Toyo Ito arcspace.com |
It is a Monday, post-everyone's holiday, time to get back to the blogosphere full speed ahead.
Today we are going to look at Christopher Hawthorne's long-standing fascination with Pritzker Prize winning (2013) Japanese contemporary architect Toyo Ito. Mr. Hawthorne writes about his fascination with Mr. Ito's work in his article, "Toyo Ito's architecture beckons a critic to Asia." The Los Angeles Times architecture critic found himself in Japan a few years ago, madly plotting the most expedient route to the Toyo Ito Museum of Architecture on the southern island of Omishima. (http://www.tima-imabari.jp/en/) Mr. Hawthorne indulges his readers in a fantasy Ito Tour of Asia which takes us to Japan and Taiwan. It is an appreciative tour of the Japanese architect's work and look at what great architecture can be. In blogger's own experience of talking to civilians about Japanese architecture, yours truly has been dismayed to discover that most peoples's conceptions Japanese architecture is largely confined to temples and teahouses. To do that would mean dismissing a large and fascinating body of architecture that gave form to its connection to the culture.
Toyo Ito Museum of Architecture Toyo Ito Imabari, Japan latimes.com |
Since the economic crisis of 2008, there's been a substantial backlash against the idea that critics should write exclusively, or even mostly, about stand-alone buildings by prominent architects. We've found broader and more complex ways to explore the relationship between architecture and society.
The cudgel of the word mash up "starchitecture" has lost its strength. However, Mr. Hawthorne asks us to make an exception for Mr. Ito's work. What makes Toyo Ito's work so compelling that it would induce our intrepid critic to fly half way around the world, scroll furiously through online ferry schedules at three in the morning (fighting jet lag), just to experience one building? Mr. Hawthorne offers this reply, "In large part, his work appeals to even the most jaded observers of contemporary architecture because of its rich variety. Unlike Zaha Hadid, Norman Foster or Daniel Libeskind, whose buildings are stamped with a recognizable signature, there is an elusiveness to Ito's output." Toyo Ito has designed "...small houses, aerodynamic glass towers and low-slung, geometrically complex museum buildings." In his book Tarzans in the Media Forest and Other Essays, architecture critic Thomas Daniell devotes an essay to Mr. Ito, titled "The Fugitive." (Daniell, 15, 2010)
Serpentine Gallery Pavilion (2002) Toyo Ito with Cecil Balmond and ARUP Kensington Gardens, London England archdaily.com |
White U Demolished 1997 Toyo Ito ©Koji Taki archdaily.com |
Although the house no longer exists, architectural experimentation is alive and well in Tokyo, making the Japanese capital a great place to be for anyone interested in contemporary design. Like Los Angeles, much of the innovative architecture is hidden away in the private realm. Mr. Hawthorne writes, "Houses by the Tokyo-based architects Sou Fujimoto and Go Hasegawa and the duo Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa, heir to the U-House in their layered, sophisticated minimalism, are worth seeking even if you ca only see them only from the outside.
Tod's Toyo Ito Tokyo, Japan busyboo.com |
Following a tour of Tokyo Ito buildings, the next stop on Mr. Hawthorne's fantasy tour is the Mediatheque, which opened in 2001 in Sendai. The seven-story building, which raised Mr. Ito's international reputation, contains a library, gallery space, and community rooms-a complex set of spaces unified through clever structural means. The design calls for the mechanical equipment to be wrapped inside thirteen vertical tubes which also compose the tower's structure, leaving each floor completely open, free of columns.
This innovative structural was initially met with suspicions about its stability but proved itself mightily
Sendai Mediathique Toyo Ito ©Nacasa & Partner archdaily.com |
Christopher Hawthorne's next stop on his Ito Tour of Asia would be Kaohsiung, Taiwan where World Games Stadium opened in 2009. Mr. Hawthorne writes, "Stadium design in the United States is an architectural backwater, with firms churning out either bland nostalgia palaces wrapped in red brick (for baseball) or sleek, oversized stacks of luxury boxes (for football)." He describes the stadium, "...uncoils like a snake across its waterfront
World Games Stadium (2009) Toyo Ito (also provided the photograph) Kaohsiung, Taiwan designboom.com |
Toyo Ito Museum of Architecture Toyo Ito Imabari, Japan flickr.com |
As architect's monuments to themselves go, this one is modest. It's also drive by an interest in stripped-down yet muscular geometry that appears almost nowhere in Ito's work. The brown steel hut is a pile of hard-edge forms, pyramids on top of rhomboids; the silver hut is covered by a seeming mismatched collection of vaults.
This approach to design flows out of a response to the landscape. The view of the vast ocean and curvaceous coastline is frequently hidden by clouds and rain. Rather than mimic nature and create something equally curvilinear in a similar manner as his less trusting peers, Mr. Ito tried to give the space what was not there, "not just to avoid repeating the lines that were already there but also to carve out a powerful space for architecture to its own work."
Christopher Hawthorne's long-standing crush on Toyo Ito's work is a reminder why architectural junkies will travel far and wide to admire the work of great masters. It makes us belief that truly great original work still exists in the world. Buildings that do not rest on eye-popping computer drawings, grand manifestos, or fetishizing that latest construction technology. Great work relies on responsiveness to the site, incorporating construction technology innovation into basic building methodology, and just basic good design. Toyo Ito's work does precisely all this.
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