Made in Tokyo. Atelier Bow Wow
Koichi Kajima, 2001. Japón
Colección General Biblioteca Casa Central UTFSM 728 K13

Introduction

The appearance and disappearance of shamelessness

I'm often surprised when returning to Tokyo, especially when returning from Europe. Roads and train lines run over buildings, expressways wind themselves over rivers, cars can drive up ramps to the rooftop of a six story building, the huge volume of a golf practice net billows over a tiny residential district. Most major cities of Europe are still using buildings from previous centuries, and are not modernised in terms of renewing actual building stock. By comparison, almost all buildings in Tokyo have been built within the last 30 or 40 years, utilizing contemporary technologies. These technologies have formed a background to the appearance of shameless spatial compositions and functional combinations, unthinkable in the traditional European city. What is it about the city of Tokyo which can allow such unthinkable productions? How has it managed to arrive at such a different place to European modernity despite being equipped with the same building technology?

But one week later, these sorts of questions disappear from my mind, together with the feeling that something is wrong.

Changing our Surroundings into Resources

If we return to our everyday architectural life, architectural magazines and university textbooks are filled with famous works, east and west, old and new. Specialists, such as practitioners and critics find their criteria by looking at overseas examples and Japanese classics. This is correct and necessary, but the values woven by this situation judge this city as consumed by disgusting buildings. But, if our footsteps are actually embedded in such a pitiful urban landscape, the idea of using famous architecture as a criteria base seems to be just an attempt to express good taste. Photographic books amplify a desire for an architecture which simply can’t be found in our surroundings. In such a situation, then suddenly architectural design holds no interest anymore, the future appears depressing. If we can’t try to turn ‘disgusting’ buildings into resources, then there is no reason to particularly stay in Tokyo. Surely we can start to think about how to take advantage of them, rather than trying to run away. Shamelessness can become useful. So let’s start by considering that these shameless buildings are not collapsible into the concept of ‘chaos’, but are in fact and intricate reporting of concrete urban situation.

Survey Beginnings

In 1991, we discovered a narrow spaghetti shop wrenched into the space under a baseball batting centre hanging from a steep incline. Neither a spaghetti shop nor a batting centre are unusual in Tokyo, but the packaging of the two together cannot be explained rationally. Despite an apparent convenience in their unity, there is no necessity to hit baseballs towards the opposite hotel, sweat, and then eat at a spaghetti shop. In addition, it is difficult to judge whether this is an amusement machine, or a strange architecture. This building simultaneously invited a feeling of suspicion that it was pure nonsense, and expectation in its joyful and willful energy. But we also felt how «very Tokyo» are those buildings which accompany this ambiguous feeling. Having been struck by how interesting they are, we set out to photograph them, just as though we were visiting a foreign city for the first time. This is the beginning of «Made in Tokyo», a survey of nameless and strange buildings of this city.

Da-me Architecture

The buildings we were attracted to were ones giving a priority to stubborn honesty in response to their surroundings and programmatic requirements, without insisting on architectural aesthetic and form. We decided to call them «Da-me Architecture» (no-good architecture), with all our love and disdain. Most of them are anonymous buildings, not beautiful, and not accepted in architectural culture to date. In fact, they are the sort of building which has been regarded as exactly what architecture should not become. But if you look closely, there is just one strong point to them. In terms of observing the reality of Tokyo through building form, they seem to us to be better than anything designed by architects. We thought that these buildings are not explained by the city of Tokyo, but they do explain what Tokyo is. So, by collecting and aligning them, we thought that the nature of Tokyo's urban space could become apparent. At the time, there was a best selling guide book of Tokyo, full of architect designed works, but it did not show the bare Tokyo which we felt. It couldn't answer the question of what kind of potentials are in this place we are standing in? What can it mean to think about and design architecture beside da-me architecture?

Flatness

The starting hypothesis for the survey is that in any city, the situation and value system of that city should be directly reflected through unique buildings. In the case of Tokyo, we suspect that da-me architecture contains hints to think about the city and architecture. However, the definition of da-me architecture was not necessarily clear from the beginning. We debated at length over each example as we collected them. During these debates, we took care to not think about the city as a conceptual model. In the 1980s there was a background of chaos affirming theory and Tokyology, and the spatial expression of architectural works displayed confusing urban landscape as a metaphor. We strongly wanted to get away from the attitude that the city can be summarised by metaphorical expression. Then again, from the very start, we avoided considering examples which can be read as stereo-typical images such as stylistic ecclecticism and contrast between pre- and super-modern. Although we agreed with the Institute of Street Observation's emphasis on pleasure, we felt uncomfortable with the importance attached to modesty and wistfulness. We decided to try to not work with nostalgia. The examples we stuck with were based more on particularity in the way they related directly to use. By treating the relation between elements as the major issue, we tried to see the object without pre-conditioned meanings and categories. We tried to look at everything flatly, by eliminating the divisions between high and low cultures, beauty and ugliness, good and bad. We thought that such a way of seeing is called for by the urban space of Tokyo, which is a gigantic agglomeration of an endless variety of physical structures.

If we describe this agglomeration simply as confused or chaotic, or understand it with a predertemined story, then probably our own experience of Tokyo's atmosfere will disperse. Anyway, there are to many exceptions to be able to convincingly deduce each building's composition from the urban structure. So if we try to collapse da-me architecture into a typology, we will lose the interesting mongrel nature of the differing elements. Our flatness means something more specific.

Guidebook

The result of the observation also depends on the method of representation. If the method doesn't suit the observation, the result often can't be grasped. Therefore it is important to develop a method of representation which doesn't lose observational quality.

The format we chose was that of a guidebook. Tokyo is a giant maze-like city without physical navigational aids such as axes or urban boundary. Perhaps because of this, there are innumerable guidebooks on every facet of life in this city. Tokyo has already been edited to suit every possible objective. Even if they form a kind of software after the fact, in terms of organizing the way the city is used, guidebooks can become a tool for urban planning. However, a guidebook doesn’t need a conclusion, clear beginning or order. This seems suitable for Tokyo, where the scene is of never ending construction and destruction. What kind of awareness will be opened up by the buildings made in Tokyo?

Urban theory by Architects

Much was learnt from architectural and urban theories from our predecessors. From Bernard Rudofsky’s ‘Architecture Without Architects’, we looked at the response between architecture and the environment in vernacular buildings. From Nikolaus Pevsner ‘A History of Building Types’, we considered from how he picked up arbitrariness and criticism in the selection of building types as material for thinking about architecture. From Aldo Rossi’s ’Architecture of the City’, we thought about the interdependent relationship between architecture and the city. From Colin Rowe and Robert Slutzky’s ’Transparency: Literal and Phenomenal’, we learnt about how space evolves out of the overlapping of various design criteria. From Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown’s ‘Learning From Las Vegas’ we realized the power of placing ‘bad architecture’ within the line of architectural history. From Rem Koolhaas ‘Delirious New York’, we delighted in the idea that the whole of the contemporary city is made up of a series of accidents in accordance with inevitable changes to the overall urban plan. From Wajiro Kon's 'Kogengaku Nyumon' (Introduction to Cultural Studies), we gained a love of observing the city before us, and an understanding where even the most subtle things start to build meaning sketch by sketch. From Tenunobu Fujimori et al's, "Institute of Street Observation" we discovered the joy of actually walking the in the street and finding fragments - allowing the swelling of imaginations and the speaking of small urban histories. We were encouraged to think that each of these theories had been born out of discussing particular cities and architectures. They have concrete origins in a specific place, and yet in the end they lead towards an abstract level, which can open new architectural and urban awareness. What kind of awareness will be opened up by the buildings made in Tokyo?

From «Architecture» towards «Building»

The buildings of Made in Tokyo are not beautiful. They are not perfect examples of architectural planning. They are not A-grade cultural building types, such as libraries and museums. They are B-grade building types, such as parking, batting centres, or hybrid containers including architectural and civil engineering works. They are not «pieces» designed by famous architects. What is nonetheless respectable about these buildings is that they don’t have a speck of fat. What is important right now is constructed in a practical manner by the possible elements of that place. They don’t respond to cultural context and history. Their highly economically efficient answers are guided by minimum effort. In Tokyo, such direct answers are expected. They are not imbued with the scent of culture; they are simply physical «building».

Moreover, Tokyo is really such a contradictory place, because it is in fact these «buildings» which most clearly reflect the quality of urban space. The translation of issues of place through history and design seems like a fabrication: this is Tokyo.

Where cultural interest is low, interest in practical issues is high. Whether civil engineering structures, rooftops, walls or gaps between buildings, they utilise whatever is at hand. What is important is the discovery of how to establish a second role to each environmental element. With this doubling up, it becomes possible to re-use spatial by-products. The material is not given, but is discovered through our own proposition of how to use it. It might be termed «affordance» of the urban environment. Further to this, cross categorical hybrids such as expressways and departments stores, can arise. In this example, the department store depends on the expressway for its structure. On the other hand, the expressway depends on the department store for its validity in such a busy commercial area. So neither can exist on their own: they are interdependent.

Such existence seems anti-aesthetic, anti-historic, anti-planning, anti-classification. It releases the architecture of over-definition towards generic «building». The buildings of Made in Tokyo are not necessarily after such ends, but they simply arrive at this position through their desperate response to the here and now. This is what is so refreshing about them.

Adjacency and «Environmental Unit»

Our interest is in the diverse methods of making and using coherent environments within the city, together with urban ecologies seen there. This includes the unexpected adjacency of function created by cross categorical hybrids, the co-existence of unrelated functions in a single structure, the joint utilisation of several differing and adjacent buildings and structures, or the packaging of an unusual urban ecology in a single building.

In Tokyo's urban density, there are examples of a coherency which cross over categorical or physical building boundaries. It is something which differs from the architecture of self-standing completeness. Rather, any particular building of this kind can perform several roles within multiple urban sets. They cannot be specifically classified as architecture, or as civil engineering, city or landscape. We decided to name such coherent environments of adjacency «Environmental Units». In Tokyo, the external envelope does not act to divide public and private, as in the traditionally understood idea of a facade. We are in a fluid situation, where rigid distinctions such as between shallowness and depth or front and back, are easily overturned by a shift in the setting of the ecological unit.

The magnificent Architecture of Architects retains distinctions between categories, rationalises physical structure, pushes preconceived use onto that structure, and tries to be self-contained. This is even though there are so many diverse ways to define environmental unities. It is a method that Modernism has passed down to us, and the precision of its ways is becoming stronger and stronger. Yet, everyday life is made up of traversing various buildings. Living space is constituted by connections between various adjacent environmental conditions, rather than by any single building. Can't we draw out the potential of this situation and project that into the future? If we can, it may be possible to counter the typical Japanese Modernist public facilities which are cut off from their surroundings and packaged into a single box. We can place attention on the issue of how usage (software) can set up a network, where public facilities can be dispersed into the city whilst interlapping with the adjacent environment. Spaces for living can penetrate into various urban situations and thereby set up new relations amongst them. The possibilities for urban dwelling expand.

On/Off

We can find an overlapping of 3 orders which set up the «Environmental Unit». They are based on category, structure and use. If we take again the example of the hybrid between expressway and department store, the traffic above and the shopping below are simply sharing the same structure, but belong to different categories and have no use relation. In other words, it is only structural order which unites this example. Maybe it is not that the example is impossible to evaluate within the existing cultural value system, but rather that the sense of unity is full of dubiousness which is the essential reason that this example is da-me architecture. We can say that when any of the 3 orders are operating, they are «on», whereas when they do not take effect they are «off». (Fig.1: Made in Tokyo Chart) This system starts to incorporate all the value poles which seem to form such an important role in the recognition and indeed the very existence of da-me architecture. We can recognise that the examples of Made in Tokyo almost always comprise some aspect of being «off». The only vacant endpoint to the Made in Tokyo chart that includes an aspect of«off», is the position which might be filled by the continuous street facades of Paris. By contrast, the magnificent buildings of architects are «on», «on», «on». Often, the Parisian streetscape and the Modern city are held to be in opposition, but the abundant examples of Made in Tokyo show that they are not necessarily bipolar. They simply exist within a score of on and off.

Anyway, surely too much «on» can't be good for our mental landscape. If we switch all 3 orders «on», there is only one possibility for achieving satisfying architecture, but if we allow any or all aspects to be «off», then suddenly the possibilities for variation explode to 8 (2 to the power of 3). This establishes a huge release for those who are designers. When we say that we can sense the pulse of Tokyo in the «da-me architecture» which includes some aspect of being «off», it means that even though the urban space of this city appears to be chaotic, in exchange, it contains a quality of freedom for production. Furthermore, we hope in our design work to clearly represent possibilities for the urban future by being consistent with the principle findings of our research. The observations can only gain a certain clarity once they have been studied through design and vice versa. Such interactive feedback between observation and design is one efficient method through which to contribute to the city through the scale of architecture.

From Inside the City

This guidebook which captures the living condition of Tokyo, may seem to be old in 10 years later. But it is impossible to attempt to take on the whole of the megapolis of Tokyo. Yet from the scale of a building, inside the city, it must be possible to see owners, users and passers by. It is possible to find environmental units with buildings at the centre within this never ending city. This can become a bodily grasping of our understanding of urban reality. We think that our architectural adventure can only start from here.