“Reflecting on Shinohara”: Kazuyo Sejima and Seng Kuan in Conversation

good evening I'm Sarah whiting I'm the Dean of the Graduate School of Design and I'm delighted to welcome you all here how unbelievably fortuitous that we start this new school year with an exhibition and a conversation since both are ideal formats for advancing ideas it's terrific to immerse yourselves in the Shinohara exhibition outside seeing all this work gathered in one place enables you to assess an offices practice especially the late phase of an architect's career looking closely at original drawings and models enables you to consider their role their success as representations and reading Shinohara thoughts takes you out of 48 Quincy Street in 2019 and puts you in the mind of a Japanese architect in the 1980s one of the parts I really loved at the text outside is his description of being in Vienna in the late 80s a place he saw as a quaint and stunningly beautiful village in comparison to the crazy chaos of his native Tokyo a city that I only discovered this morning and reading the wall text that he characterized as being of the near future the advantage of having this exhibition up in the Druker design gallery until October 11th is that you can dip in and out of it and please do just that you can fuel your entire day with a single term progressive Anarchy like think about that for a while read his description so you understand what he's talking about but what an amazing term progressive anarchy maybe I should encourage you too much you think you can fuel your entire day with a single term a paragraph a drawing a model or a photograph modern next the title that the curators have given the show was a concept that paralleled and therefore challenged the postmodern ethos that was dominant worldwide in the late 80s how timely for us to be taking Shino Harris concept of it here today taking it in and addressing it here today and starting our events with the conversation it's a perfect model of what we all do in a school an architect and a historian talking about the impact of another architect I'm thrilled I want to thank Casa Juma for coming all this way to for the occasion of this exhibition opening it's wonderful to have you here I want to thank the three curators of the show Tsing Kwan Angela Penn and she owes occupation I want to thank and the large and very talented GSD team behind this exhibition and finally I'd like to thank and introduce Marc Lee chair of the department of architecture and professor in the practice who will do the real introduction this evening Thanks markley I work for Sarah whiting I have a few events I have denounced these upcoming events at the GSD next Tuesday September 10th there will be a lecture by Samuel Bravo he's the wheelwright prize lecture there will be a piper at 6:30 and then on Thursday September 12 there will be a lecture by Dave Hickey who give the rouse Visiting Artist lecture Piper at 6:30 and then on September 13th Friday Philip who sprung from the air Teja will give a lecture at noon and Stubbins Shinohara cusamano Nicks I think it's a very important exhibition at a moment when she know Harris influence appears greater and more relevant than ever I think in the course of history there were many architects who have been influential to the extent where schools of thought were cultivated from Palladio to neo Pelagians or Mies van der Rohe and his followers but when the entire body of an architect's work is less than homogeneous and takes on a more multifaceted disposition the influence of the work also becomes more diverse take for example I think of the work of Louis Kahn one could say that the richest medical building or the Olivera factories spawned the work of Hermann Hertzberg our or the Dutch structuralist or when one thing about Salk Institute or Kimball Art Museum the entire career of Terra Ando could come from there is in the end a theater the dining hall the Exeter one could say spawn venturi Rock and Scott Brown or his buildings that Daka spawned the work of Mario Botta an icon Shinohara had a diverse body of work over his more than 50 year long career which he texts autumn eyes into a chronological series of styles the first second third and fourth which Singh would tell you more about he was an iconoclast here to consist he had consistently and deliberately situated himself outside of and against the mainstream Vanguard whether it be metabolism post-modernism or movement any movement of the moment and seeking to reconcile Japanese traditions and sensibilities with that of a international modernism he became the founder of the so called Shinohara school as one of japan's most influential architects of the post-war generation many architects including our guest tonight Azusa Shima or Toyo Ito Asuka Hasegawa real Nishizawa Italia go Hasegawa who returned as a visiting critic to GST this term among a few whose work and thinking has been associated with the genealogy of the Shinohara school and beyond Japan chin O'Hara's influence has extended from architects such as REM koolhaas who commissioned him to do the UL ill tower to or to swiss architects of generations such as christian carrots Valerio cha t to the following generation of pascal framer and rafael Zuba while the influence of Shannara was first three styles seems to be more obvious in a way that the influence of his first style is evident in a series of vernacular architecture where tradition form the basis of innovation or the way the use of concrete the embracing of an almost artistic if not autonomous abstraction and the negotiation of typography in the 2nd and 3rd styles influenced the work of the Swiss architects from graubünden I would say the influence of the fourth style Chenault harvest last and one which he had referred to as modern necks has yet to be has yet been properly appraised one could say this for style is a period we had where he had moved from the division to addition as the modus operandi of design and spatial construct it was a period where his work was arguably less consistent than his first three phases and more controversial in the for style not only did he venture into a series of institutional scale projects a departure from the residential scale that comprised the majority of his career but he also situated the work as a reflection on the chaos and randomness and of the change in urban conditions of Tokyo I'm particularly thrilled that Shinohara Kazuo mano next exhibition in the drug design gallery chose to focus on this four style of gin O'Hara's work for which I believe the final chapter of its influence is yet to be written our guest tonight cazzo Sethi mom opened her own studio in Tokyo in 1987 and then in 1995 together with real Nishizawa founded Sonam she about won many awards which included the Pritzker Prize Japan architecture award the Venice Biennale Golden Lion award she's currently a professor at the poly tech University of Milan the Yokohama Graduate School of Architecture and teaching also at Japan University and the anger Vontae at in Vienna 2010 she was appointed the director of the 12th international architecture exhibition of the Venice Biennale in which Shinohara was posthumously presented with the Golden Lion in memoriam award she'll be in conversation with San Juan saying is an architecture historian specializing in modern Japan and is a faculty here at GSD and the University of Tokyo he has written extensively on Japan's post-war architecture culture including and trilogy on the metabolism he was co-editor of Kenzo tange architecture of the world the first volume in a series of modern Japanese architecture and is currently completing books on Kenzo tange a Maki and katsu shintaro exhibition plays a major role in sense research methodology his curatorial work include utopia across scales highlights from the Kenzo tange archive at the GSD here metabolism city of the future presented the mori our museum and then on the thresholds of space making Kazu Shinohara which was shown in san luis and a PRT house erick please join me to welcome San Juan and cosmos Alma [Applause] thank you very much Mike we all want to hear more and as soon as quickly as soon as possible from staging while I'm ashore so I try to make my remarks brief nonetheless we have a series of acknowledgments to get through and also out what I thought would be useful to make the conversation as effective as possible is to give a brief a brief overview both of the exhibition as well as the kind of the sequence of the four styles that defined Shinohara cosmos Korea so before we engage asaji masala in the conversation on Sheena Harless influence on her and her generation of Japanese architects who came of age in the 1980s I want to briefly introduce the architect the architecture of Shinohara Kazuo and to acknowledge some of the people who have made the exhibition possible I'd like to recognize first and foremost my collaborators Angela pang with whom I shared this journey in the holler for seven years now and whose design of the exhibition has orth effectively served as an interlocutor between the objects on display and the Druker gallery space I'm also indebted to professors she was a katashi who is also our curator professor Okayama Shinichi and David Stewart at the Tokyo Institute of Technology or author from professor shows Aki Okayama and they were steward have supported and indeed tolerated the latitude with which we have interpreted and presented this material this collection of original material on display under the custody of Tokyo Institute of Technology where Shinohara taught and practiced from virtually his throughout his professional career has never been displayed with with this level of comprehensiveness I also want to convey convey my profound gratitude to the people here at the GSD who have made this exhibition possible to students in my course on my course competing visions of modernity in Japan to tamborelli and this entire exhibition team and you can Stewart and Office of Communications and public programs to successive chairs of the Department of Architecture first Michael Hayes and especially mark Lee have celebrated Sheila Halle as a figure from the recent past with extraordinary contemporary rather than relevance Mohsen Mostafavi championed long tradition of building relationships between the GSD and Japan during this during his deanship and initiated with what has now become a trilogy on Japan's modern masters starting with Tonga Kenzel which took place exactly ten years ago now in September of 2009 followed by QR by a second exhibition on Kikuta kakyoin ollie into the 2012 each accompanied by a publication from last Mueller for much of his career Sheena haha Kazuo built beautiful single-family houses that have reconfigured and enriched our understanding of domesticity tradition form language scale nature and the city the emphasis of this exhibition are general Acacio highlights in fact his nuance attitude towards the city which emerged with great grade graders which emerged with greater salience II in the night late 1970s and reached its apotheosis in the following decade through a series of institutional scale projects while Sheena Halle organized his long career into a chronological series of Styles 1st 2nd 3rd and 4th where he pursued different formal representational and technological expressions there are also important motifs he never wavered from was the relationship between the house and the surrounding urbanity being the most important and persistent in 1988 he coined the term modern next to underscore the avant-garde forward-looking attitude of his architecture as a counterpoint as a counterpoint to post-modernism modern necks was also a commentary on japan's bubble economy as the scale and intensity of urban activity reached unprecedented heights this position was partly informed by his travels abroad to Africa to the Americas and Europe and by his reading of European cultural criticism Sheena Halle labelled this last period the fourth style in the in the same way tradition formed but the basis of innovation for the first style chaos and randomness are to instigate a new vitality for architecture and the city I hope you all take pause to look through the model next essay that we have printed on the entire in its entirety in the gallery this essay has been now been translated into English for the first time one of the terms you come across is cured Arunachala KU enormous village that Sheena Halle used to describe Tokyo when I first read this I was immediately reminded of a similar term Okinawan acha when I've made by Tonga Kenzel thirty years earlier in the 1950s while the two wordings can can be taken to mean the same thing I prefer to translate Tongass version or kina Anaka into a big sprawling rural village the connotation here for Tanguay was of course entirely negative and dismissive in naka the countryside is the opposite of urban which fatah a was axiomatically linked to modernity in fact it is somewhat starting to see Tonga use such a pedestrian tone in this writing conversely for Shinohara you dine in a cure dynasty la ku you the uses of vocabulary that is decidedly more academic more matter-of-fact the recognition of a reality even though Shirokov is typically taken to me in small villages or townships there's no clear reason why cannot be used to describe a metropolis of 30 million people the term is also fits efficiently ambiguous it brings us to Sheena Hollis extensive travels abroad which he started to do in the 1970s after recovering from a major illness and we have in fact on to you outside in the corridor by the entrance next to Cambridge Street some of the selection of the photographs that you know Halle took from his journeys these amateur rapidly taken photographs reveal sources of ends of his inspiration for concepts such as crevice human shadows and chaos that tries his later design thought this is all to say that Sheena Halle had an entirely different outlook on the condition of these messy urban conditions in modern next what he thought was a new architectural language that responded to the set of conditions and transcended it rather than to race through these cities with straight avenues and gargantuans megastructures so I'll just briefly show you the context in which she knew Halle was in fact operating and responding to so this would be two attempts by tonga Kenzo in the late 1950s trying to bring order and regularity and rationality to to Tokyo and the plan on the on the right of course is Tongass famous intervention not only of the bay itself but the entire restructuring of the metropolitan area which then by then had exceeded 10 million in population the I should also mention that the metabolize in fact was so closely aligned with high government and the construction industry and they had this at their disposal a Cessna airplane with which they were able to survey and fly over Japan's both urban and rural areas and this is really how they had this very much a bird's-eye view a top-down literally top-down perspective on her vanity where certainly Sheena Halle operating from in a very different context did not have access to this kind of perspective so the pairing between Tonga Kenzo in China halakha zu is a crucial way to frame this important chapter of international modernism as evolved in Japan she knew hala was born in 1925 placing him in the same age range as the metabolise younger than Ithaca Masato for instance was two years older and older than Maki and in Sasaki whoo whoo I think respectively three years and five years his junior just system establish were ascending in influence and the variety nor the riot II Sheena hala famously declared a house is a work of art as a frontal attack on this elite appears from the University of Tokyo who were happily scheming together with their friends in government and industry trying to rationalize architecture and cities and indeed Tanguay tongue his presence loom large in the background and drove the discursive framework that young young architects like Shawn O'Hara must respond to and in fact the project on the left the house in kagama was the debut it was the very first published work built work by Sheena Halle which obviously paid homage to the housing say Joe this designed by Tom gay a year earlier for his own family well Tonga's house voice family was very much a one-off project out of his vast off of buildings on the far more heroic scale Shinohara operated in the separate parallelogram of single-family houses for the first 25 years of his career trained initially as a mathematician and taught briefly as a math teacher before going to architecture school Sheena Hollis studied at the laboratory of psychic EOC at the Tokyo Institute of Technology in the early 50s she know how as teacher I should say this first it is somewhat ironic then that the small single family house in Tokyo's rapidly expanding suburbs would become the topic of such a rarefied study worthy of academic investigation this is something that specifically took place at Tokyo Institute at Tokyo Institute of Technology in the laboratory of psychic Yoshi as well explain soon and this is in parallel to other contemporary works by by perhaps the architects more aligned with the metabolise people such as akira Kyoshi and a Misawa makoto who were still working operating in this trans war cm inspired paradigm of the minimum dwelling of the existence minimum Oh so briefly I'll just run through a few slides that I think in a sense best characterize best describe each of the four successive styles of Sheila Hollow so the first style roughly going from the early 50s from 1954 the housing Kageyama running through the mid 1960s ending with the housing white and both house in white and this house at the Umbrella house are both on to you in the exhibition space suggest some of the ways in which Sheena Halle operating and it takes on by that time what had already become a specific plan or type in the small single-family house that being a perfect square some of you may already know for instance kikikiki owned or these Skye house has a floor plan that is exactly a 10 by 10 in in dimensions and a series of other architects in the early 50s had also operated experimented with the perfectly square plan but in this case the Calico the Umbrella house by Sheena Halle he takes on he he takes on a Braddock Lee different approach to how the spaces are divided in fact you'll see that vary quite curiously the hard pillar the center a central column in this plan is actually off-center and thus achieves several effects one of which of course is to have a sense of hierarchy in terms of the rotation of the four major volumes in this plan but her but perhaps even more importantly is the by offsetting the central heart pillar here in the umbrella house she knew Halle is able to achieve a direct as to able is able to reveal the copula to crown in the Indian Brother house where if the hot pillar had just gone all the way up through the centuries a conventional umbrella that sensuality will not have been visible Sheena Halle was also as you can see here very much concerned with this idea of a revival of Japan's folk domestic architecture tradition the idea of Minka and with specific specifically the idea of an earthen floor of the DOMA this ambiguous space that is really the center of domestic life for in pre-modern Japanese domestic arrangements as he moved in the second half of the 1960s to the so-called second style he's dispensed with a lot of what he referred to as the symbolic aspects of representation the issue of tradition and how to use tradition as a force as a force of innovation in in post-war Japan and resorted to a series of much more than say introverted experimentations a series of highly dramatic orchestrated volumes through the course of an interior sequence in the third style and perhaps this is also the period that has gotten the most attention critically both in terms of Switzerland as Mark was alluding to but also more recently amongst Architects in Japan and elsewhere as I mentioned earlier in the in the early 1970s Sheena Halle started to travel abroad quite extensively and also was reading up on European critical theory with a great deal in to the enthusiasm but this is also one of the interventions were making a sense of this in terms of curating the exhibition and attempt to to add a twist to this very didactic chronological sequencing of first second and third and fourth styles but perhaps to position these two most famous of projects from the third style planning powerhouse from 1974 and housing were hollow from 1976 as in in terms of a watershed moment that is really characterizing the earlier much more domestic attitude towards towards living that perhaps summarizes the first 20 years from Kageyama all the way down to tanikawa in 1974 and really the house in wahala initiating a new chapter in this work where he takes on the urban conditions of building in tokyo such as this one this photograph I think shows very very clearly what this entailed that the very harsh building conditions of these small single-family houses in this vast sprawling urban mess that Tokyo had already become in the 1970s and how to rise above and overcome it and it's really in the house and wahala that we can anticipate I think a lot of the institutional scale projects that we started to see in the 1980s the housing were where Harlem even for Sheena Halle he was actually quite fond of subscribing this image of the savage of the broadness of this jungle people have said that perhaps he was reading a bit too much lévi-strauss at the time but in any case he was very much drawn to a drawn to the harsh realities of building in the city and should that the architecture speak for the kind of conditions such as exposure to sunlight and the the broadness of clashing of having these diagonal columns be inserted very very prominently into the central living spaces before I wrap up this presentation of this brief three brief overview or Shinohara I just wanted to suggest this idea of um ishino Halle school as this mark had mentioned earlier which is very much substantiate ideas we'll introduce briefly but in fact we can also suggest of these various genealogies which are extremely prominent and important when we situate the the kind of person that not only the personalities but also the methodologies and ideas with which these are these architects operated with so as I mentioned Shinohara Kazu was a member of the laboratory of seka Kiyoshi at Tokyo Institute of Technology um I think accuracy in addition to his teaching position at Tokyo Tech he was in fact at in the early 50s also an editor of the hardy influential journal Chien Ken school and it was really from this position as editor of Xin can't you that say he or she was able to establish the small single-family house as a legitimate and rightful subject of academic inquiry which where's the colleagues from Tokyo are from the University of Tokyo probably would have paid less attention to but say K and say K school was really hard effective in cultivating a specific genre of residential designs and Shinohara cazzo which you can see his picture all the way to the left-hand side of that group photograph looking downwards was really able to champion this highly you might want to call ironic attitude of this perhaps very very pedantic middle-class building type at the same time he was highly successful in cultivating a group a very verified group of clients all of whom were novelists artists photographers painters who not only embraced tolerated his work a method of working but very much perhaps found resonance in Sheena Hollis a method of designing and I also encourage all of you to look at the video the interview filmed video that we have with the clients the son and the widow of the client of the housing were Hollow who was very very fond of describing how it was like to grow up as a young boy in this living space with all these diagonal columns that divided the space in various ways and how to essentially make it claim it and as his own and lastly I just want to put the slide onto the screen as we invite our decision my sound to the screen so in 1979 the Japanese architectural journal st review published a monograph ik issue on china hollow hosel and toward the back of the volume there was a small section delineating this proposing this idea of a Shinohara school and listed specifically three of the younger of the next generation people who were still in their early thirties mid thirties who had been doing who would in fact by that time doing a lot of interesting independent work but clearly influenced in by the lacus legacy of Sheena Halle and the three original members of the so-called Sheena Halle school or Sakamoto cousin Ali who succeeded she know Hollis chairs professor of architecture at Tokyo Tech Hasegawa it's cool and I totally owe I should also mention that has ago its go into a tutorial work both initially students and associates in the office of kiyotaka Kiana Lee and independently in the early 70s vo towards Shinohara and Hasegawa its goal was also for a long period of time that perhaps the main assistant deputy to the practice of Shinohara Kazuo as it was being based out of Tokyo Tech and in this conversation I think will be speaking quite a bit about particular context of the generation of Shinohara school Sakamoto Hasegawa in it'll in terms of the in her own professional and intellectual development in the 1970s and 80s so with that I'll invite cinema sounds you the beam [Applause] thank you very much for joining us for this opening of the exhibition so you are certainly a tremendous fan of Shinohara kazoo and as Mark had mentioned earlier in 2010 when you were the chief curator of the Venice Biennale you nominated shinja LoCascio for a special Golden Lion in the in memoriam so I saw it's wonderful that we are able to have you for this conversation this evening so for my part of the discussion session I wanted to essentially to divide our session into three parts essentially covering three periods 1970s 1980s and early part of the 1990s perhaps not so much to talk about what your thoughts are on each of the projects of Shinohara kazoo but you really situate what it was like for you as a young architecture student as a young architect who was who was emerging on the scene in the 1980s and thirdly as an architect who was gaining notoriety and prominence in the late 80s when you establish your own practice and starting to receive recognition internationally so three very different stages and how your own journey as an architect perhaps is situated in this context perhaps in the shadow of Sheena Halle so perhaps we can start with the first period in the 1970s of you as a student in at Japan Woman's University and and this of course is exactly the same period when she knew how hard I was going through this transformation as an architect in the third style so if you can if I can ask you to talk a little bit about your your experience at Japan Woman's University yes first of all thank you very much for inviting I just was very nervous but also that I'm very happy to be able to see the his exhibition here I think it's really there I think so so then it's also for me that it's very not all so much familiar but especially the fourth period well me I could see before is even photo so that's the real model and the sketches is really interesting and also I hope Shinohara son is now very happy and also to sit today here sorry I couldn't have a time to study but I check that time wise and then I because I just really admired and also for me it's najara is always far away but I realized yeah because when I joined that it was studio this is 81 that means that this exhibition focus from 81 and then also the when I started my own practice this is taco de Saint Aeneas Hall it's completed so the very strong I didn't realize before I don't but a very strong radiation and of course so that mean the before the tamagawa son's house or the rehearse on we heard or we had a doll house is also even more the karakasa or the white house is very impressive for me but just when I was a Japan women's university student and that time I think in Japan Shinohara is really special because oh especially my career I started the not only act not the architecture department more house house domestic home economics saw them in the island in the skirt the saturation should be short the kitchen dining room was to the next kitchen or these are Island also the special my period is not so far from after second war of course something but still Japan needs lifestyle is really more primitive so and then the modern style is gradually coming while still so more we learn the lifestyle and then soda in school or the normal focus the magazine issue is more typical function difficult and then also the what is a comfortable space for the living that beside he published house is odd and completely different so very shocked and when I met him met me and I knew him is when I joined the University 75 and just ice saw the some books in library and then by tacky he took a lot of all white black and white photos very abstract photos and then it for me it's really shocked and then so different from I knew and then after all so I lamb in my University and also typical it japanese magazine or AA is very different from what sahara treated so so that time i really admire and very kind of he is but i love that try to find his photos but he is on me and also the interior yesterday I believe that he made a very small number of project but actually he did a lot and then but he tried to show himself also very independent from others I think so that is my so and also the old drawings always white and just black line and very difficult to understand but with tackies photo and this drawing is very much and then to show some very strong expression to ask this thank you very much so I just wanted to perhaps give a bit more context and response to this idea the important the score the importance of Sheena Hollis that what they called his aphorism the slogan that houses of work house is a work of art and perhaps so there's this tremendous rivalry I should I should preface this by saying between University of Tokyo and Tokyo Tech and the Tokyo Tech people feeling that they are really the underdogs and Shinohara slogan houses were house is a work of art is the direct refutation of a slogan that came out of University of Tokyo in 1915 a student from the University of Tokyo has the this project the promo project was titled architecture is not art and that really drove the whole direction that turned Tokyo University's architecture departments in the 19-teens very much toured in in the direction of engineering to the extent that drawing is really perhaps mark mentioned I also teach at University of Tokyo so I should not review so much but Rohan is really not a very important part of the curriculum until fairly recently so she know how I was very effective in I think appropriating this methodological and also ideological distinction between him and the meta place to his advantage and also very much again cultivating this very special group of clients painters such as a Tsukuba says Nomi emoji novelists poets like tanikawa Shintaro the photographer also gqc all of whom by the way not only had two houses commissioned to Shinagawa not just one they they first had either a city house and then came back a few years later to ask them to do a country house or vice versa so he definitely had a very devoted following a fan base and I think it's really this is one of the things were trying to achieve in the book project but really underscore the sympathy with which Sheena hala was able to operate with with modest people in the in their creative circles which is really not something that tungee or the metabolise have paid too much attention to yes also the interior fourth period he never did the big project awesome so only focused a small project private house and the client is need a special person yeah just maybe to underscore some of these comments this idea of genealogies is really has become a keyword in the study of modern Japanese architecture the exhibition the tree or the trilogy of exhibitions curated by Yoshi has Kimoto of utterly bow-wow he's also a professor at Tokyo Tech and I should also mention that he is really very much positioned in this tree on the genealogy of fishing Mahalo line it goes from from say k2 Shinohara to Sakamoto and then to scam motto and as there's in fact a very prominent group of young architects in the next generation of people of Koha cigars generation who in fact came out of the laboratory of Komodo at Tokyo Tech so there is that very much a clear lineage in this trajectory as well so one of the things that schemata salads camuto did at the Japanese house exhibition is very much delineating to bring clarity to these continuities that run through the so-called Shinohara school or say k school this was also an idea that became very prominent in the MoMA exhibition 2015/2016 and in the spring of 2016 MoMA had the exhibition constellations and Ito in the two main galleries parallel to each other and the pending office in three other galleries were devoted to each gommi Fujimoto and he laughed are also niches are some also had this cluster and those of you who visit the exhibition might remember this in fact as very small sketch drawing that's placed at the entrance to the exhibition gallery where Toyo Ito was all sketched out the kind of connections not in the line as in the family tree but in fact a series of stars planets satellites perhaps series of constellations in which he positioned himself in this cadre of architects and engineers so I think until the this is my I don't know it's true or not the correct but until fourth this exhibition period the it'll Sakamoto and Hasegawa more some I think the group but from ages the Sahara started even he said house is art but still she has more the heavily committed connected to the Japanese history although that is not his the lifestyle or the culture modern and then gradually this period more heat through the third period he developed his own language and the more more skirt looks like a sculpture the big power showing and then I think they against this direction so the from 80s become so that it's very complicated under the ethos on of this of course we were interested in in a hard way but at the same time he really want more the architecture be open and the connected to the society not standalone so that this is but now we can understand also Sheila Harris not only the forum but also he more tried to touch the maybe city but so that time I remembered when I started my own farm that I was invited of some workshop in Europe and I used my English even was much much worse than now and then I used that try to connect it the society instead I said open and no one understand that open what is open open is typical in 80s in Japan it's very difficult world open that means more architecture not only the physical but also physically but also the more we did that connected Society and this is it all sound or second started to this but a thousand seen with another way so then some house in hottest could become not so what the next generation especially its come with us and it's all to my chanel Harrison and the second what's a second wasn't tried to be different from Harrison but he also boasts so that is great it's not so easy but I think also that he goes over 3,000 and Haskell son also have very strong relation to the attacker then Sakamoto is only Sinhala and the it'll never work or directory' work under Sahara and how the girls are is awesome so very very different I think so really I think whoever might happen from that I think a good idea before some video those najara became so quiet in that definitely it's a publicity I think right so he in Japanese national universities at the time especially there was managed to retirement at 60 so Sheena Halle retired from teaching from Tokyo Tech in 1985 and started that was only then that he start when he started his own independent practice prior to that he all of these buildings were really designed built out of the laboratory at Tokyo Tech but since we're now talking about going into the modern next period and you have ready brought this up the I want to talk a little bit more about the international situation so by then for instance people like kangay or Maki or is Ozaki were already very well known figures internationally and uses a key in particular who established very strong connections with people like ISIL an average of Meyer in New York with the ia US and he was also an Iraqi continues to do this today very good at cultivating at the next generation so he was very generous and bringing people like uh no sound or ethos on to New York and introducing them to this circle and to some extent I think Shinohara also benefited from this exposure but started in the 1980s so Japanese architects like Shinohara were being invited to competitions to symposia to symposia to other events outside of Japan there was that only started to happen in the 1980s and of course there's the year 80s so Sheila Harless first international project project outside of Japan it was a competition for the headquarters in Cologne in Germany that was in 1981 and then in 81 he or he was also invited to do solo exhibitions in Europe and and the United States so outside of Japan this international situation became much more important in in how he dealt with his architecture that of course he could no longer deal with tradition as he did in the 1950s or 60s that the context of this necklace and model next became very very different yeah yeah maybe he started from 80s invited the outside but in Japan more everyone or cus like next generation is like the three architects are bigger more popular and then we are very interested in so actually the deal is it's not the competion at that time is kind of Commission and so I remember we really fear felt expected of finally Shahada we do make big and also the building project in abroad but it's not happened about 90s we're not talking about the euro Leo project which is on display in the gallery it's primarily a hotel it went through a series of different designs different phases I think started in 1989 1990 and then the project was finally terminated in 90 1993 with the global economic downturn maybe I think they too 70s maybe that and I saw the photo of the Africa when that was taken the Agadir competition was African for us that after the this I joined his lecture and he showed the photos and then I only remember he used the word the cross cross crossing crossing there so I think that so I was a student and then crossing crossing in that different character this is maybe now that some kind starting to think about more mix to the many different the culture or the event in Japan that that's really interesting even in Agadir the idea of crossing was because you think of when you look at the model it's so iconic it's such a solitary standalone object but crossing is an idea that really was brought to the fore in tanikawa house by the shear inclined the slope in the interior space the gentle geometry of nature clashing with the very rigid before the five degree angle of the roof and the interior diagonal braces that what he got diagonal columns the intent as he described it was really to force you into an unstable condition so you're constantly on the move in the interior space but it's it's quite shocking that even in our idea the idea of this movement is so prominent this more become clear that the force period the many I think the lambda 1 s or anything is just coming together I think maybe if I could make it a little bit more personal in your own experience in terms of this exposure to the International see in this international community you yourself you establish all an independent the independent practice in 1987 but quite early on you were also invited to to these international events international forums to participate in competitions workshops and and that was really in in terms of Japan a very almost unique situation know that that there is such close interaction between the different communities globally because through because I started my own practice 87 so that 80s is a many exchange things happened and especially that time is a Japanese economy was really high so started to invite also the many architects from abroad and also good Adderley the architects will get the opportunity to be able to go out and then also media change a lot so yes but 83 or something when I was working for it wasn't studio the is like invite Ito and Ando to join the conference that time even it'll some so suffice to not abroad four or five people very small still very shocked and then there are not so there are no project but we must make some project to present at the conference this is a situation I think in Japan at that time and then 10 years later the because ito-san or many shin Hassan is went outside and then introduced the younger generation so that mean for me is and also that many yeah smashing so these are the progressed and then yes I saw the I had an invitation that published at Krupke is when I opened the studio two three years later and I couldn't imagine such a thing happened so the focus is favor arrival and then what a meaning because I have only fun to project and then I sent to my friend foreign friend what a meaning and they said are they like this these are that is very daily life and so the now changing very a lot and but after the yeah next week they will be to come next I heard yeah big influence the after until maybe the end of it is the formation from abroad especially limbs information arrived but I think not only Japan all the world I think and then the young architects are very shocked also the when I was a student yeah I remember thy students its house island house should be like this other days at the same time a proceeded published a score that also I couldn't understand anything but just a graphic read I fair so different and encouraged we are the architects sir well is not house to be like this is about so that it's also the sahabas difference in the hard way but it's also very big present accident in Japanese architecture Wow I think thank you so perhaps this would be a good opportunity to turn to to open up to the floor for questions from the audience I'm sure there are many many either about Sheila Halle or perhaps other questions you may have for for sage versa thank you for the lecture and the conversation and the as efficient I think it's very interesting that mr. Sun Quan study posts tanki Kenzo and castle Shino Nara and my question is for City Massa tanki represent from our perspective represent Tokyo University which focus more on property buildings and Shannara represents a Tokyo Institute of Technology which focus more on housing and my question is which size influenced you more and/or which side you are more fit you more it is your favorite or you prefer it more thank you because the 70s the public building designed so the K Todai has a big power I think and then the panga of cost and most with power so a lot of maybe public projects important the national project went cognizant now that we have because we must always have a at least competition so but at that time there are not so I think no competition I think there just to went to some architects and and then to do this situation the Sheila Harrison belong to TI tech and then his professor is ecommerce on and then you give a sound also designed only almost houses and then also that the 50s also the for Japan is to think about how to make amount of house and how to develop is a good lifestyle after the morrow it's very important issue I think so the one is how to make a public building for Japan but the same time also how to make a good condition and also minimum house because we didn't have material so that it's really important to use the thing thing and the small member of still or that even I think so that mean also that this some aesthetic relate to also traditional aesthetic so the thinness or the smallness is doesn't mean so Palace of course world tour makes this requirement but the same time this relate to some aesthetic and then this developed so to and for students it's more realistic - the hard way because the big thick fabric building is very far of course that Tokyo Olympic the gymnasium everyone impressed but afterwards if - I don't know Chris but I'm fascinated somehow this is a hard way oh I was student also but good heard early also of course tank is importance also I realized but Tonga the sound also stands somehow that Japanese tradition so that are you sure that two houses there's a very serious so it's really quite remarkable again going back to to this idea of of a timeline of a historical narrative so say gee my song started studying architecture in 1971-72 and and she talks about how immediately drawn she was - - scheana Hollis work which makes a lot of sense for those of us who are completely immersed in the world of Shinohara but when we look at the 1970s look at 1971-72 surprised because the the crowning achievement of Japanese architecture in nineteen that time was Tongass Osaka expo that enormous festival fahza with with the space frame designed by a Sasaki and Colour groups in C and but already in 1971 and and for you and people in your circle to be so quickly gravitating towards the opposite side that due to this critical minority point of view for me is really quite starting startling

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Length: 68min 20sec (4100 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 28 2020