the age of masonry
construction,
developed
into
a
threedimensional grid through the introduction of
steel-frame and megastructural construction.
The disorderly array of tall buildings we see
today consists, deep down, of a similar grid.
The metropolis generated homogeneous space in
order to deal with greater numbers, and the
three-dimensional grid was the basis of that
space(…) Le Corbusier, who considered himself
a Cartesian, was quick to anticipate the
167
CHAPTER 3
homogeneous character
century city.”115
of
the
twentieth-
In Arata Isozaki’s thought the machinery of
the
metropolitan
government
and
its
activities have by nature a grid structure
rather that a tree-form. It possesses the
fractal characteristics of a structured grid.
So his rigorous application of a universal
Cartesian
grid
to
all
the
surfaces,
particularly the exterior, has the effect of
increasing the abstraction of the forms and
reducing their appearance of mass and
solidity, the building no longer weighs down
upon the ground and, instead, it appears
levitating and getting lack of weight all
together. The next step in the design process
is in use of pure forms as a new a start from
primordial forms.
Has Isozaki explain, in Western architecture
history, pure geometric forms inevitably
appear in times of revolutionary change, but
they are usually considered anomalous and
their radicalism dismissed. At the time of
designing
the
Tokyo
City
Hall
the
architectural atmosphere in Japan was a way
revolutionary, in search of a new guideline
that may could reinterpret the tradition,
such as in the evoke of Kenzo Tange, but
rather overlooked at international current of
modernism.
115
See note 3, p. 205.
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CHAPTER 3
Simplifying design steps to Tokyo New City
Hall:
Figure 3.7.
1. Lay down 2D grid which invests the surrounding landscape and create the “zero
degree point”.
Figure 3.8.
2. Let the grid grow vertically in 3D to
create the scheme into everything will
be incorporated in a high medium rise.
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CHAPTER 3
Figure 3.9.
3. Set pure Platonic forms which will include the functions in their inner.
Three forms rules (sphere, pyramid and
cube).
Figure 3.10.
4. Rise some of them up, to create a second layer ground which will be visible
from distance the elements representing
the Municipal Administration.
Not the final result, but the process of form
generation is important for Isozaki. He
affirmed “The idea of planning the whole has
been abandoned; planning has been reduced to
the control of the transportation system and
zoning. There is no predicting what will
happen where. The urban silhouette is created
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CHAPTER 3
from a chain
(events)”.116
of
indeterminate
incidents
As for the Japanese architect the duration of
process is essential as well as a memory of
stages of form development. On every stage
form opens in a new way, and on every stage
architect
is
being
in
condition
of
"tremulous" anticipation, on the border of
opening, of birth of new change of form.
Figure 3.11. Scheme represent fractal grid of Isoaki’s
project New Tokyo City Hall.
In the Project for New Tokyo City Hall
Isozaki interprets the fractal figures as an
incubator for the generation on the new pure
geometrical shapes. He didn’t propose a final
composition but rather a scheme in which
forms could be generated. Isozaki called it
116
Arata Isozaki, Arata Isozaki (New York,
Phaidon Press, 2009)p. 202.
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“rhizome117”
process
where
the
parts
continually undergo creation and extinction.
He used the fractal structure as a cage in
which forms can be generated.
The principle of self-generation form can be
compared with Imperial Katzura118 Villa.
At the beginning (16th century) the settlement
of Katzura Imperial Villa was indeed composed
by three houses and an arbor facing the pond
but later (17th century) the plan grown
117
Rhizome
is
a
philosophical
concept
developed
by
Gilles
Deleuze
and
Félix
Guattari
in
their
Capitalism
and
Schizophrenia (1972–1980) project. It is
what Deleuze calls an "image of thought",
based
on
the
botanical
rhizome,
that
apprehends multiplicities.
118
The Katzura Imperial Villa, an outstanding
example
of
seventeenth-century
Japanese
architecture, has survived the perils of the
time and periodical careful restoration. Arata
Isozaki issued the article:” The diagonal
strategy: Katsura as envisioned by Enshu’s
taste”, published in “Katzura Imperial Villa”,
MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2005. He
is recognized as the most original Japanese
scholar of Katzura, who has reconstructed the
villa’s history and sifted the conjectural
attributions.
In
the
past
other
great
architects have interpreted the imperial villa
and Japanese architecture, from Bruno Taut,
“discoverer” of Katzura, to Walter Gropius,
Kenzo Tange and Manfred Speidel.
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CHAPTER 3
expanding around,
levelling.
respecting
the
ground
The growth may be called a fractal119 process
in which sizes of rooms depending on quantity
of tatami120 module. The result is a fractal
grid which in its growth generate its own
form.
Figure 3.12. Scheme representing the historical building
phases. Adding room process respected the tatami size,
119
See note 30.
A tatami(畳) is a type of mat used as a
flooring material in traditional Japanese-style
rooms. Tatami are made in standard sizes, with
the length exactly twice the width.
120
173
CHAPTER 3
changing their measure according to the number of tatami
used.
Isozaki’s
project
shows
also
another
fundamental
of
traditional
Japanese
composition: “aesthetic of the diagonal and
asymmetry”.
Figure 3.13. Scheme showing the angle view of
each room facing the pond. The left side is
longer then the right one, keeping the
composition in asymmetric arrangement.
The aesthetic of diagonal was first used in
set arrangement of Imperial Katzura Villa.
The dynamism of “flying gees” method, as
Isozaki named, consists in the formation by
which a group of building that could be
rigidly aligned on the same central axis
begins to dislocate away from the axis
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CHAPTER 3
successively to the point of giving up the
symmetry and the centrality.
The theme diagonal comes from the tea
ceremony: sumikake (corner arrangement) and
sujichigai (shifting streaks). The tea master
used to arrange the tools for the preparation
of the beverage in diagonal and in a corner
of the set. Also other elements taking part
in the arrangement of the tea house were
deliberately set in a diagonal axes compared
to the main axes (guest axe).
Figure 3.14. Scheme representing the
diagonal arrangement on some elements
of Villa Katzura’s the house.
Isozaki dedicate one of his “Seven Manners”
which describes seven operations of his
designing process to the “shifting” theme.
The project that mostly embodied this modus
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CHAPTER 3
operandi is the Gunma Modern Art Museum. In
many of his building is visible a gesture of
rotating (Oita’s Girls School), shifting or
transcript, as he likes to named. The common
feature between those acts of design is the
desire to change the axes on one element,
part of the whole, to emerge the asymmetry of
the entire structure.
New Tokyo City Hall presented a double
gesture of asymmetry: on façade trough the
high radio tower located on the right corner
of the building and breaking the asymmetry of
the volume and leaving a large empty space
above the roof (façade’s patter as well). The
second action is visible on roof’s plan
through the rotation of the pyramid volume.
Figure
3.15.
Diagonal
aesthetic
Isozaki’s Tokyo City Hall project.
of
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CHAPTER 3
The grid structure of New Tokyo City Hall may
be simplified as the result of horizontal and
vertical lines intersected together. The effect of infinitive space ensued from this
system is recognized in Imperial Katzura Villa’s interior.
The horizontal dark lines of the blue-dyed
cotton tatami edging and the vertical dark
lines of the aged columns appears indeed like
modular lines that articulate a whole threedimensional space, creating the impression of
infinite.
Figure 3.16. Interior of Imperial
Katzura Villa. The result of white
space defined by lines, impose a
sense of infinite and alienation.
The
theme
of
the
illusion
is
so
understandable in a space like a mirror
rooms, where the modules are reverberate all
around. Isozaki practised for long time the
“space of illusion” stating also, in a
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CHAPTER 3
provocative way that one of the best
architecture in the world is the “Mirror
room” at “Tokyo’s Fun Park”. The adoption of
some object as not accessible stairs or
sinking walls are used by Isozaki to get the
visitor's sense of displacement and not
belonging to the realities. The infinite
repetition of the cube module in New Tokyo
City Hall and the resulting levitation on
pure forms on the roof are intent to
represent an illusionary composition.
178
CONCLUSIONS
CONCLUSIONS
1th Chapter.
Basing on an analysis of Isozaki’s
biography and relationship with Kenzo Tange
and Metabolists it is possible to draw a
profile of the architect, defining the
results of those influences on his
architectural design process.
Since the first years of his professional
activity Arata Isozaki located himself in
architectural
context
as
individual
architect and not as a member of any
ideological group. Tis attitude occurred
first as detachment from Kenzo Tange’s firm
and then as a refuse from the participation
in Metabolism’s Group.
Whilst his individualist character it’s
getting equally clear that Isozaki was
strongly
influenced
by
his
mentor’s
devotion to history and by Metabolist’s
conception of forms.
During his working years at K. Tange’s
Laboratory Isozaki has assimilated his
master tendency sought to rediscover
traditional Japanese architecture to create
a new Modern architectural style. It’s very
specific situation than both, Tange and
Isozaki, influenced each other, but what
united them is definitely a rigorous
respect for so called Japanese archetypes.
While in the period during which Isozaki
worked in Tange’s Lab. this trend within
the interest for traditional heritage was
179
CONCLUSIONS
not particularly well comprehended by the
young architect. After few years, Isozaki
seemed to come back to this respective
attitude to the Japanese architectural
history. The concepts developed by Isozaki
together with his teacher can be summarized
as: “sacred pillar” and “trabeation”. The
buildings developed according to the first
concept are a long series and almost all
residing in Oita Prefecture. Some years
later,
already
autonomous
architect,
Isozaki presented more complex versions of
“sacred pillar”. The ideas dated back to
tradition as the handling of the concept
relating
to
“heavy
Japanese
roofs”,
appeared when Isozaki had been already
separate from his master. The rediscovery
of attachment to history and ambition to
citation the traditional shapes is one of
the major Isozaki’s behavior features. His
conception of "architecture as an event"
demonstrates his inclination to cite
frequently
a
historical
context
of
buildings, touching their very essence
clarifying their principles for himself and
enriching them by a superior identity.
While working time spent in Kange’s
Laboratory Isoaki had close relations to
the Metabolism’s members.
Exploring their repertoire the points of
contact with Isozaki’s spatial construction
can be summarized as follow:
- Capsules
The basic unit of Metabolism, the capsule,
has myriad origins in Japan: national
180
CONCLUSIONS
archetypal images in the form of kago121
“mobile
house”
and
the
tea
hut.
Metabolists, especially Kurakawa, had a
modern obsession with mobility in the form
of jets and cars. Isozaki adopted the
concept of capsules for almost every
variant of the “Clusters”. The difference
was in the belief that those modules may
fulfill
in
reality.
In
fact
while
Metabolists built some exemplars of capsule
houses, Isozaki adopted only for few
unbuilt project such as the “Clusters” and
the “Responsive House”. This last project
was made by Isozaki on the mobility trend
composed by a car transporting a cube
house.
- Proliferation/ Colonization
Since the precarious ground and its rules
cannot be conquered Metabolism sprawls a
series of buildings, megastructures, and
even cities that instead find ways of
adopting to their hostile host.
- Floating cities
Through an alchemy of ambition and
technology,
Metabolists,
especially
Kikutake, plan to overlay artificial ground
on water through a combination of piers,
platforms, floating megastructures and
floating island.
121
Kago (駕籠) is a type of litter used as a
means of human transportation by the nonsamurai class in feudal Japan and into the
Meiji period.
181
CONCLUSIONS
Isozaki faced two times the concept of
designing city on the wate: the first time
was together with Kenzo Tange in “New Tokyo
City” project and then in his own project
for “Haishi, Mirage City” (an artificial
island in the South China Sea). In both
projects Isozaki, contrariwise Metabolists,
focused on the self-generation of the
territory.
He
cited
the
“flux
of
development” rather than submarine or
floating structure. His attitude was mainly
focused on “invisible architecture” and
reason for a self growth.
- Unicore/ Joint Core
As well as land and sea, Metabolism
attempts to conquest (“colonization”) the
air. The means to do it is through a
reinvention of the core: as a stand-alone
tower into which living units can be
plugged, and in the “join core” model, as
one of several trunks supporting the
branches of a new urban system, straddling
the mess of the existing city beneath it.
The theme of the core is surely the closest
to Isozaki for whom it’s connected to
traditional Japanese ideas of the “sacred
pillar”. In fact it’s known the devotion of
the architect to Great South Gate of
Todaiji, cited as one of the three most
important buildings for his ispiration.
- Megaforest
While the average building height in Tokyo
is a paltry one, the Metabolists envision
forest-like megastructures that form a
benevolent canopy over the squat city
182
CONCLUSIONS
below. Composed of helixes, brenches, or
cones,
the
megaforests
create
new
categories of spaces: diagonal as well as
vertical and horizontal, with the ability
to reach across space onto neighboring
“trees”.
Every variant of Metabolists’ s megaforest
prototype
(“leaves”
or
the
“tree
silhouette” system of Kikutake, “DNA”
system of Kurakawa) where designed to be a
series of independent buildings standing
one close to the other as a repetition of
module. Contrariwise Isozaki’s variants
were all designed to growth together,
creating a second ground horizontal level.
2th Chapter.
Exploring and classifying the influences of
Japanese tradition, Russian Avant-Garde and
Western culture which A. Isozaki cited in
his spatial constructions it is possible to
reveal the themes of influences specific
for three different cultures.
Deepening in the study of traditional
Japanese architecture one inferred that the
mains aspects from the ancient Japanese
epoch
were
the
sensibilities
and
dispositions to a certain atmosphere. It
may be called as an atmospheres which is
the closer word to express the oriental
conception of “space”, which is tightly
connected with “time”. As it was reported
in the foreword this approach can be
183
CONCLUSIONS
summarized in the concept of “ma”. The
tools to afford to it are those of:
“darkness”, “mask”, “void”, “catching”
natural
elements
and
“dissolving
architecture” in the context. Those are the
archetypal concepts from former Japanese
epochs. After the Second World War it
figured out that Japan comparing to other
countries, doesn’t have any ancient ideas
of architecture. In the past the Japanese
had always built spaces that respected the
religious and philosophical culture but
with no real awareness of the architectural
gesture. It was figured out by Kenzo Tange
who was the first in charge for a responce
to the Modernist Movement.
Hence Isozaki’s citing a traditional
architecture refers more to ancestral
space/time concepts rather than shapes and
plastic forms.
Concerning the Russian Avant-Garde it may
be said that Isozaki used it as a
creativity prototype. He reproduced some
Avangardist compositions understood in a
Japanese
manner.
Malevich’s
flat
compositions were developed making their
surfaces to slide orthogonally between each
other, in a typical way used for Japanese
sliding
paper
walls.
The
Talin’s
controrielief was adopted in an enlarged
scale of a building transforming the curved
material in a big wall-roof. This gesture
remembers the concept of traditional
184
CONCLUSIONS
Japanese heavy roof functioning as well as
a wall. Isozaki’s vision of the Russian
Avant-Garde treated as a Japanese filter
which distorted the meaning and leaving
only the analogical shapes to the original
one.
Isozaki’s
position
regarding
Western
architectural culture was in a way
“didactic”. His purpose was to show and to
teach to Japanese audience the foreign
traditions.
3th Chapter.
Through a comparative analysis between one
of
A.
Isozaki’s
project
and
an
I.I. Leonidov’s
one,
I
identified
characters of influences from Russian
Avant-Garde
and
traditional
Japanese
architecture. In this summery I divided the
conclusions of my analysis in three main
features that I deduced from it. Then I
proceeded showing points of contact and
dissimilarities of Isozaki’s and Leonidov’s
project.
The grid
The difference between using of grid of
I.I. Leonidov and A. Isozaki consists in
their approach with it. While for Leonidov
grid is a schematic concept of universal
invisible network, Isozaki treats grid in
more concrete and formal manner, as a
185
CONCLUSIONS
constructive network in
architectural elements.
terms
of
the
For the Japanese architect grid first of
all means a geometrical structure. It’s
used as a real massive frame that capture
and freeze inside it the pure geometrical
forms. For Isozaki grid becomes a kind of
static
mechanism
which
sustains
an
architectural structure. His grid system is
closely connected with the Japanese housing
tradition where the paper sliding modules
transform, slide and appear as a quasimechanical objects.
Contrariwise for Leonidov the grid is
connected to schematic deployment of forms
which offer the places for the initial
seeds dissemination and growth. These seeds
represent the architect’s initial ideas and
images. Grid as a more dynamic structure
liberates the pure geometrical forms and
let them levitate on columns. In such a
state the Leonidov’s grid is comparable to
Isozaki’s one.
What
distinguishes
the
two
design
approaches, is also the scale of grid‘s
implementation.
According
to
the
traditional Japanese concept it is possible
to rescale an object from macro (universal
scale) to the micro (single building
scale).
186
CONCLUSIONS
The pure geometrical forms
The origins of pure geometrical forms for
Leonidov come from a negation of the
previous culture and a desire to search for
a new artificial formal language working
with pure forms. So Russian architect
explores the former epochs and uses the
archetypal images to create an ideal
environment of forms materialized in his
“The City of the Sun”. Hence germination of
the new forms respond to the trend of the
world evolution.
On the countrary, for Isozaki a personal
negation of the previous culture didn’t
occurre but an actual negation is happened,
because of the Second World War. Isozaki
draws from pure forms of Russian AvantGarde, but they are understated by the
architect as a pure composition of
universal forms and patterns of forms
assembled in some temporary aggregation.
While traditional Japanese housing culture,
frequently cited by Isozaki, is understood
as the principles of transformation,
temporary architecture that could be
rebuilt from time to time.
And also his referring to Metabolism is
understood as the structural principles
where the position, aggregation of units is
much more important than units themselves.
He also gets influenced by the positivism
coming from Metabolists and he believes in
power
of
Japanese
growth,
technical
187
CONCLUSIONS
construction, where everything is possible
to fulfill nto reality. Even if Isozaki
were far from belongs to Metabolists, their
influences on him let him believe that the
fantasy ideas of the Russian Avant-Garde
were possible to be realized.
Within the differences in architect’s
origins, both Isozaki and Leonidov use pure
forms in order to get back to the
architectural images of former epochs. For
both of them is necessary to lay a
foundation for the civilization based on
the new life principles. They are intending
to mention the origins of architecture to
symbolize a new world beginning. While
Leonidov freed the pure geometrical forms
from the grid structure (levitating on
pillars) Isozaki froze them in the grid
structure.
The Nature.
In his project A. Isozaki relates to the
Nature in an artificial way. He raises the
natural spaces in the air and made them
open for the public, and this is an
“intention to relive the increases stress
of the workers”. An artificial atmosphere
of hanging gardens with their greenery on
an upper floor side of the building. This
is a traditional Japanese attitude to recreate
an
artificial
composition
of
greenery evoking a natural settlement.
188
CONCLUSIONS
Contrariwise, Leonidov deals with nature in
an anti-interventional manner. He leaves
every natural panorama conformation as they
exist, without any thought or destructive
intervention.
The process of fertilization of urban
ground
which
generates
the
new
architectural forms is clearly evident in
the creative process of Leonidov, as well
as in Isozaki’s one treatment of those
three layers (Nature, Grid and Pure Forms)
manifests itself that is the difference
between solutions for Isozaki and Leonidov.
Isozaki pulls together the three layers in
a single architectural object. He present a
grid as a first compositional layer, than
he hangs the gardens and pure geometrical
forms (pyramid, sphere, cube) as a second
ground layer. The layers are so merged
together.
Leonidov on the contrary treats the three
layers as separated essences with only few
point of contact organized as pillars and
columns. The result is a creation of a
second artificial layer, which do not
disturbs first nature layer of ecosystem.
189
RESULTS
RESULTS
1. Kenzo Tange, in the years of collaboration
with his student Arata Isozaki, transmits to
him the devotion to traditional Japanese
architecture. Approach that is not openly
shared by the young architect who decides to
move away from his master. Few years later
Isozki
refers
to
traditional
Japanese
architecture and it will be visible in his
architecture.
2. A. Isozaki’s relationship with Metabolists
may be called ambivalent. On the one hand his
constant criticism to the Group given by an
excessive optimism and confidence in the
futuristic technology. On the other hand his
utopian projects suggest a common enthusiasm
with young Metabolists for technology.
Certainly characters of his architecture as
the concept of "trunk" and "forest", although
developed
less
optimistically
in
a
technological way, arise from a relationship
of mutual influence with the Group. This
influence, through Isozaki, affects also
Kenzo Tange who builds some of these
architectural objects according to the
concept of the "trunk".
3. Because Japanese after the Second World
War had a lack of traditional architectural
awareness,
Isozaki
referred
mostly
to
ancestral Japanese atmosphere rather than
archetypal images.
190
RESULTS
4. A. Isozaki’ s vision to the Russian AvantGarde has been treated as a Japanese filter
which distorted the meaning and leaved only
the analogical shapes of the original one.
5.
A. Isozaki
referred
to
Western
architecture in accord to import in Japan
foreigner architecture and to teach it to
Japanese audience, as a “didactic” manner.
6. The A. Isozaki’ s project New City Hall
have some common points with I.I. Leonidov’ s
Magnitagorsk as the concept of grid and pure
geometrical forms. Those ones are treated in
a different way as also the relationship with
the Nature. Some characters of Isozaki’ s
project can be connected to Imperial Katzura
Villa as well.
191
INTERVIES 192
INTERVIEWS
4.1.Professor Haijme
July, Shinjuku, Tokyo.
Yatzuka122,
22th
1. How was the first approach of Isozaki
with ideas of Russian Avant Garde?
Arata Isozaki went Moscow in 1990 and in
that occasion he visited with Kisho
Kurakawa Konstantine Melnikov’s house in
Staraia Arbat with Melnikov’s son Victor
Melnikov. The relationship between Russian
Avant-Garde and Japan begins in 1980.
Before that dates Russian artist Valentina
Bodunova already visited Japan (1960) and
imported Avant-Garde ideas in artistic
field. In 1965-1966 Russian architect
Anatol Kagan from Leningrad arrived in
Japan when the left ideology as Marx, Lenin
and Trotsky started to spread among young
minds in university. In the article
122
Hajime
Yatzuka
1948,
Tokyo.
Japanese
architect, architectural critic and author.
Graduated at University of Tokyo.
He worked for Arata Isozaki firm for several
years and mostly he took part to MOCA Museum in
Los Angeles with Professor Makoto Kikuchi.
Professor in Shibaura Institute of Technology,
Tokyo till 2015. Author of several volumes
including: “Russian avant-garde architecture”
1993, “Creative Now 8“ 1993, “Avant-garde
architecture of Japan 1960s metabolism” 1997,
“Japan modern architecture as a thought”
2005,“Hyper den-City” 2011 and “Metabolism
Nexus” 2011.
INTERVIES 193
Dismantling Architecture Arata Isoaki gave
himself appellative of Stalin and his
friend and interlocutor, Trotsky. Isozaki
at that time thought that city should be
entirely rebuilt whereas his friend (in the
story) was more radical like Trotsky.
2. Which was the architectural tendency in
Japan after Second World War?
After war the political and intellectual
tendency was closer to Russia and distanced
from America. Kenzo Tange was protagonist
of this time and he proposed a modern
architecture that still maintain links with
tradition. It was the time when was rediscovered the formal beauty of Villa
Katzura and Ise Shire. In 1960, Tange
together
with
photographer
Yasuhiro
Ishimoto, architect Walter Gropius, and
graphic designer Herbert Bayer published a
photobook titled ‘Katsura’.
3. He mentioned many times Ivan Leonidov in
his influences, does we spoke about his interest about him?
Isozaki wrote an article called:” City of
the Sun of Leonidov” issued on Hermes
magazine but isn’t translated in English,
as majority of his texts.
4. How did Isozaki get familiar with Russian Formalism?
During a trip in New York Peter Eisenman
presented to Isozaki the book “Prison of
languages”
a
critical
account
of
Structuralism and Russian Formalism” by
INTERVIES 194
Frederic Jamenson. Getting inspired by
formalism Isozaki written an article "About
My Method", issued on 1972 in the journal A
+ U, number 1. He divides his method in
seven manners: " to multiciplity", "to
pack", "to cut", "to transcript", "to
project", "to place", and "response to".
But the fact remains that this research
work on its process of design is dated.
5. Is it Know his Diploma project?
Yes, He made it with Fumihiko Maki and it
was a resource about American skyscrapers.
At that time they were both working in
Kenzo Tange studio and he was interested on
American way how to build high structures
to use for new generation of architecture
in Japan.
6. Isozaki was also very much inspired by
European architecture, which were his link
with Europe?
In 1960 he had many friends in Europe as
Cedric Price, intellectually very close to
Ivan Leonidov, Peter Cook and Archigram.
7. In which architecture from tradition
Isozaki refers more?
Every summer on his way to Kyūshū home
island Isozaki stops to Todaiji Temple in
Nara because he thinks that can get
inspired from it very year.
INTERVIES 195
8. Arata Isozaki mentioned many times Palladio in his architecture, how does his
passion for Palladio started?
In 1999 there was an exhibition in Tokyo of
Palladio and Manfredo Tafuri was invited
for this occasion. Tafuri and Isozaki know
each other at that time. In 1980 Japanese
architect designed many villas using
Palladio’s volta and Manfredo Tafuri “No
Palladio is similar to Arata Isozaki”.
INTERVIES 196
4.2. Andrea
Milan.
Maffei123,
16th October,
1. In una sua conversazione con Arata Isozaki,
l’architetto
giapponese
criticava
il
continuo cambiamento delle forme dei
giovani architetti a confronto dello stile
costante di Tadao Ando o di Richard Meier.
Isozaki ha passato molte fasi nel suo
processo creativo (Metabolismo, Manierismo
,Postmodernismo,
Antimodernismo);
quali
sono secondo Lei gli aspetti che hanno
sempre distinto l’architettura di Isozaki?
In questi tempi si tende molto a seguire
una moda, un certo stile, invece Isozaki ha
sempre cambiato i contenuti non lo stile.
La sua è stata una critica dal punto di
vista di stile nel senso che molti
architetti sfogliano le riviste da Herzog
de Meuron a Frank Ghery e mescolano insieme
gli stili realizzando progetti modaioli che
hanno pero il problema di non avere dei
123
Andrea Maffei. Graduated in Florence, in
1997 he moved to Tokyo to work in the study of
Arata Isozaki.
Initially working in the ceramics museum team
Gifu (Japan), villa At Wabrah in Doha and
expansion project of Qatari history museum in
Doha. Become Arata Isozaki Associate and Head
of the Italian projects. Directsf the hockey
stadium project in Turin. Founded the Andrea
Maffei Architects. Collaborator of CASABELLA
magazine, since 1998.
INTERVIES 197
contenuti perché non c è l’intenzione di
fare una critica verso un tipo di edificio
o verso certi contenuti. Semplicemente oggi
è bello farli così. Mentre la critica di
Isozaki verte sulla questione che si
dovrebbe leggere più formalmente da parte
dei giovani d’oggi. Viceversa il suo
sperimentalismo
Postmodernismo,
Costruttivismo ecc., deriva dalla sua
volontà di interpretare il progetto che gli
si pone di fronte in un modo interessante
come
un’interpretazione
critica
sul
significato, per esempio, di cosa comporta
oggi
costruire
una
biblioteca
(i.e.
Biblioteca Comunale Maranello), in quella
determinata città.
Da ciò deriva il suo sperimentalismo che
non si basa su una scelta formale come per
esempio Tadao Ando le cui architetture si
assomigliano tutte, ma lui si pone di volta
in volta un desiderio di sperimentare nuove
forme. Isozaki ha sempre rifiutato una sua
classificazione postmoderna o di qualunque
tipo.
2. In un’intervista Isozaki afferma il suo
profondo interesse per Malevich e Tatlin e
molte delle sue scelte formali ricordano El
Lissitzky o la «Future city» di Lazar
Kiedekel. Tale affezione alle avanguardie
russe può essere interpretata come un
spirito, del dopo guerra, di “imitazione e
riproduzione” di forme architettoniche e
idee di tendenza senza un profondo
INTERVIES 198
interesse della cultura russa?
Nel concorso che aveva partecipato per il
teatro di San Pietroburgo del Marijinski di
St. Pietroburgo aveva cercato di riprendere
questi piani bianchi rossi blu ispirandosi
a Malevich ma anche Zaha Hadid afferma la
sua predilezione per Malevich, forse si
tratta di una moda.
3. Mentre
nella
cultura
occidentale
la
geometria consente il controllo astratto
delle forme, in quella orientale l’edificio
segue le forme dell’area e i dettagli sono
la definizione formale. Essendo Isozaki un
architetto “ponte”
tra Occidente e
Orientale, quale pensa sia il suo approccio
alla
definizione
della
forma
architettonica?
Wright
è
stato
molto
influenzato
dall’architettura
classica
giapponese,
queste grandi coperture che aggettano delle
case giapponesi. Per quanto riguarda
l’architettura di Isozaki non penso ci sia
una “regola generale”, se si trova in un
contesto italiano di centro storico si
comporta in una maniera mentre se riferisce
ad un contesto americano ancora un altro.
Secondo me non c è nessuna regola, è
un’interpretazione del luogo, non dico in
termini di “genius loci” ma in termini di
interpretazione di un architetto che vuole
raccontare un’idea. Per quanto riguarda il
museo della Ceramica di Gifo decide lui
stesso il luogo dove porlo, circondato
INTERVIES 199
dalla natura e nel rispetto del terreno sul
quale poggia e quindi un discorso di
contesto organico nel contesto naturale.
Viceversa ci sono edifici molto geometrici,
basta pensare al MOCA di Los Angeles che
invece riprende tutte le geometrie perché
si trova in una città come Los Angeles,
America
4. Isozaki
afferma:”
L’architettura
deve
essere aggressiva, deve difendersi dal
contesto” In un contesto giapponese dove
ogni elemento vive di vita propria,
disegnando
lo
schema
psicologico
dell’individualità
giapponese,
ha
riscontrato
nella
collaborazione
con
Isozaki una sensibilità per il dialogo tra
edificio e spazio urbano come piattaforma
sociale?
In Giappone non esistono le piazze e non ce
ne sono mai state nella storia. Non hanno
mai avuto il palazzo del potere civile,
derivante anche dalla cultura cristiana. I
Giapponesi hanno un altro senso di sociale
e comunità che non è urbano ma più
affettivo. Dei punti di aggregazione che
non sono molto urbani quanto sociali. Il
lavoro è un po’ una seconda casa. A livello
urbano quindi non c è un vero centro, anche
Kyoto, per esempio, non ha alcune piazze ma
i punti di riferimento sono questi templi
sparsi, diversamente da come si riscontra
in Cina i cui spazi sociali possono essere
paragonati alle nostre piazze italiane.
INTERVIES 200
I punti di sviluppo urbano giapponese sono
le fermate della metro. La stessa azienda
che fa la metropolitana compra i terreni e
vi costruisce gli edifici e, comunque, è
una politica a mio parere molto sensata.
Non credo che ci siano veri e propri piani
regolatori.
5. Rispetto dei ritmi e degli elementi
naturali.
Isozaki,
come
molti
altri
architetti
giapponesi,
utilizza
luce
naturale, elementi atmosferici come vento e
acqua
integrati
nell’architettura
per
sottoporre l’artificialità dell’edificio
allo stagionale e giornaliero decorso della
natura. Quali sono i progetti da Lei
seguiti che si avvalgono di questo
approccio
progettuale?
(ricordando
la
biblioteca di Maranello)
Il tema della luce è il più importante ma
anche l’acqua come vediamo in Gifu e
Tsukuba che è stato molto riproposto. Nel
progetto della Biblioteca Maranello gli
elementi fondamentali sono il verde la luce
e l’acqua ed è un modo per percepire la
biblioteca in un modo diverso che è
estremamente giapponese: essere circondati
dalla natura.
6. Decentralizzazione. Si è spesso parlato di
Tokyo come di una città senza centro e
dell’attitudine a ogni scala di applicare
il modus operandi giapponese di separare
gli elementi per conservarne la loro
basicità. In architettura questo fenomeno è
INTERVIES 201
riscontrabile nelle piante della celebre
casa Moriyama dello studio Sanaa a Tokyo ma
anche nell’International Art Village di
Akiyoshidai e nel Museo delle Ceramiche a
Gifu di Isozaki. Ritiene che questa sia
un’attitudine
derivata
dalla
cultura
giapponese sempre presente nel processo
creativo di Isozaki?
Il
centro
Gifu
è
un
discorso
di
architettura organica con l’intenzione di
“spalmarla” sul territorio. Il centro
Tsukuba è invece molto monumentale e
centralizzato quindi secondo me non c è una
regola
comune.
Parlando
del
centro
artistico Kamioka anche questo è un
edificio che si trova in un paesaggio
campestre e quindi non c’era l’intenzione
di creare un grande volume unico ma voleva
spargerlo nel territorio per integrarlo in
un modo organico.
7. Isozaki spiega il concetto di ‘oscurità’,
così lontano dall’ideale occidentale di
bellezza, con le seguenti parole: ”Oscurità
come spazio spirituale dell’immaginazione e
del mondo dell’illusione. Una riflessione
della realtà associata con la profondità
psicologica del singolo”. Come approccia a
questo concetto in quanto architetto
occidentale?
Forse è più un’interpretazione che ne hanno
maturato i critici nei confronti della sua
architettura.
Tanizaki
descrive
la
sensibilità dell’oscurità dei giapponesi
INTERVIES 202
che preferiscono avere un contatto con la
luce sempre non diretto ma sempre più soft.
Oscurità
non
tanto
come
esplicita
indicazione delle cose ma sempre più a un
detto non detto e quindi a una percezione
più indiretta delle cose. E questo è dunque
un rapporto più indiretto con la realtà. Il
loro rapporto infatti è un rapporto sempre
molto poco aggressivo con le cose e le
situazioni.
8. Nel trattamento del materiale di facciata
di alcune architetture di Isozaki come per
esempio
il
Gunma
Center
of
Art,
l’architetto utilizza una superficie ad
alta riflessione per aumentare l’effetto
dell’astrazione
e
della
perdita
di
materialicità del volume. La scelta del
materiale della pelle esterna dell’Hockey
Center di Torino è dovuto allo stesso
intento?
Non è stato un riferimento diretto al Gunma
è stato scelto per rendere più interessante
la facciata mentre nella parte interne è
stato scelto la riflettenza dello specchio
per rendere più leggero il volume delle
tribune mobili che avevano una certa massa.
Lo specchio ha il compito di far svanire la
pesantezza.
Inoltre
l’aspetto
più
importante del Palaisozaki, su cui Isozaki
ha molto insistito, è stato quello di
creare un edificio non solo per le
Olimpiadi ma un edificio che durasse anche
anche dopo le Olimpiadi. Per questo la
scelta di avere due tribune fisse e le
INTERVIES 203
altre mobili. Esperienza derivata dal
palazzo di Barcellona che non ha le tribune
da una parte proprio perché potesse essere
comodamente essere utilizzato nel dopo
Olimpiadi.
9. Isozaki è stato il primo architetto
giapponese ad aprirsi all’architettura
occidentale,
dimostrandosi
un
grande
conoscitore ed esperto di entrambi le
culture, occidentali ed orientali. Nei suoi
ultimi
lavori
(Citylife
a
Milano),
riconosce
un’influenza
prevalente
sull’altra?
E difficile classificarlo perché il tema è
quello della modularità che si ripete
all’infinito che è sia occidentale che
orientale. Il riferimento è più a Giò Ponti
al grattacielo Pirelli. La funzionalità
soprattutto è un riferimento a Pirelli con
uno spazio molto flessibile per durare nel
tempo perché un edificio parte dalla scelta
funzionale.
10.
Differenza tra Toyo Ito e Isozaki
Ciò che differenzia Isozaki da Toyo Ito è
sicuramente la sua grande cultura della
storia dell’architettura non tanto in
termini formali ma di contenuti, con
l’amore per Palladio e per il suo risultato
di armonia delle proporzioni e la sua
interpretazione degli elementi classici
dell’architettura
romana
oppure
di
Piranesi. Nei suo dieci libri, Isozaki
INTERVIES 204
ciascuno era dedicato ad un’opera che
riteneva più significativa di quel periodo
esempio sul Gotico, poi del Rinascimento
con San Lorenzo a Firenze e il Manierismo
con Palazzo Tè a Mantova. Quindi lui ha
sempre guardato alla storia un po’ alla
maniera di Louis Kann e questo è quello che
l’ha portato a un maggior utilizzo della
pietra e le forme del passato.
Toyo Ito invece sulla storia ci ha messo
una pietra sopra, ha sempre interpretato la
città
molto
contemporaneamente
come
organismo veloce mutevole. Quindi la grossa
differenza tra Isozaki e Toyo Ito risiede
nella devozione alla storia.
11. Linguaggio
Kanji
Riscontra un rapporto?
e
architettura.
Per tutti i giapponesi e i cinesi, data la
calligrafia basata sui kanji, è inevitabile
che ci sia un rapporto fra il linguaggio e
il segno grafico perché loro sono abituati
a disegnare in continuazione. In Himalaya
Center a Shangai recentemente Isozaki ha
realizzato
un
terzo
della
facciata
riprendendo degli ideogrammi e inventandone
dei nuovi, interpretando la facciata con
dei Kanji che non esistono. In tutti gli
architetti
giapponesi
c’è
sempre
un
rapporto froidiano con gli ideogrammi
quando disegnano.
ARATA ISOZAKI’S CREATIVE BIOGRAPHY
1931 23 July Borne in Oita Prefecture, Japan. 1941
Roosevelt imposes US trade embargo on Japan. 1945
the Isozaki’s mother was killed in an accident in
the confusion of bombs. 1945 40% of industrial
plants and infrastructure destroyed by US bombing.
Arata’s trip to Italy visiting Palladio.University
of Tokyo, B.Arch. Thesis about Skyscraper in
America, tutor Kenzo Tange. 1954 Work in Kenzo
Tange’s firm with Sachio Otani, Fumihiko Maki and
Kisho Kurokawa. Recovered in hospital for a
suspicion of cancer to the brain. Rapid economic
growth of Tokyo between 1955 and 1961,"Golden
Sixties". 1960 Elaborating concept of “darkness”.
1955 Isozaki’s father passed away. Metabolism.
1958 Kikutake’s Marine City. K. Kurakawa visited
Moscow and Leningrad 1959-1960 Oita Medical Hall,
Oita, Japan. 1960 Project Clusters in the Air,
Tokyo, Japan, (unbuilt). 1959 asked to join
Metabolism but Isozaki declined. 1960 participates
in Plan for New Tokyo ’60 at Tange Laboratoty.
1961 Shinjuku project, Tokyo, Japan, (unbuilt).
1961
Peugeot
Building
project,
Argentina,
(unbuilt). 1960 Elaborating concept of “ruins”.
1962 participates in Metabolist exhibition: “This
will be your city” in Tokyo. 1962 ‘City Demolition
Industry, Inc.’ essay (Isozaki the timid Staliist
vs Sin in the Trotskyist Killer. He wrote it to
keeo distance from Metabolism. 1962 ‘Incubation
process’ exhibition. 1963 Marunouchi project,
Marunouchi, Tokyo, Japan, (unbuilt). 1963 Project
City in the air (unbuilt). 1962-1966 Oita
Prefectural Library,Oita, Japan. 1963 Established
Arata Isozaki Atelier (now Arata Isozaki &
Associates ,Tokyo). 1964 Part-time lecturer, Urban
Engineering Faculty, University of Tokyo. 19631964 lwata Girls’ High School, Oita, Japan. 1964
Japanese citizens allowed to freely travel
overseas for the first time.1965 Monroe Ruler (a
curve ruler according to the proportion of Monroe
that Isozaki incorporated into architecture and
furniture design). 1965 Urban Planning, Kenzo
Tange Team,Skopje,YugosIavia. 1966 Collaboration
for the film director Hiroshi Teshigahara and
artist Tomio Miki for“Face of Another”. 1966
Skopje masterplan with Kenzo Tange. 1967-1970
Festival Plaza Expo ’70 Osaka, Japan. Recovered in
hospital one year for a breakdown after Expo’70.
1968 The exhibition “Electric Labyrinth” for the
14th Triennale di Milano. “Electric Labyrinth” was
completely taken over by these young artists and
students protesting against “establishement”. 1970
Empire of Signs, Roland Barthes. 1970 Elaborating
concept “tabula rasa”. 1970 Special Prize of EXPO
’70, Architectural Institute of Japan (mechanics
and electronics
of Festival
Plaza). 1970
Responsive House Project as a model for simulate
physical forms. 1970 Formalism. 1970-1972 Oita
Medical Hall Annex, Oita, Japan. 1971-1974 The
Museum of Modern Art, Gunma, Japan. 1971 Interview
in with James Stirling, affirming his distance
with Metabolist group. ‘About My Method’, Japan
Architect (August 1972), pp. 22-8. Elaborating
concept “Ciber city”. Computer-Aided city project.
1972-1974 The Kitakyushu City Museum of Art,
Fukuoka, Japan. 1973 Oil crisis stops Japan’s
revoòution in its tracks. 1973 International
Committee Member, Milan Triennale, Italy. 19731974 Kitakyushu Central Library, Fukuoka, Japan.
1973-1974-Fujimi Country Clubhouse, Oita, Japan.
1974-1975 Shukosha Building, Fukuoka , Japan.
Kenchiku no Kaitai (The Dismantling of Modern
Architecture) (Tokyo, Bijutsu Shuppon-sho, 1975).
1975 Annual Prize, Architectural Institute of
Japan (The Museum of Modern Art, Gunma). 1975-1977
West Japan General Exhibition Centre, Fukuoka,
Japan. ‘The Metraphor of the Cube', Japan
Architect (March 1976), pp.24-6. ‘Rhetoric of The
Cylinder’, Japan Architect (April 1976), pp.66-67.
‘From Manner To Rhetoric’, Japan Architect (April
1976),pp. 64-72. 1976 Collaborating with Hans
Hollein “MAN trans FORMS” exhibition “Isozaki’s
Body by Hans Hollein”. 1976 Visiting Professor in
AA School of London, lesson presented by Peter
Cook about “Designing process of early works”.
1976-1978 Kamioka Town Hall, Gifu, Japan. ‘Nine
Quotation
Sources,
Nine
Metaphors’,
Japan
Architect (October/ November, 1977), pp.20-21.
1978 “Ma-Espace/Temps au Japon”(MA:Space-Time in
Japan), Paris. 1978-1983 Fukuoka Mutual Bank, Head
Office Expansion, Fukuoka, Japan. Ma Space/Time in
Japan (exhibition catalogue) (NY, Cooper-Hewitt
Museum, 1979). ‘Formalism’, Japan Architect
(January 1979),pp.9-11. Shuhò-ga: Arata Isozaki
Chosakushu 3 (Manner: Collected Writings 3)
(Tokyo, Bijutsu Shuppon-sho, 1979). Two years of
studying Japanese calligraphy. 1980 Postmodernism.
1979-1983 Tsukuba Centre Building, lbaragi, Japan.
1980 Memphis movement Milano. 1980 Collaboration
for the movie: “Ki (Breathing)” Toshio Matsumoto.
1980-1982 Toga Sanbo Theater, Toyama, Japan. ‘A
Rethinking of
Spaces
of Darkness’,
Japan
Architect(February
1981),
pp.9-20.
1981-1986
Bjornson Studio and House, California, USA. 19811986 The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles,
California, USA. 1982 Togamura Amphitheatre,
Toyama,
Japan.
‘The
Ledoux
Connection’,
Architectural Design (January-February 1982),
pp.28-9. 1982-1984 Okanoyama Graphic Art Museum,
Hyogo, Japan. 1982-1986 Housing Block 4, House 2,
IBA, Berlin, Germany. 1983-1985 Palladium Club,
New York, USA. 1983-1990 Barcelona 1992 Olympic
Games Main Sports Hall Sant Jordi Sports Hall,
Barcelona, Spain. 1984-1987 Ochanomizu Square
Building, Casals Hall, Tokyo, Japan. Ima, Mienai
Tashi (Now, the City Invisible) (Tokyo, Yomoto
Shobò, 1985). 1985 “Tokyo is Photography”
exhibition in collaboration with Kishin Shinoyama.
Post-Modern no Jidai to Kenchiku ( The Post-modern
Era and Architecture) (diologues) (Tokyo, Kojimo
Shuppon-koi,1985). 1986 Visiting Professor AA
School of London, lessosn about ”New Tokyo City
Hall”. 1986-1987 Clubhouse, Musashi-kyuryo Country
Club, Saitama, Japan. 1986-1993 Tokyo University
of Art and Design, Tokyo, Japan. 1986 Golden
Medal, Royal institute of British Architects
(RIBA). 1986-1990 Art Tower Mito, Ibaragi, Japan.
1987-1988 Hara Museum ARC, Gunma, Japan. 1987-1989
Clubhouse, Lake Sagami Country Club, Yamanashi,
Japan.
1987-1989
Bond
University
Library,
Administration Building, Faculty of Humanities
Building,
Queensland
Australia.
1987-1990
Kitakyushu
International
Conference
Centre,
Fukuoka, Japan. 1987-1990 Team Disney building,
Florida, USA. 1987-1990 Pabellon Polideportivo,
Palafolls, Spain. ‘Ruins’, in Ryu/i Miyamoto:
Architectural
Apocalypse
(Tokyo,
Heibon-sha,
1988), pp. 1 1-19. 1988-1992 The Brooklyn Museum
Expansion, Brooklyn, NY, U.S.A. in partnership
with James Stewart Polshek. 1988-1989 Tokyo
Christian College, Chapel, Chiba, Japan. 1989
Collaboration for the movie: “Ma:Space/Time in The
Garden of Ryoan-Ji” Takahiko Iimura. 1989-1990 J R
Kyushu Yufuin Railway Station, Oita, Japan. 19891991 Tateyama Museum of Toyama and Youboh-kan
Hall, Toyama, Japan. 1990 visit of Konstantin
Melnikov’s House located in Staraya Arbat, Moscow
with Victor Melnikov and Kisho Kurokowa. 1990
Collaboration with Kiju Yoshida for Opera “Madame
Butterfly” (Opera de Lyon). 1989-90 New Tokyo city
Hall project. Deconstructivism. 1990-1992-Uii-An
Tea Ceremony House, Tokyo, Japan. 1990-1994 Museum
of Japanese Art and Technology, Krakow, Poland.
Arata Isozaki 1960-1990 Architecture (NY, Rizzoli,
1991). 1991 The FAD Prize of Architecture, Spain
(Sant Jordi Sports Hall). 1996 Commissioner
Japanese Pavilion (‘Fractures' won the Golden Lion
Prize) at the 6th international Architecture
Exhibition, Venice Biennale. Commissioner Japanese
Pavilion (‘City of Girls’) at the 7th international
Architecture Exhibition, Venice Biennale. 19911994-Nagi Museum of Contemporary Art, Okayama,
Japan. 1991-1995 Toyonokuni Library for Cultural
Resources, Oita, Japan. 1991-1995 Kyoto Concert
Hall, Kyoto, Japan. 1991-1995 B-con PlazaInternational Convention Hall, Oita, Japan. Arata
Isozaki Works 30: Architectural Models, Prints,
Drawings (Tokyo, Riyuko-sho ,1992). 1992-1994
Nakaya Ukichiro Museum of Snow and Ice, lshikawa,
Japan.1992-1998-Nara Centennial Hall, Nara, Japan.
1992-1998 Daimler Benz AG, Project Potsdamer Platz
Block C2+C3, Berlin, Germany. 1993-1994 Luigi
Nono’s Tomb, Venice, ltaly. 1993-1995 Domus House
for Humankind, La Coruna, Spain. 1993-1999 Okayama
West Police Station, Okayama, Japan. 1993-1997
Shizuoka Performing Arts Centre, Shizuoka, Japan.
1993-1998 Shizuoka Convention & Arts Centre,
Shizuoka, Japan. 1993-2000 Bass Museum Extension,
Florida, U.S.A.. Arata Isozaki Opere e progetti
(italiano) (Milan, Electa,1994). 1994 Royal
Academy of Arts Honorary Academician, London,
England. ‘Mask and folding screen’, GA Document39
(1994): pp. 48-9. 1994-1999 Ohio Centre of Science
& Industry, Ohio, U.S.A.. 1995 Design Competition,
Japan Juror, Yokohama International Port Terminal
Design. 1995-1998 Akiyoshidai International Art
Village,
Yamaguchi,
Japan.
1995-1999
Gunma
Astronomical Observatory, Gunma, Japan. Shigen no
Modoki:
Japanesque-ization
(Psuedo-origins:
Japanesque-izotion)
(Tokyo,
Kojimo
Shupponkoi.1996). 1996-2002 Ceramic Park Mino, Gifu,
Japan. 1997 Andrea Maffei joined Arta Isozaki’s
working team. 1997-2003 Yamaguchi Centre for Arts
and Media, Yamaguchi, Japan. 1998-2005 Kitagata
Town Community Centre, Gifu. Isozaki Arata no
Hossò-hò (Isozaki’s Ideas: the secrets to the
creation of his architecture) (Motsudo, Okoku-sho,
1998).
1998-2008
Shenzhen
Cultural
Centre,
Shenzhen, China. 1999 The Millenium House Sheikh
Saud AI-Thani Villa, Doha Qatar. Kaishi-Mou
Hitotsuno Utopia (The Mirage City: Another Utopia)
(Tokyo. NTT Publishing. 1998). 1999-2002 La Caixa
Forum, Entrance Court, Barcelona, Spain. Jintai no
Kage Anthropomorphism (Traces of the Human Body:
Anthropomorphism)
(Tokyo,
Kojima
Shupponkoi.2000). Fluxism. 2001 Qatar Education City
masterplan, Doha, Qatar. 2001-2005 Isozaki AteaUrbitarite Project, Bilbao, Spain. Kami no
Nisugata (The illusory Forms of the Gods) (Tokyo,
Kojimo Shuppon-koi, 2001). Kenchiku to Jikan
(Architecture and Time) (co-writer) (Tokyo,
Iwonomi Shoten 2001). UNBUILT/ Hon-kenchiku-sha
Shi
(UNBUILT/Anti-Architectural
History)
(Tokyo,To10 publishing, 2001).2002 Qatar National
Library, Doha, Qatar. 2000-2006 Turin 2006 Winter
Olympic Games Ice Hockey Stadium, Turin, Italy in
collaboration with Andrea Maffei. 2003-2008
Central Academy of Fine Arts, Museum of Art,
Beijing, China. Isozaki Arata no Kenchiku Dangi
(Arata Isozaki’s Architecture Discourse) (Tokyo,
Rikuyo-sho):1 Kornok Temple (2001 ); 2 Acropolis
(2001 ); 3 Villa Adriano (2002); 4 San Vitale
(2004); 5 Le Thoronet Abbey (2004); # 6 Notre Dome
Cathedral (2002); 7 San Lorenzo (2003); 8 Palazzo
Del Te (2001 ); 9 San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane
(2003); 10 Choux Soil Factory (2001 ); 11 Sir John
Soane Museum (2004); 12 Chrysler Building (2001).
2003-2009 China International Practical Exhibition
of Architecture Conference Centre, Nanjing, China.
2003-2009 Megaron Concert Hall, Thessaloniki,
Greece. 2003-2009 Qingdao Guiyuan Garden, Qingdaa
China. 2003-2010 Shanghai Zendai Himalaya Art
Centre, Shanghai ,China. 2003 Milano Fiera
Redevelopment, Milan, ltaly in collaboration with
Andrea Maffei. Kukon no Gyokan (Spacing Among
Space:
Dialogue
with
Kazuya
Fukuda)
(Tokyo,Chikumo-shobò,
2004.
‘Mariinsky
II
International design Competition St. Petersburg
Russia’,
GA
Document
77
(2004),
pp.4-7.
‘Suprematism, zero degree, GA Document 77
(2004),pp. 58-59. 2004 TEDA Two Decade Anniversary
Urban Memorial Monument Tianjin, China. ‘Futurismflux’ , GA Document 77 (2004), pp.28-9. 2004
Jianchua
n Museum Complex, Japanese Army Museum, Jianchuan,
China. 2004 University of Central Asia masterplan,
Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan. ‘City In the
Air’, GA Document 77 (2004), pp.144-5. 2004-2005
Hotel Puerta America, Madrid, Spain. 2004-2010
Qatar Convention Center, Doha, Qatar. 2005 Kenzo
Kange’s death. ‘The Diagonal Strategy, Katsura as
Envisioned by “Enshu’s Taste“ in Katsura Imperial
Villa,
Virginia
Ponciroli
ed.
(Milan,
EIecta,2005),pp. 9-41. Japan-ness in Architecture
(Cambridge MA. MIT Press, 2006). ‘An Interview
with Peter Cook by Arata lsozaki’ in ArchigramExperimentalArchitecture
1961-74
(Tokyo2005),
pp98-1 05. 2006 Diamond Island New Urban Quarter,
Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam. 2006 Xixi Wetland Museum,
Hangzhou, China. 2006-2008 Hara Museum ARC,
Expansion, Gunma, Japan. 2007 Hanoi Municipal
Office Complex, Hanoi, Vietnam. 2007 City
Conference Center in Krakow, Krakow, Poland. 2008
New
Bologna
Station,
Bologna,
Italy
in
collaboration with Andrea Maffei. 2008 Shanghai
Symphony Hall, Shanghai, China. 2008 CulturaI-Art
and Museum Complex, Kyiv, Ukraine. 2008 Hezheng
Museum of Natural History, Hezheng, China. 2009
Visiting Professor at Royal Academy of Arts,
London, lecture about “Andrea Palladio through the
eyes of contemporary architects.
2009 Library
Maranello, Italy, in collaboration with Andrea
Maffei. 2012 New National Stadium Tokyo in
collaborating with Andrea Maffei.
2013 Death
Isozaki’s wife and sculptor Aiko Miyawaki. 2013
Artistic Collaboration with Anish Kapoor and the
Lucerne Festival (“Ark Nova”). 2013 Visiting
professor Harvard University, Cambridge, MA,
lesson about “Japanese artistic features”. 2014
Visiting professor Politecnico di Milano, Italy
for “Mi/Arch”.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Books of Arata Isozaki:
-
Isozaki, A. Arata Isozaki 1964-76 First
– Tokyo: Kajima Institute Publishing,
Co., Ltd, - 1980. 191 p.
-
Isozaki, A. Arata Isozaki 1976-84
Second – Tokyo: Kajima Institute
Publishing, Co., Ltd, - 1986. 203 p.
-
Isozaki, A. Katsura Villa. – Milan:
Rizzoli, - 1987. 267 p.
-
Isozaki, A. Arata Isozaki Works 30:
Architectural
Models,
Prints,
Drawings./ A. Isozaki, Y. Ishimoto –
Tokyo: Gingko Pr Inc, - 1992. 385 p.
-
Third, PART1 – Tokyo: Kajima Institute
-
Third, PART2 – Tokyo: Kajima Institute
-
Isozaki, A. Unbuilt. - .Tokyo: Toto, –
2001. 272 p.
-
Isozaki, A. Arata Isozaki./ A. Isozaki,
K. Tadashi Oshima – London: Phaidon
Press, - 2009. 272 p.
-
Isozaki, A. Japan-ness in Architecture.
– Massachusetts: The MIT Press, – 2011.
376 p.
212
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Books about Arata Isozaki:
-
Drew, P. Architecture of Arata Isozaki.
– London: Granada, 1982. 206 p.
- Nannerini, G. Arata Isozaki, Opere e
Progetti/ G. Nannerini, M. Faiferri, D.
Mandolesi. – Roma: Cdp editrice, 1996.
230 p.
-
Leone
Spinta,
Saper
credere
in
architettura : trentadue domande a
Arata
Isozaki.
–
Napoli:
Clean
Edizioni, - 2003. 63 p.
- Koshalek, R. Arata Isozaki,
Decenni di Architettura. Rizzoli, 2005. 235 p.
-
Quattro
Milano:
Koolhaas, R. Project Japan: Metabolism
Talks…./ R. Koolhaas, H. U. Obrist –
Koln: Taschen, - 2011. 684 p.
Books mentioned by Arata Isozaki:
-
Tanizaki, J. In praise of shadows. –
Tokyo: Leete'S Island Books, - 1977. 56
p.
- Chuang,
T.
Zhuangzi.
–
Feltrinelli, - 1994. 416 p.
Milano:
- Di Felice, P. Sakuteiki, annotazioni
sulla composizione dei giardini. –
Firenze: Le Lettere, - 2001. 218 p.
213
BIBLIOGRAPHY
214
Other books:
- Teiji, I. L’Architettura Giapponese. –
Milano: Silva Editoriale d’arte. –
1963. 154 p.
- Okakura, k. The book of tea. – USA:
Dover Publications. - 1964. 76 p.
- Quilici,
v.
costruttivismo.
1969. 585 p.
L’architettura
del
– Bari: Laterza, -
- Eisentein, S. The Film sense. – London:
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. – 1969. 288
p.
- Jamenson, F. The Prison House of
Language.
A
Critical
Account
of
Structuralism and Russian Formalism. –
Princeton: Princeton University Press.
– 1974. 302 p.
- Bruschi, A. Bramante. – London: Thames
& Hudson Ltd, - 1977. 208 p.
- Erlich, V. Russian Formalism, HistoryDoctrine. – Yale: Yale University
Press. - 1981.195 p.
- Quilici, V. Ivan Leonidov./ V. Quieri,
Chan- Magomedov, S. Omarovic. – New
York: Institute for Architecture and
Urbanism
Studies:
Rizzoli
International. – 1981. 98 p.
- Barthes, R. L’impero dei segni.
Torino: Einaudi, - 1984. 140 p.
–
BIBLIOGRAPHY
- Kurakawa, K. Rediscovering Japanese
space. – Trumbull: Weatherhill. - 1988.
217p.
- Zadova, L. A. Tatlin. – London: Thames
and Hudson. – 1988. 533 p.
- Schwarz, H. Ivan Ilich Leonidov: la
città del sole. – Stuttgart: Oktogon. –
1989. 80 p.
- De Magistris, A. La casa cilindrica di
Konstantin Melʹnikov, 1927-1929. –
Torino: Celid. – 1998. 71 p.
- Ray, M. Tatlin e la cultura del
Vchutemas: 1885-1953, 1920-1930. –
Roma: Officina. – 1992. – 121 p.
- Wright , F. L. Frank Lloyd Wright and
Japan: The Role of Traditional Japanese
Art and Architecture in the work of
Frank
Lloyd
Wright.
–
London:
Routledge. – 2000.245 p.
- Maffei, A. Le opere, i progetti e gli
scritti Toyo Ito. – Milano: Electa. 2001. 209 p.
- Calza, G. C. Stile Giappone. – Torino:
Einaudi, - 2002. 213 p.
- Calza, G. C. Stile Giappone. - Torino:
Einaudi. – 2002. 210 p.
- Maraini, F. Mandala: Giappone,
Milano: Electa, - 2006. 285 p.
-
215
BIBLIOGRAPHY
- Meriggi,
M.
Una
città
Possibile
Progetti di Leonidov 1926-1934./ M.
Meriggi, O. Macel, D. Schmidt, Ju.
Volcok. - Milano: Mondadori Electa. 2007. 80 p.
- Beltrami, G. Palladio./ G. Beltrami, H.
Burns. – Venezia: Marsilio. – 2008. 427
p.
- De Magistris, A. Ivan Leonidov, 19021959./ A. De MagistrisI. Korob’ina Milano: Electa. – 2009. 321 p.
- Fujimoto, S. Sou Fujimoto Recent
Project. – Tokyo: GA International ADA
Edita. – 2013. 192 p.
- Lissitzky,
E.
El
Lissitzky:
L’esperienza
della
totalità.
–
Rovereto: Mart; Milano: ELecta. – 2014.
– 199 p.
Magazine:
- Hans Hollein. Global Architect // GA
Architect. - 1959-1978. – 6
-
K. Shinohara. The Japanese Conception
of Space// The Japan Architect A+U. –
1972. - 32
- Hans Allen. Frank Lloyd Wright and the
Destruction of the Box// Journal of the
Society of Architectural Historians. –
1979. - 38
216
BIBLIOGRAPHY
- Chang Ching Yu. Japanese Spatial
Conception// Japan Architect. – 1984. 6
- Ando Tadao. Thinking
Croquis. – 1993. - 15
in
Ma//
El
- Arata Isozaki. Futurism Flux// GA
Architect Special Iusse. - 2004. – 77
- Arata
Isozaki.
Suprematism,
Zero
Degree// GA Architect Special Iusse. 2004. – 77
- Arata
Isozaki.
Mariiski
II
International Design Competition// GA
Architect Special Iusse. - 2004. - 77
- Arata
Isozaki,
Mask
1995//
Architect. - 1991-2000. - 15
GA
- Arata Isozaki. Una Loggia per
Uffizi// Casabella. - 1999. - 664
gli
- Arata
Isozaki.
International
Art
Village Akiyoshidai// Casabella. 1998. – 669
- Arata
Isozaki.
International
Art
Village Akiyoshidai// Casabella. 1998. - 669
- Arata Isozaki. International Performing
Arts Park Shizuoka// Casabella. - 2000.
– 676
- Andrea
Maffei.
Japan
Today,
una
conversazione
con
Arata
Isozaki//
Casabella. - 2000. – 676
217
BIBLIOGRAPHY
- Andrea Maffei. Civic Center, Taisha//
Casabella. - 2000. - 682
- Arata
Isozaki.
Centro
Culturale
Shenzhen, Cina// Casabella. - 2001. –
690
- Yasushiro Ishimoto. La Villa Imperiale
di Katzura// Casabella. - 2002. – 702
- Arata
Isozaki.
Centro
Culturale
Kitagata, Gifu, Giappone// Casabella. 2007. – 752
Thesis:
- Konovalova
Nina
Anatolieva,
Preservation
and
Development
of
historical
traditions
in
modern
architecture of Japan: on a material of
World exhibitions. 3th chapter: Russian
Avantgarde and Japanese metabolism.
Filmography:
- “The face of Another”, 1966, Hiroshi
Teshigahara,
set
architect
Arata
Isozaki.
- “Harakiri”, 1962 Masaki Kobayashi.
218
THANKS
I’m deeply grateful to:
Politecnico di Milano, MArxI Institute of
Moscow, Shibaura Technology Tokyo University
…without whose this research and my personal
experience would not exist.
Professor Oleg Igorevich Adamov, Professor
Alesandro De Magistris, Professor Makoto
Kikuchi …for their invaluable support and
advices.
Professor Hajime Yatzuka and Andrea Maffei
…who shared their professional and academic
expertise.
Pavel Andreivich Sipkin …for inspiration and
insight.
Professor Valeiry Nicolaevich Bgashev …for
his generous support in my way to Shibaura
Technology Tokyo University.

POLITesi - Politecnico di Milano

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