In this writings Toyo Ito explains the way that he feels about the many aspects of everyday life, contemporary architectural culture, which is dominated by an endless consumption and production of images, graphics and information. He also expresses his thoughts trough a metaphor, comparing architecture to a tree.
He is explaining that today architects have a tendency to develop their project to a degree that surrounding is disordered, saying that the architects are making plans that form and independent order unrelated to their context, introducing the example from the natural environment, saying that if a tree tried to implement such an independent idealized image, it would be destroyed in an instant- however egoistically the tree tries to live, a tree can only survive in a vast number of relationships. We must conceder this as an important lesson for thinking about contemporary architecture.
If we want to create an architecture that would be more open to nature-as man’s natural habitat, we must think about the types of connections that this architecture creates. They need to be decisive in this case, because as much as architectural design was good by itself, if the connection that this newly created architecture has with its natural environment is not solid enough, the solution simply will not bring anything new to the already existing ways of thinking and solving problems that we are facing today. Thinking about the architecture must be based on relativistic relationships with the environment. Architecture must be opened to the environment.
The union off all the the texts we discussed relays in the unbreakable bonds which man and nature are connected, ways that are required to create the conditions for a man to re-build a close relationship with nature. Because I would like to believe that a building is not just a synthesis of materials, volumes and structures, It is a machine that that functions in a perfect harmony with its environment and nature to achieve its final destination. It is a longitudinal existence born from the past, pointing to the future.
Personal research Topic
self′-sustain′ing
adj.
able to support or sustain oneself or itself without outside aid.
Is it even possible to have sustainable architecture? Is it possible that a system that works within another system to be self-sustaining without interconnecting with other systems?
These are the questions I would like to do deeper research about. Since I do not believe in the idea of a sustainable system as such (because nothing in the nature is self sustainable), but the interconnection of smaller systems within a larger system in a way to function in symbiosis.