Etkinlikler

7. Orleans International Architectural Conference: "Archilab 2006 Japan"

Etkinlik Başlangıç - Bitiş Tarihi: 21 Ekim - 23 Aralık 2006
Yer: Site des Subsistances Militaires, Orleans - Fransa
İletişim
Web Sitesi: www.archilab.org/#

7th Orleans International Architectural Conference going to take place between 21 October to 23 December 2006 on Site des Subsistances Militaires, Orleans, France.

Since its creation in 1999, as the brainchild of the city of Orleans, in close partnership with the Ministry of Culture and Communications, and in cooperation with the Centre Regional Council, ArchiLab has been, and still is the annual meeting-place for forward-looking architecture, at an international level.

Between tradition and modernity
Throughout the 20th century, Japan has produced the greatest of architects: from Kazuo Shinohara to Kisho Kurokawa, architect of 'metabolism' in the 1960s, from Kenzo Tange to Fumihiko Maki, from Hiroshi Hara to Arata Isozaki, and from Tadao Ando to Toyo Ito. Similarly, many great 20th century western architects, including Le Corbusier, have been fascinated by Japanese architecture.

Seen as minimalist and traditionalist, the architecture of Japan broke with its image in 1970 at the Osaka World Fair, which asserted its radical modernity: the dynamics of urban construction of Fumihiko Maki; the spiral structures and capsule architecture of Kurokawa; and Kitutake's urban notions of marine cities. Robots are also part of this architecture, with a renewed feeling for nature, at the same time as Japan uses the most advanced state-of-the-art technologies.
Steeped in Shintoism, and a sense of impermanence, Japan has always shown an interest in ephemeral forms of architecture, light and temporary structures, which we find today, for example, in Shigeru Ban's cardboard architecture, which was discovered in France by ArchiLab in 1999.

The significance of the notion of transitoriness has given rise to forms of architecture oriented towards the dimension of dematerialisation, along with Kengo Kuma's 'bamboo houses', for this latter architect's buildings tend to disappear in the nature roundabout.

Architecture and environment
At the crossroads where poetics meet technology, this architecture also has to do with the concept of 'ma' – the spacing between things – which defines the approach to space in Japan. Japanese architecture is also hallmarked by its sense of spatial composition, always combining interior and exterior, and favouring transparency and dialogue with its environment and setting. Clear examples of this are Itsuko Hasegawa's 'artificial landscapes'. His architecture comes across as one involving the flows of nature and technology, drawing from natural phenomena, and adapting to topography. Toyo Ito's projects are permeated by vegetable metaphors, like the tree for the Sendai multimedia centre and Tod's store, recently opened in Tokyo.

No country or architecture has shown quite so much interest in the individual house and home, together with the household space as a 'space encouraging thought' (Kazuo Shinohara). Most young architects build tiny houses in Tokyo, separated from one another by the "ma", which stipulates 30 cm or 1 foot between each home. It is here that we find the encounter between domestic tradition and the most advanced technological modernity. Shuhei Endo, who exhibited at the 2000 ArchiLab conference, and won a prize at the 2004 Venice Biennale, has built houses in Tokyo which open onto the exterior, in which rolls of corrugated iron have a function which is at once aesthetic and structural.

Japanese architecture comes across as an architecture of flexibility, atmosphere, and circulation between inside and out. It is the architecture of 'space movement' where the world always appears like a flow (Inoue Mitsuo), where the void replaces the solid, and arrangement replaces division.

Technological innovations
The organic and ever-changing city of Tokyo has become a gigantic urban laboratory, symbol of the far-reaching changes occurring in all great metropolises. Omote-sando, Tokyo's Champs Elysées, is nowadays the site of every manner of architectural experiment. Over a stretch of some 200 metres you find luxury shops designed by the most renowned Japanese architects (Kazuyo Sejima, Kengo Kuma, Toyo Ito) rubbing shoulders with buildings devised by some of the most creative of western architects, such as Herzog-De Meuron and their Prada store.

As an architecture of things human, Japanese architecture is today displaying its innovativeness not only in its approach to the individual house and home, but also in its cultural programmes as has been shown by the recent and already famous museum of Kanazawa with its circular rhythm, part and parcel of nature, and built by one of the most important women architects at an international level, Kazuyo Sejima. Japanese architecture stands out for the emphasis it lays as much on the aesthetic chord as on the engineering style, thereby demonstrating an exceptional mastery of both materials and the most advanced technological solutions, with engineers like Ikeda, by way of example.

Many are those architects who, like Makoto Sei Watanabe, were revealed at the 1999 ArchiLab conference, and have since gone on to acquire an international reputation, making use of every manner of technological possibility to achieve an architecture with natural forms but forms nevertheless derived from production methods that are not standard in the factory. So Japan is a kind of microcosm of the many different trends running through architecture worldwide, though it still retains its own particular philosophy of space, which goes to explain its very specific attraction.


The exhibition Nested in the City
The exhibition will present the projects of some 30 teams of architects, most of them from a younger generation. For completed projects – houses, museums, stores etc. – the presentation will involve photographs, drawings, maquettes, and installations. Viewers will thus discover the constructive reality of Japan, as well as the link between household space and urban space.

Architecture in Japan has gone through several periods: in the Meiji period, Western architecture was imported; this was followed by an upsurge of nationalism. Between the end of the Second World War and the 1980s, public buildings offered a monumental vision of modern life. From the 1980s onwards, and in the wake of the economic 'bubble', most young architects no longer see the house as a miniature replica of the nation, but rather seek to have it incorporated in the city, bearing in mind the heterogeneous and moving fabric of the Japanese urban space.

Accordingly, the Bow-Wow Workshop draws up an inventory of houses 'without quality' in Tokyo, and even goes so far as to become involved in the infrastructural network (metro, freeways, etc.) (Made in Tokyo); they examine how the urban space is domesticated by services (beverage machines, etc.), lending the street a human scale (Pet Architecture). Other architects, such as Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa, make use of the notions of 'lightness' and 'shelter'; their architecture comes across like a transparent 'skin', contrasting with the concrete constructions of Tadao Ando. Some houses adopt the principle of flexibility through moveable items of furniture, and show a certain audacity in terms of their engineering (cantilevers, etc.) which can lead to surprising forms (Ikeda).

All these architects question and challenge the metropolitan conditions of a constantly changing city, and their repercussions for lifestyles. Architecture here seems like a fragile shelter, which 'wraps' the life of its occupants instead of enclosing them in a space with no access to the outside world. Most of the houses designed by these architects thus create a 'continuum' between street and interior. 'Nested in the City' means living in your own home while at the same time being connected to the city, illustrating how architects have incorporated these cityscapes in their life scenarios.

The sets for the exhibition will conjure up the urban atmosphere of Tokyo, with its host of images (Chirashi, advertising posters). The entrance to the exhibition will recreate a transitory space, which is also a living space where people may take tea, while being simultaneously plunged into the urban frenzy of Tokyo. Visitors will walk round the exhibition as if they were criss-crossing the streets of Tokyo, plunged into the organic city and at the same time sucked into the inner space of the dwellings.

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