DESIGNWORKS Vol.03

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Interviewer: The works published on this occasion are based on the keywords "urban and non-urban landscapes". Prior to this interview, the designers of Sagawa Art Museum Raku Kichizaemon-Kan, Mikami Building, and the Traffic Police Box at Namba have each explained their work, but we would still like to hear your overall impressions of the published works.Architecture in the Global EraIijima: There are many cases in the works I have seen, but my image of Raku Kichizaemon-Kan is that many variations of water have been interwoven. The fact that the design has delicacy in this way is an aspect that is common, and I think this is very interesting. Regarding the Traffic Police Box also, it can be taken to be one object within the city, and I feel it has sharpness and strength of design. I think the building is very beautiful with the black paint, without sticking with mosaic tiles. I think that the Raku Kichizaemon-Kan is also a good work from yet another stance. The background to the Kaohsiung competition work is a separate matter, but both the Raku Kichizaemon-Kan and the Traffic Police Box have completely different variations. On the other hand, there is also a work with the transparent feeling of the Omron Kyoto Center Building Keishinkan.For each individual urban landscape or locality, the works have various responses to the individual landscape, which is not just a scenic problem, but also a recalled landscape, or a water landscape that is being reproduced. The first overall impression I receive is that the design Department of Takenaka Corporation has a free stance within an overall organizational rule.Interviewer: What do you observe regarding the relationship to trends in modern architecture?Iijima: There is a trend regarding how critics divide things into categories. However, from about two years ago in my lectures at university I use the three keywords: minimal, material, and folding. If the works I saw today are classified in this way, then the Omron Kyoto Center Building Keishinkan and the Maruwa Seto Dormitory appear to be minimal works with an impression of transparency. I think this is a style that links with trend towards light construction, in other words, a lightness of rendition as opposed to heavy architecture. The Traffic Police Box and the Island Training Center are material type works. This is because you can feel the special characteristics of the materials. In particular I feel this more and more after hearing that the inside of the Traffic Police Box Box is a black box. Mikami Building also comes within the material category, but here I feel that there is no adherence to materials, so classification is difficult. Raku Kichizaemon-Kan also belongs to the material classification. Finally, I think the Kaohsiung competition work belongs to the folding category, although this might be an outrageous thing to say. Folding means that a membrane is continuous although folded, for example from overseas MVRDV*1 and Rem Koolhaas,*2 Peter Eisenmann,*3 and Zaha Hadid,*4 fall within this. Maybe the categorization is not very good, but it is used as a guide when distinguishing modern architecture, and today it is also useful for me. Also it is thought that these three symbolize today's global era. As is often said, in the global era information is distributed uniformly, it is an era that is spread flat horizontally. Minimal is precisely created with a flat surface, material is when one surface, the surface layer, is decorated or worked on. Finally folding is when a cut is inserted into a surface, which is then folded, bent, or twisted. Interpreted in this way, these three describe all the variations in one surface. Recently I have been thinking that in that one surface what can be seen is globalism.In a flattened landscapeInterviewer: Please tell us how you understand the word "landscape", or the concept of the word, and what your impressions are regarding the actual landscapes created by the published works?Iijima: To begin with, and speaking broadly and generally, within globalization, structurally speaking landscape is an overall homogenization and flattening.*5 Structurally means systematically, a large capital system, global system is spreading. For example, Crystal Palace, which was constructed for the London Great Exhibition of 1851, was created by the combination of the greenhouse engineer Joseph Paxton and the railroad engineer Charles Fox. This building was created by repeatedly using identical members, and those members were produced in a factory, which was a new building type at that time, and transported to site using railways, which were the foundation of the industrial revolution. By the new production system of prefabrication it was built in nine months, and the cost was also reduced. The system constructed by the landscape that is the current social system has already integrated that building. This era was just when photography started to spread. This was about the same time that highly accurate photographs could be made using the wet collodion process. What Crystal Palace and photographs have in common is mass production; by making identical parts in large numbers that building itself could be reproduced.Interviewer: So the current landscape is being produced by the social system which is based on mass production.Iijima: The current landscape is in a major transition period towards becoming flat. The interpretation of the landscape varies depending on which of two alternatives are selected, whether landscape theory is discussed for several years and then after five years goes on to another discussion, or whether the recent discussion anticipates the future. If the future is anticipated, the question is whether it is really effective to design relying on the context which is the landscape. Is it possible to create a design that does not depend on the context of the time? Within the global system, if you do not think about design hopes and possibilities, then I think it is not possible. If there is over-reliance on context, then a work itself may be very sharp and have high value in its time, but later could become a "what was that all about?"-type of discussion. I think that design must be understood within some kind of greater framework. I think we should not just have a fragmentary understanding of the landscape of the transition period. It is necessary to consider why the landscape is being transformed in this way, and what will happen in the future over a long span. If you think over a short span of five to ten years, then I think the design method of Maruwa Seto Dormitory using the context of the intersection of axis that connects the mountains and the axis of cityscape is extremely effective, and there are many ways of approaching this. However, we do not know when the mountains will be developed. We do not know what is universal, and this is difficult.Interviewer: Unlike the suburbs, within the city of Tokyo there are places where the area is created by the value of the land that is produced by the streets. It is a strange phenomenon that even if the buildings are changed, the presence of streets like Ginza Dori is universal.Iijima: This is persuasive. I think it is interesting that something like the quality of a street can be read as a reliable context, as a single commitment. However, generally it is not possible to find a believable context within a landscape. This is because we do not know what will happen in the future. I think it is tough on the designer who must design under these circumstances. That is because we do not know what to rely on in designing there.An extreme instance is the universality of Kazuo Shinohara. It is no surprise that a debate on the independence of architecture, that this building is independent as an object no matter what comes, should arise. Also, there is the tactic of conforming yourself to the authority of the time, like Koolhaas who developed a unique urban theory by analyzing politics and economics.Interviewer: These two extremes of Shinohara and Koolhaas, the landscapes produced by their actual works are unreal, don't you think?Iijima: I do. And sincere architects are searching there to find the connections to the current landscape to find clues to design. How do you find the designer's intention in the strange landscape where remaining things and newly created things clash? On this point we can say that the response of the Maruwa Seto Dormitory in the suburbs is one of the sincere methods. On the other hand, if the work of a star architect does not have a common style, no matter how local the context in which it is built, it will be somewhat bland, and not a successful product. If you cut down a particular era to the short term, then that style also creates the landscape of the world.The middle way and originalityInterviewer: Do you think that the so-called style of the era has influenced the present published works?Iijima: Initially I received the impression that the three patterns of modern architects that I referred to previously have been all packed into the large organization that is the Design Department of Takenaka Corporation. If for example you look at individual studio offices, you do not find any where all three patterns are being created. For example, in Kazuyo Sejima's work you see minimal, in Koolhaas you see folding, and in Herzog & de Meuron*6 you can strongly see material. Of course this is a subtle point, but in Peter Zumthor*7 you can see minimal that is rather close to material. Of the two, perhaps it is more material. In any case, studio architects place their stance in this way. In the case of the Takenaka Design Department, the trends in modern architecture are gathered under one roof. In this respect, Interview with Yoichi Iijima"A dialog with landscape"Interview