Tarzan in the media forest, the Toyo Ito’s code

giombattista areddia — Tue, 12 Nov 2013 01:50:40 +0000

Reading Toyo Ito’s writing, Tarzan in the media forest, you feel dispatched into his architectural journey, a fortieth years journey where the architect deal with his works and the architectural movements he is related whit , in order to determinate an “architectural code” result of four top events, four buildings which determinate his “code”.

To read this “journey” is really important to put it into a specific context , Tokyo.

The Modern movement is generously criticized, its principles are even replaced by themes that he considers as tree properties:

1- Environment relationships

2- Increasing design process

3- Complex order

4- Redefinition of inside/outside boundaries

5- Architecture opened to the environment

The modernist architecture extremely changed Tokyo’s spaces, up to create abnormal relationships between high-rise and low-rise buildings, in order to appear as a building fight ring. Personally the movement itself has not to criticized but the architects misunderstand the power of its principles. The modernism created one of the strongest revolutionary process into the architecture world, overused by its second generation followers, the same happened for the Cuba revolution, it should have been the starting point to create a new era, not the era itself !

Modernism message wasn’t only to conceive architectural principles but to introduce the revolutionary spirit into the architects mind, the audacity of breaking rules.

“All too often, our real intentions have been and still are misunderstood, namely, to see in the movement an attempt at creating a “style” and to identify every building and object in which ornament and period style seem to be discarded as examples of an imaginary “Bauhaus Style”. This is contrary to what we were aiming at. The object of the Bauhaus was not to propagate any “style,” system or dogma, but simply to exert a revitalizing influence on design. A Bauhaus Style” would have been a confession of failure and a return to that devitalizing inertia, that stagnating academism which I had called it into being to combat. ”

(from “ Scope of the total Architecture”, by Walter Gropius, Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1954)

Toy Ito embraces the revolutionary spirits of the movement, is able to get its essential and at the some time when it start to categorize itself he is able to passover it, for example the futuristic scenario depicted by Archigram and the metabolists.

In this journey jumping from an era to another, he faces the problems of each period, and learn from the problems created by each period to finally be inspired by the nature, seems like the revolution for Toyo Ito becomes a devolution, in the way that he looks like Eraclito’s dormants theory, he is looking everywhere that principles to describe today architecture and he finds them in a tree, the nature, he become able to see with the awaken eyes the code of the nature.

” [..] at the other men remain hidden what they do when are awake, in the same way they aren’t conscious about what they do while are sleeping [..] ” (from Diels-Kranz Vol.1, by Hermann Diels, 1903)

This journey doesn’t have a beginning or an end, it has processes which create a turning point, Toyo Ito looks for answers in human capacity to finally finds these answers inside the nature.

” The meaning of the research is located in the path already done, not in the destination; the purpose of traveling is the travel itself not the arrival”

Tiziano Terzani

Tarzans in The Media Forest

gokhancatikkas — Sat, 09 Nov 2013 19:50:52 +0000

PROTESTOR GUARDING HIS TREE / POLICEMEN GUARD THE DESTRUCTION

WHAT WE CAN LEARN FROM A PARK

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_protests_in_Turkey

Summer of 2013 something happened in Istanbul, the monetary system wanted to take the only green space left in Taksim, the GEZİ PARK, wich was the last public breathing point for the people and the reason to do so was to build a SHOPPING MALL

Like Toyo Ito says, the rapid economical growth was there, trying to reach every corner of the city, every valuable space was being occupied by big “bosses” to be sold. The park was tried to be destroyed with the help of police force. People resisted, the resistance spread to the country, that mall was not built. This shows if people themselves have the respect to the nature, we have a lot to learn from a tree, everything startet with a tree at gezi park but of course had political background.

WHAT WE CAN LEARN FROM A TREE

Toyo Ito mainly focuses on the idea of creating a connection between nature and human living environments “cities”. There is the example of the tree, which can grow vertically but also create harmony with his surroundings and in itself by sharing the sunlight with every leave democratical as neighbours living in harmony. He asks the question why humans today “lost” that connection wich he had with the nature in rural horizontal cities, what did we miss trough the inevitable proccess of going vertical in the city.

Ito runs his office for over 40 years and he talks about the different eras of arcitectural growth of the city, and for him the word city means “Tokyo”. The swimming in the sea of consumption, extreme fast economical changes influence architecture and create almost impossible relationships in the city texture. He and his colleagues ask the same questions in every era, even if rules of the game changes in every 10 years period. Who is the architect, how much an architect can influence the world in this rules and for whom is architecture practiced and how can we learn from the nature.

He accepst and creates an anology with the rules of the game in the human world, in the the ecosystem “the forest”, when if only one tree tries to abstract himself form the system, gets eliminated, as this fight between spiecies creates their harmony. Harmony comes from the constant fight, which fight brought us to live worse. Instead of creating indusry for sustainability, we should simply learn from nature.

Modern times create so called fictional architecture, Ito states, as we architects fix on an image and miss the importance of building creation proccess and humanitary needs also naturality. His own Sendai Mediatheque building period is for him an example of, how reality changes the mind of an architect by time, the end product may vary from the idea or image, but get better qualities after facing reality. The imaginary idea dies, leaving huge amount of construction work behind. However your image is idealised, the building is real.

Advanced Architecture Concepts » tarzans in the media forest

Tarzan in the media forest, the Toyo Ito’s code

Tarzans in The Media Forest