Never have the dominant systems been so frail. Through the downpour of hubrical debris, an abundance of opportunities emerges. As we free ourselves from the fascination with the stable, the monumental and the explicit, we can start to grasp the elastic nebula our life has become. This sudden moment of sublimation leaves us in a cloud of new ecologies, economies, energies, flows and fantasies ready to be explored. Hybridized infrastructures, bastard typologies and mutant materials form an androgynous modernity. Everything is elastic; footloose we float around in a mist of unstable, but determined, intentions.

A shaking, shrinking, and melting planet will persistently force us to cooperate in its remediation. We are doubtful that fast-tracking Modernity will offer resolution – it is not an engineering question - nor are we professing a passive, neo-Goth observance of our decaying environs. We propose to embrace the instability and the dynamic environment it creates. The architect can become the lean interface between ideas, people and places, realigning the physical and the virtual. Let us investigate the soft links, the fleeting forces and the lightness of our tread. Can we direct the cloud? Can we discern a new beauty within this?

(memo for the future, de Architect)

Kikutake graduated in 1950 from Tokyo’s Waseda University, the same year the Capital Construction Law was passed. Tokyo in the 50’s, bombed and burned during WWII, was a place in turmoil. The government’s decision to centralize reconstruction around Tokyo, prioritizing the rebuilding of industries over public infrastructure, turned the city into a dynamic patchwork of clusters, cells and nodes. Though the city was chaotic and dispersed, this was a time of energy and hope. After twenty years of decline Tokyo was on a rise, growing its economy and population. Kikutake’s first job was for the Bridgestone Company, renovating, remodeling, and relocating wooden structures, which were damaged during the war. This humble work fueled his ideas about construction methodology and cyclic processes.  Concerned however that these renovation projects would not advance his career, he decided to build his own house in Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo in ‘58. This project allowed him to test concepts of mutable structures using modern technologies and to develop his ideas of a plug-in unit. The house is a single large space – in reference to the 16 tatami-parlour of his family mansion - elevated above the recovering city.  Arguing that the components most likely to change should be designed for ease of replacement, he distributed the service spaces around an open living space, which would be permanent. The house was a manifestation of his thoughts, cast in concrete. Original pictures show the house high above the ground, flying over a surging landscape of single story homes. In the background emerges Mt Fuji. As a floating capsule of civility the house embodied the dawn of a new era. It showed Japan could rise again, towards a new Modernity which incorporated the national spirit; essential for the tarnished Japanese soul.

The Sky House became the gambit of the Metabolist Movement and propelled Kikutake as one of its figureheads. Frustrated with the way Tokyo was being rebuilt, this boisterous group of youngsters outlined their ideas in a bilingual pamphlet called Metabolism: the proposals for a new urbanism. Put forth during the World Design Conference in Tokyo in 1960, this document became the group’s declaration of independence from both the government and CIAM. The Metabolists gained immediate notoriety. MoMA included Kikutake’s and Kurokawa’s work in its Visionary Architecture show in 1961 and Kenzo Tange introduced them to the evolving Team 10 discourse. More so then Kurokawa’s well published Nagakin Tower, slated for demolition due to its inadaptability to new times, the Sky House remains the only built manifestation of the movement. The house did evolve over time, and mutated as the life of its user changed. After the initial hype and consequential criticism, the individual members of the Metabolist group went their own way. The movement seemingly faded after a final collaboration during the Osaka Exposition of 1970.

Meanwhile, Tokyo developed organically into an uncontrollable futuristic fantasy. The ’64 Olympics; the elevated Metropolitan Expressway, the subway lines and bullet trains together turned the city into a dense, non-hierarchical network in a continuous flux. The city became the mega-structure on which jumbled plug-ins prospered as healthy parasites. During the craze of the asset price bubble, with its rampant consumerism and pomo extravaganza (e.g. Kikutake’s Edo –Tokyo Museum), architects lost their grip on the city as they quietly withdrew behind perfect concrete walls. Hitoshe Abe recently said: “The mega-structure used to be something that architects would construct.  But the CITY is the new mega-structure, a system that people tap into.  Tokyo is treated by its inhabitants as an enormous extended home, with convenience stores functioning as the fridge and medicine cabinet.  The home just plugs in. Unlike the Metabolists -Kurokawa ran for governor of Tokyo in 2007- a current generation of Japanese architects focuses on designing pretty plug-ins. By not reclaiming the city, they fail to propose an explicit vision for the future.

Past ideologies tend to be revisited in times of crises. The tactically constructed set of words and images that make up the Metabolists’ pamphlet bring together a number of topics one can consider urgent today: the city as a responsive environment, network theory, infrastructure and evolving ecologies, viral cellular proliferation, and so on. Their emblematic visuals of the mega-structures, floating cities and biomorphic buildings continue to have widespread appeal, mostly outside of Japan. Koolhaas, fascinated with their ability to operate outside of architecture, is interviewing the last living Metabolists while his offspring floods the world with Neo-Metabolist proposals. Not as utopic dreams but as formal proposals which, unlike most of their predecessors, have a probability of being built.

Many of these schemes risk evoking criticism, similar to that which condemned the Metabolists. [begin met that.. beetje colloquial] Critics might say the work is a –contextual; that most of the urban proposals copy modernist tabula rasa strategies at the dismissal of traditional urban environments; that they tend to oversimplify the design and compositional process;  that the schemes are theoretically flexible but in reality oppressive, derived from an acceptance and trust in modern technologies and rationalist principles; that they cater to big construction companies, consumers and developers, and most importantly that they disregard deeper social issues and despite their claim of being about ecology the focus is on the image of skyline. Maybe we ought to find inspiration in Kikutake’s earlier work, before the bravado of his utopic schemes; in his careful reconfiguration and calibration of systems already in place. Maybe the architect should not relentlessly try to reinvent the tree but rather should become a constant gardener, someone who weeds and nurtures.

The Sky House flies no longer. It has landed. Its translucent partition, closed shutters, and lush garden ground it to the city. A city as infrastructural as the boldest Metabolist dreams, but with little of their involvement. Visiting Kikutake’s concrete manifest  where traditional elements blend with post-war modernism, is mostly a sentimental journey these days. Maybe one can find inspiration in the Sky House itself, quietly mutating for half a century, adapting to the needs, not of its architect, but of its resident: Kiyonori Kikutake.

for Abitare

Enter Pole Dance here…

时至今日，作为一名建筑师，虽无时不感危机迫近，多少也略有轻松之感。 从金融系统到环境生态，这些向来被认为具有相当固质性的宏观结构，都在我们的共睹下，或瓦解、或坍塌、或至少是 呈现出它们流体性的本质。无底的开发、无限的投资和无止的消费，在近世纪的这一轮循环中使我们日渐自傲，过多的轻信于看得见的发展，而少了去关心看不见的 退步。如果我们敢于摘去头顶上这些沉重的高帽子，拨开眼前遮眼的彩云，也许有一番新天地可以去探索。于是，我们开始在对建筑形式的追求中松绑自己，试图捕 捉到那些不定的东西；人与人之间的、人与物之间的、物与物之间的那些柔软的、敏感的、飘动的空间。

纽约现代美术馆(MoMA)每年在世界建筑界中选拔一位年轻有为的建筑师，为他们的副馆PS1的院里建造一个装置建 筑，我们今年被选中。我们的灵感发自于人类社会和自然环境这似混乱又似平衡的状态。我们所置身的生态、经济、能源在流动和幻想中时时相互冲击、交织；我们 自身也在这错综复杂的网络里鱼跃弹跳；那么，我们的建筑是否也应放弃无味的攀高比强，真正成为可以容纳多变元素的空间？

首先它的骨架肢臂需要做伸缩运动。以POLE DANCE为名的装置建筑主要是由65根玻纤柱与在它们之间纵横交错的弹力绳组成。这些柱子销轴连接于它们的 地基，所以可以在被弹力绳牵制的幅度中自由摆动。柱子9米，弹力绳打结在4.5米的半腰；一面尼龙网覆盖在弹力绳上，成为有透明感的“屋顶“；屋顶上有各色大小的体操球可以任意跳高弹起，并且移动；聚在一起，它们能遮挡阳光和风雨。屋顶下我们设置几种“激活物“—吊床、绳梯、吊环、吸水盆花、喷水器、浅水池等；9米高的柱子顶上更有几斗风向袋。这些“激活物“在人为或自然的环境中不停 地牵动着65根玻纤柱，而这些柱子也在自重和牵制中不停的寻找平衡，一个局部的动作会 通过网络蔓延涟漪，影响到其他部位，比5米的院墙高出很多的柱子在空中摇摆，犹似舞戏。

这种仿若游戏的设计让每一个参观者可以用自己的方式去与构造交接、参与； 你可以躺在吊床上仰望缓缓摇摆的“球云“，或试图爬上绳梯去移动那些 云；你可以摇动柱子去改变喷水的方向，或倚在水池边的网上乘凉。游戏的规则是自己去发明的，但你的一举一动或单纯只是你的重量，在无时不刻影响着周围构造 的变化。你可以把它推到快崩溃的边缘，也可以静守一旁凝看它在风中轻盈；它的动向不确定，没有始终没有基线，不可以重新启动，也没有刻意的结果。

设置这样一个变动不息的环境，意在重建每一个人与他的周围之间的关系，尤 其是人和事物与自然之间相互关联，同息共存的关系；不论这关系是冲突的还是和谐的，其中总有因果，总是在变动中时时寻找平衡。建筑也是如此，不是永恒不变 的，而是很敏感的接受各种因素的影响，不断重整；不断变迁。这样会暴露出我们以往一味追求标志型建筑的局限性，并让我们意识到自身对周围环境的责任，建筑 的空间是影响我们的最大因素，不是它的形式，而是这空间应有敏感性、弹性，能包容使用者，并让他们同时成为创造者。这样的建筑不应是单行的，由建筑师雕刻 出放在人前的死板的作品；而是多元的，可以进入其中体验,使其变换的空间，这是使建筑充满活力的关键。于是，它会少似雕塑，多似 针灸；我想，建筑的可持续性问题也可能在这种环境中找到答案，

POLE DANCE，2010年夏季在纽约设置于PS1/MoMA。有意成为一架足迹松软的灯塔，照亮一番透明的建筑空间。

进入 Pole Dance  这里…

Site.

Kukje engaged SO-IL in re-imagining its presence in the historic urban fabric of Sogyeok-dong, a low-rise area in the northern part of Seoul. Small alleyways and courtyard houses characterize this neighborhood which is currently being overtaken by newly constructed galleries, boutiques and coffee shops. The program is simple - quintessential gallery space, as large as the zoning envelope allows for. The ground floor space is to be used for large installations, performances and other functions, while the two underground floors house a sales room, a lecture space and storage areas. Circulation is pushed to the perimeter to maintain the pure geometry of the box. A perimeter skylight admits natural light.

As the Seoul arts community is increasingly more globalized and professionalized, it is important that Kukje remains influential as a destination. Simultaneously, concerns grow within the local government that over-sized and eclectic architectures are destroying the delicate urban fabric. A recent decree requires new construction to blend in within the historic city fabric. Our design responds to these ambivalent forces by creating tactile ambiguity.

Plan.

The clear diagrammatic geometry of the white cube would be too rigid in the historic fabric. Our idea was to envelop the building in a permanent nebula by wrapping a pliable chainmail veil around the box. The chainmail, through a combination of multidirectional reflection, openness, and the moiré pattern it generates through the interplay of its shadows has the potential of producing a layer of “fuzz” in front of the actual building mass. An additional characteristic of the chainmail mesh is that it can stretch thus avoiding creasing. It is strong yet pliable, and can easily wrap around crude geometries.

库克杰展览馆位于韩国首尔市区北部一片历史悠久的低层住宅地带，而SO-IL设计的新馆旨在为这一区域带来全新的建筑气息。在这个由小巷和四合院组成的纯朴社区里，正拔地而起许多新建的展览馆、时装店和咖啡厅。库克杰新馆的空间要求很简单——经典的展厅式方块形建筑，面积在城市用途分区的允许下要尽可能地做到最大。地上一层的空间用来展览大型艺术品、行为艺术、表演等，而地下两层则容纳了一个商店、报告厅和储物间。楼梯等通道则被推到建筑周边以确保展览空间的纯净与简洁。除此之外，在展览厅的屋顶外延一圈也覆盖了连续的天窗以提供充足的自然光。

随着首尔艺术界国际化和专业化的进程不断加深，库克杰展览馆需成为引领韩国展览类建筑风向标的重要性也不言而喻。同时，当地政府却也顾虑新建的大型和新奇建筑或许会破会传统的城市结构。一个最近出台的法规便要求新工程必须要能与历史社区和谐相容。诸如此类的外界因素非但没有局限我们的思维，却激发我们使设计在满足要求的同时也并创造出一种视觉和触觉的模糊效果。

另外一方面，如果仅仅建造一个干净的白色方块必将难与现存的古建筑和谐共存。我们解决这一问题的想法是在建筑的周围包裹一层由金属环串联成的“锁子甲”式的柔软网装体。这层金属网通过反光、投影、滤光、莫尔效应等在建筑的外围形成一种茸茸模糊的效果。该材料的另一特点是它可以在一定范围内进行拉伸而避免褶皱和下垂。这种坚实却又柔软的材料也可以轻松的覆盖棱角分明的几何形体。

Rather than an addition, SO – IL tries to reveal the theosophical ideas Wright had when considering his design. Seeing the rotunda as a space between heaven and earth, this print shows a view from the rotunda looking straight up towards one’s zenith, and straight down towards one’s nadir. The structure is erased to show people and art floating between these two poles. From a distance the print reads as two neighboring galaxies or as a stereographic projection of the poles.

Letterpress print in series of 9 (36″ x 16″)

凸版印刷艺术品, 共9张（92.5cm x 41.5cm)

selected press 报搞:

NYTimes（纽约时报）

artinfo （艺术情报）

Oedipus and Kronos never reached Japan. For in this country it is not inevitable that a young architect instantaneously commits patricide upon leaving his master, nor is it given for a master to impair his “renegade’s” prospects. The opposite is more likely. Japanese architecture can be characterized as a series of continuous flows. Concepts and attitudes are not copied blindly, but adapted, developed, reinterpreted, and modified. The relationship between master and apprentice generally remains respectful and the exchange occurs over time. A collective sense of responsibility toward the profession inspires Japan’s architects to feed an ongoing stream of ideas, passing on knowledge, influence, and interest from one generation to the next.

One such stream springs from Kunio Maekawa, himself an apprentice of Le Corbusier and Antonin Raymond, Frank Lloyd Wright’s associate in Japan. An early master of the postwar era, Maekawa is primarily known for his attempts to develop an approach that synthesized Modernism and Japanese tradition. Kenzo Tange, who worked in Maekawa’s office for four years, continued this effort. Tange, a vital force in Japan and abroad, returned to the spatial concepts and modular proportions of tatami[i], used textures to enliven the omnipresent concrete and steel, and integrated gardens and sculpture into his designs. He established the Tange Laboratory where young associates such as Fumihiko Maki, Kisho Kurokawa, and Arata Isozaki met and exchanged ideas. Isozaki continued the Corbusien tradition and then turned toward a further exploration of geometric shapes and cubic silhouettes. He fused Western high-technology building concepts with typically Japanese spatial, functional, and decorative ideas to create a contemporary personal style. Traces of this geometric fusion of international influences with Japanese sensitivities continue to be visible – albeit modified – in the work of Isozaki’s disciples, such as Jun Aoki, who worked at Isozaki’s office from 1983 until 1990.

Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa are part of a comparable flow that has Kiyonori Kikutake at its source. Kikutake graduated in 1950 from Tokyo’s Waseda University with a strong interest in the use of advanced technology to inform architecture and urban design. Three years later he established his own firm. The completion of his personal residence, the Sky House in Tokyo in 1958, made him famous. The house is a single volume elevated on piers. Arguing that the components most likely to change should be designed for ease of replacement, he distributed the service spaces around an open living space. When asked about her influences, Sejima mentions that as a child, coming across this house in a magazine drew her into architecture. Kikutake became a figurehead of the Metabolist Movement, launched at the World Design Conference in Tokyo in 1960, in the midst of worldwide explosive urban growth. The Metabolists initiated a new chapter in Japanese architecture, in a reaction to the “Eurocentric” CIAM. This movement explored the “symbiosis of diverse cultures, from anthropocentrism to ecology, from industrial to information society, from universalism to the age of symbiosis of diverse elements, from the age of the machine to the age of the life principle.” [ii]

Between 1965 and 1969, Toyo Ito worked in Kikutake’s office. Upon starting his own office, Ito adapted and redefined his master’s exploration of the cross-fertilization of new technologies, urban life, and “nature.” He recognized a post-identity city where boundaries such as inside/outside and private/public were becoming increasingly porous. Illustrative to his thinking is the Pao for the Tokyo Nomad Girl project (1985), which introduces the vision of an “urban nomad,” immersed in the bubble of booming Japan. The performance of the building’s skin as an ephemeral interface between building and city inform his explorations, illustrated for instance in his project Tower of Winds (1986). Similar to Kikutake in the sixties, Ito, through his investigation of the border between the virtual and physical, devised an answer to a novel condition; that of the contemporary Asian metropolis in its transformation by popular culture and information society. Ito’s practice, like his master’s, educates a long lineage of talented designers. One of them is Kazuyo Sejima. After working there since 1981 she started her own office in 1987, at the height of an economic boom that would soon turn into a bust. Tokyo’s post bubble landscape craved for a shift in direction. Surrounded by the pompous artifacts of a deflated era, Sejima commenced on a search for a more restrained and personal architectural language. Yushi Uehara, a Japanese architect based in the Netherlands, who assisted both Ito and Sejima during their projects in that country, describes Sejima as model of the Tokyo Nomad Girl who appears in Ito’s work: “A new generation that is more personal when imagining space.” Uehara continues: “The architecture of SANAA is like your favorite furniture: Space that has less complication. Space that is as it is, not abused by any bigger manifesto: No obsession, no polemics but therefore expressing fresh aesthetics.”[iii] Although momentous architectural obsessions and spatial complexities inform SANAA’s work, these are indeed freed from an overarching dogmatic approach. Sejima moved Japanese architecture to a more personal, non-doctrinaire realm. Suddenly it can seep into the smallest alleys of the city and in its flow overtake gambling halls, fashion stores and tiny urban lots. Sejima soon was joined by Ryue Nishizawa, a young architect who as post-graduate student had already worked in Sejima’s office. “I don’t even remember graduating,” Nishizawa once remarked, “it was just a continual progression”[iv]. Together as SANAA, Sejima and Nishizawa continued their investigation of the fluid realm between substance and context. Through conceptual and technical invention they pushed this quest, nourishing it with new architectural possibilities. Today, this strain continues as SANAA fosters new breed of its own. Not only in Japan, with architects like Junya Ishigami or Tetsuo Kondo, but, also elsewhere around the globe because of SANAA’s expansive practice. As the dense media-infested metropolis is becoming a more ubiquitous condition, the architectural language that SANAA and their offspring have developed in reaction will gain relevance for all of us.

Japan is often seen as a society of timeless traditions. The truly timeless quality of these traditions is fundamental. It liberates them from history and grants eternal validity. They become ingrained in culture. One such tradition is a dedicated and systematic quest for progress – a perpetual, almost messianic, pursuit of the new. In this search influences can come from anywhere. Opportunism and open-mindedness select its source. Throughout history, Japan has absorbed the “higher” culture through total and instant immersion, shifting suppliers from China to Europe and then America. Advancement is immediate. By merging the freshly absorbed with relics of the previous, a new condition is achieved. In his introduction to a book on Japanese contemporary graphic design, Tsuyoshi Hirooka writes: “We have always adopted ideas and materials from overseas, always superficially because of a lack of interest in understanding the background of other countries. But we have developed those ideas according to our own interpretations and brought them to a completely different destination from the original ones.”[v] At SANAA the raw ingredients have been perfectly absorbed. Asked after a lecture about a possible relationship between prewar German architecture and SANAA’s contemporary work Sejima replied: “Generally, we do not refer.”[vi] SANAA’s almost encyclopedic knowledge of the entire Modernist oeuvre is rooted so deep that it has become part of the office’s collective subconscious. Similarly, when pressed on any relation to traditional Japanese sensitivities in the work, such suggestion is typically deemed superfluous. Nishizawa makes this clear in El Croquis 139: “Well there might be some relationship, but I have never thought about it. There must be some relationship between our architecture and Zen, but actually I don’t know how they relate.”[vii]

Through immersion, adaptation, and rigorous study SANAA generates new models out of an amalgam of influences. In dissecting this blend, elements of history and culture become visible, but other traces linger as well. Much has been said about the graphic, diagrammatic qualities in their work. This aspect of their architecture has often been discussed in relation to Japanese popular culture. Artist Takeshi Murakami tried to characterize this condition – contemporary culture in Japan at the end of the twentieth century – through introducing his idea of Superflat. “Society, customs, art, culture: all are extremely two-dimensional.”[viii] Murakami coined the term to position his work within Japanese culture at large. “Consequently Murakami’s statement has drawn attention from critics and scholars due to its connotations: ‘devoid of perspective and devoid of hierarchy, all existing equally and simultaneously.’”[ix] Although SANAA certainly gives extensive attention to the graphic composition of their designs, it is not solely what they are after. The architectural plan is in fact an organizational tool. Not merely in its conventional way, as spatial organizer of the program, but as a carefully crafted script for human interrelationships. It’s a loose script, one that includes multiple and open-ended scenarios. The user/actor is offered a free range of options and trajectories, passing through realms of varied degrees of activation. The plan operates as a freely defined board game, with an internal set of rules and reasons. While traversing the plan the objective is to discover and examine its relationships. The building is the extrusion of a systematically and rigorously optimized plan. Material and color are neutralized to become the canvas for the act. Yuko Hasegawa – who commissioned SANAA to design the Kanazawa 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art - claims: “SANAA adds chronological elements such as events and actions to their architectural structures”[x] Describing the SANAA method, she continues, “The process is a game, a dialogue of which the outcome is unknown, the concept is given, but as programs develop over time, the game is about accommodating all different needs … The architectural design reveals itself in time and is given its wholeness through the relationship with the people who use the building and the surrounding environment.”[xi] The games SANAA instigates are local, they end at the perimeter. They can be playful, as the sets of rules and relationships do not represent a blueprint for an all-encompassing utopian system. One often mentions the permeable nature of SANAA’s facades, but these will not allow the game to escape into the world. They are transparent to seduce people to enter. The more participants, the more fun the game yields. Looking at a SANAA building is like looking at a pool on a hot day.

Similar concepts of the event, the open-ended outcome, and the need for users or audiences to participate have been ascribed to the work of a group of artists who gained recognition during the 1990s. Nicolas Bourriaud, a critic and former director of the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, has theorized the work of this group of artists – which includes Rirkrit Tiravanija, Philippe Parreno, Carsten Höller and Pierre Huyghe – within his concept of Relational Aesthetics.[xii] The artists in this group take as their theoretical and practical point of departure the whole of human relations and their social context, rather than an independent and private space. Works, many of which operate on the scale of a room or environment, produce inter-subjective encounters through scripts of which the outcome depends on the participation of the audience. The work moves away from the individual aesthetic object to a more ephemeral, situation-based environment. It steers clear of a singular theoretical approach to embrace the mutability of meaning:

The ideas of diversity, potentiality, fluidity and simultaneity inform the work […] which opens itself onto the world, eschewing introspective critique in favor of engagement, activation, entertainment and seductions. At the heart of these varying practices is an impulse to merge experience and its representations […] the work is less about social interaction than a deliberate activation of the social, meaning that the viewer is drawn into the aesthetic experience to become an integral part of the process of perception and cognition. [xiii]

In conceiving ideas, Sejima likes the analogy of the park. She sees the park as a place where multiple and diverse activities take place concurrently. Paths, trees, and shrubs form soft separations between zones of accommodation. The user can roam freely between these different zones and see people enjoying their surroundings. A park only succeeds as an environment through activation by its user. Projects such as the Kanazawa 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art and the Rolex Learning Center in Lausanne operate in such a way. Ambiguous circulation spaces, places of density and lesser definition, realms of overlap and interference. Not unlike SANAA’s renderings these projects without their people and furniture would merely seem a collection of reflections and multiple shades of white. Similarly in smaller projects, such as Moriyama House, with the space between the volumes, or Onishi Community Hall, where the town’s main pedestrian route is incorporated in the plan, the work is activated by its users. The essence of these projects lies in fostering (not forcing) and exposing relational systems. The strongest analogy between the arts movement and SANAA’s practice occurs in their smaller installations. Their design for relational aesthete pur sang Hans Ulrich Obrist, whose Rumor Machine, part of the Mutations exhibition in Tokyo in 2001 consisted of layers of white cards, inscribed with rumors, on a low platform encouraging visitors to spread them throughout the city. A second project, Field Party, which Sejima undertook with her students, consisted of a 12m x 12m grid of approximately one hundred barbecues set up on a large field in the suburban outskirts of Tokyo. Each barbecue offered only one type of meat or vegetable (some nodes offered drinks). The inhabitants of this sleepy suburb roamed the field to taste the different dishes while encountering their neighbors along the way. “The party looks disconnected, but people share the coming dusk together.”[xiv] One could argue that this interest in community and interaction fits within Japanese cultural values of conviviality. Similar interest in issues of participation can be seen in Japanese contemporaries such as Atelier Bow-Wow, for instance, with their White Limousine Yata project. But rather than making actual art, SANAA resolves their relational tendencies primarily within the realms of architecture. Projects are conceived through overarching concepts that are so versatile they can accommodate radical change and sudden programmatic omissions or additions as a result of external forces. Sometimes the work is wrongfully depicted as a series of beautiful objects, but it is the regressive (not minimal) qualities of these architectures, the programs they accommodate, and the potentiality of the spaces in between that make up the work.

Although there are few visual commonalities between the aforementioned artists and SANAA, the sensibilities that generate the work are similar. Both are responses to a new social space that has emerged with the rise and proliferation of virtual society. In art, this has prompted a desire for more physical and face-to-face interaction between people on one hand, while on the other it inspired artists to adopt a do-it-yourself approach and to model their possible universes. SANAA also tries to define answers to this novel condition. Sejima herself has said: “In an age of non physical communication by various means, it is the job of the architect to provide real spaces for direct communication between people.”[xv] Without being literal (the fold, the field) the framework SANAA sets up with their designs addresses new types of spatial and mental navigation the information age has introduced. One browses from space to space in a non-hierarchical, non-linear manner, to encounter and connect.

The focus on community and participation within architecture as a response to a new social paradigm interested the architects of Structuralism. Aldo van Eijk, the Smithsons, and Lucien Kröll, for instance, dealt with similar concerns. As in the art world, the main difference between SANAA and these historical movements is the shift in attitude toward social change: “instead of an ‘utopian’ agenda, today’s artists seek only to find provisional solutions in the here and now; instead of trying to change their environment, artists today are simply learning to inhabit the world in a better way; instead of looking forward to a future utopia, this art sets up functioning ‘microtopias’ in the present.”[xvi]

The introduction of new communication technologies in Japan has lead to isolation, a sense of loss, and the erosion of traditional social structures. SANAA’s work is not trying to preserve these old structures, but react to the loss of community by proposing new, contemporary alternatives, in which open, non hierarchical, and ever shifting relations take form. SANAA’s work is not Superflat. It achieves social cohesion through open-ended, continuous spatial containers that allow for accidental moments of exchange, gently held within a permeable membrane. The political aspect of the participatory project lies not in a move away from the spectacle to an “unmonumental” staging of community or in the claim that mere physical activity would correspond to emancipation, but in a faith in human’s individual ability to invent their own stories. “Unattached to a privileged artistic medium, this principle would not divide audiences into active and passive, capable and incapable, but instead would invite us all to appropriate works for ourselves and make use of these in ways that their authors might never have dreamed of.”[xvii] SANAA’s work is transparent only to a degree. Upon further exploration, their buildings only give minor cues, dispersed in a field of ambivalence. This deliberate ambiguity turns each individual into a creator.

—

We live in times in which, as a result of financial and environmental crises, reservations about the project of Modernity begin to resurface. This gives us an opportunity to shift its focus. Connectivity and “smart” ecological and geometrical design, while well intentioned, seem to push architecture further into a techno-centric realm. The faith in technology as focal point of the profession should be considered with some reservation. Society’s systematic relocation to the virtual is greatly affecting a traditional sense of social space. Where in a pre-network culture, architecture shaped the social realm; accumulating in memory to form historical significance, it risks becoming the frictionless, temporary carrier of the virtual. As the modern driver of the architectural project, the program, evaporates, it will turn the entire world into the gigantic lounge (with Wi-Fi!) where people can do “whatever” as we now socialize, research, shop, play, and have sex online. This shift delaminates “value” from the physical world. Allowing this value to flow and mutate freely has recently left us with millions of acres of boarded up homes, dead malls, rejected icons, shrinking towns, and piles of expired “value-carriers.” In and against this milieu we should conceive of an architecture with intrinsic value. SANAA’s intentional “scripting” of activities shows us how our architectural intelligence can be employed to reinvigorate our sensibilities in the physical world. Rather than an architecture of the virtual—the graphic, the explicit, the temporary, the sterile, the mechanic—we should explore an architecture of the “new” real. An architecture that is spatial, sensory, and multivalent.

In the short movie Shaking Tokyo (2009), director Bong Joon-Ho imagines how a hikikomori (shut-in) after ten years gives up his voluntary solitary imprisonment. As he leaves his overgrown house he notices the total absence of human beings in the streets. We all have withdrawn from the real world into individual isolation and life online. During his search for a physical encounter, a sudden earthquake hits, violently forcing people out of their rat holes. Resentfully, they enter the derelict streets; the obese, the fearful and weak, in their tracksuits and slippers, scared and distressed, like newborn albinos thrown into the merciless sunlight.  It’s time for architecture to get seismic before this scenario plays out.

Diagram 1.

The city of Athens and particularly the districts of Kerameikos and Metaxourgeio are characterized by a potpourri of building types, most of them closed and senseless, facing narrow streets. Backyards dictated by code are left dirty, unused and out of sight. Life in these neighborhoods has an edge, is intense and diverse, yet its current urbanism does not allow this life to infuse the blocks.

Diagram 2.

Diagram 3.

The architecture in this new urbanity can be straightforward and clear. Four floors and a basement hold 18 rooms, outside terraces and a communal laundry room. The yard provides perfect daylight, intimacy and views. It extends the spaciousness of the rooms. Layering spatial qualities, from focused and private at the interior, towards shared and social at the façade, allows students to quickly shift between these modes. A façade of slim sliding doors, shaded by the balcony above, provides daylight and natural ventilation. The balconies double as horizontal circulation, enhancing social exchange. Some balconies have extended platforms in the sky that stretch to the party wall. They are communal spaces; a yard in the sky… and “eyes on the street”.

see: www.upto35.com

人的一生没有任何时期能像学生年华一样充满多样的经历。情感与心情从亲情和聚精会神的学习之余迸发出来，生气勃勃，充满庆贺。没有别的时光能像学生年华那样多样、广交，也没有谁的思想能比学生们更开放。我们在学生时代所做的一切从本质上影响我们将来成为什么样的一个人。作为一个学生宿舍的设计，反应这种状况的住宅类型就是一个必须考虑的命题了。

雅典城特别是它的KM区由以许多封闭而无观感的建筑类型为特征。这些建筑通常面朝窄小的道路，而其后院则因为建筑规范的要求而常常凌乱无章，无人使用，也无人注意。学生在如此区域中的生活总有应该是热情而多样的，但目前的城市现状却不容这多彩的生活融入到建筑中去。

在法规允许的范围内移动基地上的体块并把它与界墙对齐使得一系列想法成为可能。由后退4.55米这条法规产生的公共后院在作为一个公共与私有之间的缓冲的同时，也使希腊典型的社交生活成为这个宿舍生活体验整体的一部分。这个设计提供了一种新式的多孔都市风——过滤而非阻挡着都市的繁杂。所形成的庭院可以进而发展成为一个让城市布局重见活力的内部网络。这个策略可以因地制宜地进行改动（背对背或背对面），进而使共享空间多样化。

在这种新都市风格下的建筑是直白而简洁的。四层楼和一个地下室构成了18个寝室、室外阳台和公共洗衣房。而后院则提供了完美的日光、私密度和视野，并把寝室的宽敞延伸到室外。把具体而私密的内部空间向外叠加到公共而社交的立面上，使得学生们可以迅速的在工作学习与娱乐休息这些状态之中转换。一系列轻巧地滑动门构成了立面的主体，而每层也都由上层的室外阳台楼板提供阴凉，在保证了通风的同时也确保了日照。所有的阳台也具有水平通道的作用，促进不同寝室学生之间的交流与互动。一些阳台一直延伸到界墙上，构成特殊的共享空间——视野朝向街道的空中花园。

参见： www.upto35.com

荷兰阿姆斯特尔河北部的阿姆斯特丹，一个不乏征服者、先驱者、定居者的多元城市，将继续经历着其向拥有着国际视野的公民城市的转变。这样的动态进程需要大胆的举动和灵活的勇气。与其他定型的建筑物不同，开放堡垒将随着阿姆斯丹的转变而不断演化发展。

01.

The fort operates somewhere between a superblock and a piece of city. The form is generated by a series of terracing slabs that jointly form a porous, absorptive mountain. The kilometer long structure twists and terraces out to create a multitude of spatial qualities: concave - convex, terraced-straight, open - close, interior - exterior. The meandering form provides moments of protection, sensation, secretion, absorption, and diffusion along the dynamic Y front.

这个城堡的功能介于一个超大街区和完整城市之间。通过使用多个定制楼板，我们创造出一座多孔而具有隔断的山体形态。这个一公里长的结构扭曲盘旋形成了多种多样的空间构成：突出和凹进，弯曲和直线，开敞和封闭，室内和室外。其蜿蜒的曲线不仅创造出了建筑物庇护的功能、动感的形体，同时也增强了私密性和间隔性。

Its wealth of spatial qualities tolerates a multitude of people and activities. Larger slabs at the bottom will attract an array of small industries, creative businesses, and public facilities. As the slabs become smaller at the higher levels, they become attractive for lofts, apartments and live/work units. By generously dimensioning structure and infrastructure a flexible and thus sustainability structure is achieved. Extra ceiling height and over dimensioned slabs stairs, and passageways will attract and stimulate diverse usage. The building is mountable by the public; the roof can be reached, for a picnic, a view or a morning jog. The public circulation ties in to the new paths along the waterway, making it an integral part of a new necklace of public spaces. The occupation of the fort will strengthen it; it will be defended by the new occupiers.

这个城堡建筑空间的多样性包容并济多样的居民和活动。在其底部的大型层板将会吸引各种小型商业业主、创造业业主、和公共设施。随着高层的层板逐渐变小，它们成为理想的复式、公寓和混合型工作室。我们赋予结构和基础设施一套广阔的尺度，以使总体的空间分配可以灵活也不失可持续性。额外的层高以及宽大的楼梯和走道也鼓励居民们对这些空间的创造性使用。建筑本身如同一座山坡，向公众开放。因而山顶（建筑的屋顶）也成为野餐、观光、晨练的好去处。建筑内部的公共通道与河边新建的小径相连，使整个建筑成为公共空间内难以分割的整体。“城堡”因居民的使用而更加强化这种整体性，而这一系列建筑特征也因为居住者的存在而得到利用和保护。

LA Forum.

Society’s systematic relocation to the virtual has greatly affected a traditional sense of social space. Where in a pre-network culture, architecture shaped the social realm it now risks becoming the frictionless, temporary carrier of the virtual. This shift delaminates ‘value’ from the physical world, allowing it to flow and mutate freely, leaving behind millions of acres of boarded up homes, dead malls, rejected icons, shrinking towns and piles of expired ‘value-carriers’. In these fraught conditions we search for an architecture that can re-invigorate our sensibilities and offer constructive resistance that appropriates latent frictions rather than merely represent a new modernity in slick forms.

The exhibition is an exploration of an architecture with intrinsic value; one which shifts away from the flat qualities of the virtual - the graphic, the explicit, the sterile, the mechanic - toward the full characters of the tactile, the spatial, the sensorial and multi-valent. Through models, projections and collaborations with various artist and photographers the exhibition tries to convey an overall mood rather than a set of facts.

download curatorial statement and content of here

Generous support for the show comes from the Stimuleringsfonds voor Architectuur and the Consulate General of the Netherlands.

Siteplan.

This is a proposal for a wedding Chapel as part of the China International Practical Exhibition of Architecture, (CIPEA) in Nanjing. The project is located northwest of the old capital, on the lush shores of Foshou Lake.

这是一个给中国国际建筑艺术实践展（CIPEA）的婚礼教堂设计提案。这个项目位于古都南京西北郊佛手湖水草丰茂的湖岸上。

Diagram.

Situated in a beautiful mountainous landscape, we propose a singular gesture to create an intimate environment. Through splitting the topographic landscape a space is generated within the site. Surrounded by trees, light filters in from the sides. From the top of the roof, one can see the sunset behind the mountains and the Yangtze river in a distance.

这个礼堂坐落在一处美丽的山景中。我们的设计用一个单一手法建造一种亲密无间的环境。通过开掘建筑所在的坡地，我们在基地的内部创造了主要的礼堂空间。光线在周围树木的过滤下从建筑的两侧洒落进来。站在礼堂的屋顶上，人们可以看见远处山边的日落和流淌的长江。

Section.

Plan.

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