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 fourth installment in a series of five reports by Tokyo Art Beat's Naoki Matsuyama.
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Rem Koolhaas
Photo: Mikuriya Shinichiro
In this installment, we will look at the present state of architecture and its problems through the period of the Metabolists in which politics and architecture collaborated to-gether. Koolhaas suggested that the leadership of a strong government is necessary for architects to be able to contribute to a project of a grand scale such as nation building. Does he feel this is still possible today? And if not, what are the problems that architec-ture faces?
In Project Japan, Koolhaas uses one entire chapter to explore the relationship between the Metabolists and the mass media. Tange and the Metabolists attracted an inordinate amount of media attention. Tange, for instance, presented his "Plan for Tokyo 1960" in a special program on NHK (Japan's national public broadcasting organization), and Kurokawa Kisho was featured on countless weekly fashion magazines and regularly appeared on NHK programs for more than 15 years. Koolhaas points out that through this, Tange and the Metabolists were able to fundamentally renew the image of the architect in Japanese society. In his words, they "invented the role of the architect beyond the limitation of architecture". In saying this, he also added that he was interested in this because he is "very much aware of the limitations of architecture", prompting an immediate response from Nanjo: what is the limitation of an architect working today? And what are his thoughts about the relationship between architecture and democracy?
I hate to think that architecture and democracy are incompatible. But in the last three decades, the entire world has embraced the market economy as the final arbiter of what should happen, pushing consumerist culture to the fore. Architects are now working mainly for the private sector and that's creating huge limitations in the terms of the agenda for architecture.
The issue today is that the financial strength is on the side of the private sector, so the government is becoming increasingly weaker, having no control over the market economy. And since it is unable to invest in preparing its agenda, the agenda is at the mercy of popularity. The public sector must become stronger, because now they're made responsible for everything but they don't have the power to act in any direction. I think that is the tragic situation. Since the government is weak, it only attracts people who are attracted by its very weakness.
"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
■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"
