A special talk event at TSUTAYA TOKYO ROPPONGI with director of Mori Art Museum Nanjo Fumio, and architect Rem Koolhaas, who had travelled to Japan to attend the symposium organized in conjunction with the exhibition "Metabolism, the City of the Future: Dreams and Visions of Reconstruction in Postwar and Present-Day Japan". Here is the second installment in a series of five reports by Tokyo Art Beat's Naoki Matsuyama.
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In the talk, Koolhaas repeatedly emphasized that his interest in Metabolism was prompted by his discomfort with the current situation of architecture. There is the possibility, however, that such an attitude may be understood as mere nostalgia. This question was posed by Nanjo: some say that as Metabolism emerged in coincidence with the rapid growth and expansion of the economic society, it has become a thing of a past in the present shrinking Japan. What does Koolhaas think about this?
Kurokawa Kisho Nakagin Capsule Tower 1972
Tokyo Photo: Ohashi Tomio
Kurokawa Kisho Nakagin Capsule Tower 1972 Tokyo
"Metabolism, the City of the Future: Dreams and Visions of Reconstruction in Postwar and Present-Day Japan"
Installation view: Mori Art Museum
Photo: Watanabe Osamu
When you start a movement, it's like a crime: you have to have a motive. And the more compelling the motive, the more successful the crime or the movement. So I think that it was a brilliant choice by the Metabolists to take the metaphor of metabolism as the motive, because it gives the sense of a biological inevitability.
If you look at the work of Kurokawa for instance, he seems to read Metabolism not as a linear push for ever bigger and larger projects, but more as an ability to transform at the biological level. I think that he put forward many ideas that are very subtle in terms of how nature could be used or how architecture could be sustainable, ideas which are major issues in architecture now.
But more to the point, while the half of the world consisting of developed countries is in a process of stagnation, the other half continues to grow incredibly quickly. And in that sense, I'd say that there's still an urgent necessity today to think about how to not only accommodate growth, but to channel it in a way that is productive. From this point of view too, I believe looking at a movement like Metabolism is very important.
Listening to this in post-disaster Japan, where large-scale reconstruction is required in some form or other, one perceives a sense of hesitation in Koolhaas' words. Perhaps this is because he did not touch here on topics such as the process of transformation and building of the nation that the Metabolists contributed to. What is the source of this hesitation? This is an important question when thinking about what can be done in Japan today. We will attempt to find an answer to this in the next installment, exploring the book Project Japan.
■Relevant information
・Rem Koolhaas x Nanjo Fumio
(1) Why Metabolism now?
Looking back at the period of the Metabolists through the eyes of today
(2) Why Metabolism now?
Is Metabolism a thing of the past for a shrinking Japan?
(3) Metabolism and Politics
Are politicians and bureaucrats the real "architects"?
(4) Architecture Today and Its Problems
What kind of limitations does Koolhaas feel as an architect?
(5) Architecture Today and Its Problems
・"Metabolism, the City of the Future:Dreams and Visions of Reconstruction in Postwar and Present-Day"
17 September (sat), 2011 - 15 January (sun), 2012
・Mori Art Museum on Flickr
"Metabolism, the City of the Future: Dreams and Visions of Reconstruction in Postwar and Present-Day Japan"
