N U RT U RIN G D RE AMS

architecture NURTURING DREAMS

Collected Essays on Architecture and the City
“Maki’s elegant essays blend intellectual autobiography, a distinguished insid- Fumihiko Maki
er’s view of the development of postwar Japanese architecture, and insightful edited by Mark Mulligan
theorizing on architectural and urban form. At a moment when major proj- foreword by Eduard Sekler
ects by Maki are making their appearance in the United States, the publica-
tion of these essays in collected form is particularly timely and welcome.” Born in Tokyo, educated in Japan and the United
—William J. Mitchell, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, MIT, and author States, and principal of an internationally acclaimed
of World’s Greatest Architect architectural practice, celebrated architect Fumihiko
Maki brings to his writings on architecture a perspec-
“In part a sensitive memoir of the cities of his childhood and youth and in tive that is both global and uniquely Japanese. Influ-
part a mature reflection on the triumphs and limits of architecture and ur- enced by post-Bauhaus internationalism, sympathetic
ban planning in the late modern world, this collection of lucid essays by the to the radical urban architectural vision of Team X,
distinguished cosmopolitan architect Fumihiko Maki testifies to the fact that and a participant in the avant-garde movement Me-
today we are all citizens of the same world, moved by very similar spiritual tabolism, Maki has been at the forefront of his profes-
pleasures and by equally comparable environmental threats.” sion for decades. This collection of essays documents
—Kenneth Frampton, Ware Professor of Architecture, Graduate School of the evolution of architectural modernism and Maki’s
Architecture, Planning & Preservation, Columbia University own fifty-year intellectual journey during a critical
Fumihiko Maki is one of Japan’s most prolific and
distinguished architects, in practice since the 1960s.
NURTURING DREAMS period of architectural and urban history.
Maki’s treatment of his two overarching themes—
CO LLECTED ES S AY S O N A RCHI TECTURE A ND THE CI TY the contemporary city and modernist architecture—
His works include projects in Japan, North and South
demonstrates strong (and sometimes unexpected)
America, Europe, and Asia. He received the presti-
linkages between urban theory and architectural
gious Pritzker Architecture Prize in 1993. Among his
practice. After writing about his first encounters with
current works in progress are the World Trade Center
Tower 4 in New York City and the Media Lab Ex- FUMIHIKO MAKI modern architecture and with CIAM and Team X,
Maki describes his studies of “collective form,” the

MAKI
tension at MIT.
EDITED BY MARK MULLIGAN relationship between cities and their individual build-
FOREWORD BY EDUARD SEKLER ings. His influential essay “The Japanese City and In-
ner Space” traces characteristics of the Japanese city
from the Edo period to contemporary Tokyo; his
Golgi structure 1967
consideration of Japanese modernism begins with a
discussion of “the Le Corbusier syndrome” in mod-
ern Japanese architecture. Images and commentary
on three of Maki’s own works demonstrate the con-
nection between his writing and his designs. Moving
Printed and bound in Spain through the successive waves of modernism, post-
modernism, neomodernism, and other isms, these es-
The MIT Press says reflect how several generations of architectural
Massachusetts Institute of Technology thought and expression have been resolved within
Cambridge, Massachusetts 02142 one career.
http://mitpress.mit.edu

978-0-262-13500-9

281445-MAKI-NURTURING-DREAMS-COB.indd 1 21/8/08 10:00:42

NURTURING DREA MS
 Nurturing Dreams

Col l e c t e d E s s ay s o n Ar chi te ctur e and the Ci ty

F umih ik o Mak i

edi ted b y Mar k Mulli gan

for eword by Eduard Sekler

Th e M IT Press  C am bri dge , M a s s a c h us e tts  Lon don , E n gl a n d

© 2008 Massachusetts Institute of Technology

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or
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This book was set in Bembo and Helvetica Neue by Graphic Composition, Inc.,
Bogart, Georgia. Printed and bound in Spain.

Library of Congress C
­ ataloging-­in‑Publication Data

Maki, Fumihiko, 1928–­

  Nurturing dreams : collected essays on architecture and the city / Fumihiko Maki ;
foreword by Eduard Sekler.
    p. cm.
  Includes bibliographical references and index.
  ISBN 978‑0‑262‑13500‑9 (hardcover : alk. paper)
  1. Maki, Fumihiko, 1928– —Philosophy. 2. Architecture. I. Title.
NA1559.M24A35 2008
720—dc22
2007045947

10  9  8  7  6  5  4  3  2  1
to Misao, Midori, and Naomi
CONTENTS
 F OR E W O R D B Y E D UA R D S E K L E R v i ii

ED I T O R ’ S NO T E xiv

I N T R O D UCT I O N 2

1 FO RM AT I V E Y E A RS

F O R M AT IVE Y E A R S 10

2 CO L L E C T I V E F O RM

C ollect iv e form : A p reface 40

I N V E S T I GAT I O NS I N CO L L E CT IVE F O R M 44

T I M E A ND L A ND S CA P E : CO L L E CT IVE FOR M AT H IL L S IDE T E R R A C E 68

3 ON T H E C I T Y

C I T Y A ND M O D E R NI S M 82

MY CI T Y: T HE A CQ UI S I T I O N O F M E NTA L L A N DS C A PE S 90

AM E R I CA : HI GHWAY S , D E TA CHE D HO U S E S , A N D S KY S C R A PE R S 96

T HE D R AW I NG CA L L E D B R A S ÍL I A 110

N O T E S O N UR B A N S PA CE 118

SPA CE , T E R R I T O RY, A ND P E R CE P T I O N 130

R E F L E CT I O NS O N HA RVA R D ’ S 1 9 5 6 UR B A N DE S IG N C ON F E R E N C E 140

T HE J A PA NE S E CI T Y A ND I NNE R S PA CE 150

T H E K A Z E - ­N O - ­O K A CR E M AT O R I UM 168

4 ON A RC H I T E C T S A N D A RC H I T E C T U RE

T H E L E C O R B U SIE R S Y N D R O M E : O N THE DE VELO P MENT OF MODERN

A R CHI T E CT UR E I N J A PA N 180

MA K I NG A R CHI T E CT UR E I N J A PA N 194

T OGO M UR A NO 204

ST I L L NE S S A ND P L E NI T UD E : T HE A R C H ITE C TU R E OF Y OS H IO TA N IG U C H I 216

O N T HE I ND US T R I A L V E R NA CUL A R 230

T HE R O O F AT F UJ I S AWA 238

O N UNIV E R S A L I T Y 250

AR CHI T E CT UR A L M O D E R NI T Y A ND T H E C ON S C IOU S N E S S C A L L E D

T HE P R E S E NT 256

n o tes and credits

notes 262

O R I GI NA L P UB L I CAT I O N D ATA 270

PHO T O CR E D I T S 272

AC K NO W L E D GM E NT S 274
F o rew o rd

It is a rare privilege to introduce a book that is significant as a source of inspiration

and authentic historical information about a period of tremendous global changes:
the second half of the twentieth century and the beginning of the ­twenty-­first.
The work is written by a distinguished practitioner in architecture and urban de-
sign during this period whose observations and challenging thoughts are relevant
beyond the confines of a single culture, just as his creations have touched the lives
of people in many countries. In Tokyo, for example, an architect of a younger
generation recently said about Fumihiko Maki, “the majority of our generation’s
urban experience of the last four decades in Tokyo took place in his buildings.”1
The title Fumihiko Maki gave to his book, Nurturing Dreams, can have differ-
ent meanings for different people. He probably intended the title as an invocation
of something desirable in the future, as in “I have a dream of. . . ”. Nurturing
dreams, however, may also refer to the “bringing up” of dreams—either in the
sense of giving them a good upbringing, or in the sense of bringing them up from
a place where, according to psychoanalysis, they have been lying suppressed in
some depth. In all cases something positive is expected; what one dreams of may
actually happen, or an experience may become so fecund when implanted and
brought up in the mind that dreams can originate from it.
How this happened in young Fumihiko’s case might be guessed in the light
of hints the author gives about his early youth, a childhood he has remembered
fondly throughout his life. He describes growing up in a hilly residential district
of Tokyo that still had many old trees and was not yet much touched by the
forces that in the next decades would dramatically change all of the city. But such
memories do not indicate that he was dreaming of something specific, nor do
they express a strong retrospective nostalgia.
 Instead, Maki simply recalls how he admired the large, modern foreign ships
that he saw during visits to Yokohama with his parents. He also remembers how
he visited the architect Kameki Tsuchiura, who lived in a modern house that
was white, not gray or brown like most neighboring dwellings. The building
impressed young Fumihiko strongly because of its spatial treatment and the use of
steel and glass. Thirty years later, during a study tour of Europe, he noted that a
railing in the Tsuchiura house was “strikingly similar to the railing of the stairwell
in Duiker’s Zonnestraal Sanatorium.”2 This proves not only that from the begin-
ning he was a very sharp observer, but also that one element of his dreaming was
the wish to be modern, whatever that meant. The present collection of writings
demonstrates time and again his desire to clarify what the concept of modernity
denotes for an individual and the city at the present time. In one of the late essays,
he makes it clear as a pragmatic idealist that, in his opinion, it is essential for a city
to offer “opportunities for nurturing dreams. Dreams give meaning to our very
existence in the city.”3
Fumihiko Maki’s essays are part of a tradition: many architects and urban de-
signers have accompanied their professional work with texts. The nature of these
texts is quite varied: most frequently they are scholarly or didactic treatises and
autobiographical reports; they may be descriptive and critical, ­theory-­oriented,
programmatic, propagandistic, even polemical. Usually they have been accepted
with greater attention when coming from an author backed up by an impressive
record of professional achievement, as is the case with Fumihiko Maki. His col-
lection of texts is sui generis. Despite some important personal recollections about
his teachers such as Josep Lluis Sert and Kenzo Tange, as well as architectural con-
temporaries like the Metabolists and Team X, he is not as amply autobiographic
as Frank Lloyd Wright, Louis Sullivan, or Richard Neutra; nor does he produce
something in the nature of a descriptive illustrated overview of his entire œuvre.
Rather, one reads a selection of essays the author considered relevant because they
deal with issues that concerned him from early in his career until today. This is
borne out by the fact that the texts are not arranged chronologically but in groups
that indicate the author’s priorities among issues.
Many of the texts give the impression that they were written to clarify the
author’s own thinking about some key concepts that he revisited time and again,
some were records of observations and their interpretation, others are meant to
assist in understanding a building or project and the author’s design method. Since
he taught at a number of important universities, certain pieces may have been

FOREWORD ix
written with a didactic intent, though clearly many essays were also meant gener-
ally to discuss issues that affected the life of citizens as a consequence of what
happened in architecture and the city.
From antiquity through the centuries, architects have been expected to know
more than just what was needed to master both the art and technology of build-
ing and the engineering skills of their time. Thus the Roman architect Vitruvius
wrote some two millennia ago:

An architect should be also talented and docile in acquiring knowledge. Be-

cause neither talent without knowledge nor knowledge without talent can
produce a perfect master. He should be a good writer, a skillful draftsman,
trained in geometry, know a good deal of history; he should have listened
diligently to the philosophers, understand music, be not uninformed about
medicine, know how to deal with legal decisions, and be informed about
astronomy and the laws of the heavens.4

It is striking to discover how well this description of a good architect compares to

a contemporary description obtained when I assembled the results of an inquiry I
carried out some years ago. I asked highly respected architects what, in their opin-
ion, were the qualities typical for a successful architect whose work was of high
quality. Though they were expressed in various ways, the answers were remarkably
similar in essence: one has to be up-­to‑date regarding all information relevant for
one’s work; one must have the capacity to recognize problems clearly and to ana-
lyze them in a manner conducive to arriving at a solution where a synthesis of all
relevant factors is achieved; in addition, one must have sufficient willpower, moti-
vation, and firmness of character to make sure something is carried through. Above
all, however, one must have talent, which in this case means a mixture of visual
capability, a strong feeling for space as a medium, and creative imagination.5
Maki’s œuvre and the essays collected in this volume bear out how closely
he belongs to the Vitruvian tradition as regards an architect’s ideal qualifications.
Using today’s terminology, one would describe him as talented and desirous of
learning; a good writer who makes beautiful drawings and masters geometry,
too; and as one who knows a good deal of history and is interested in keeping up
with the latest philosophical trends and matters of health. Surely, he has enough
experience with decisions by lawyers. He also perfectly fits the contemporary

x
specification for a good architect quoted above. In addition, however, Maki brings
a special capacity to his work that enables him to have valuable insights about the
way we are affected by our culture in all we do. He can do this because he has
lived, studied, worked, and taught in the two cultures of Japan and the West long
enough to be more than a brief visitor in either of them.
As a consequence, these essays contain material that should be of interest to a
wide circle of readers. Architects and urban designers as well as theorists and stu-
dents in these disciplines should profit from a careful reading, especially of those
essays that explain the author’s methodical procedure in some detail. Scholars of
historical disciplines such as cultural, architectural, and urban history, psychologists,
sociologists, anthropologists, specialists of Japan studies, and philosophers also will
find something of interest, even though these essays were not written by a pro-
fessional scholar or scientist but by a thoughtful, ­sharp-­eyed architect and urban
designer. As an artist in a typical Japanese manner, Maki prefers understatement to
exaggeration, especially when dealing with the core, the innermost information
about a crucial issue. If one reads this book as a collection of individual essays
only, one will miss its point—that would be like inspecting carefully individual
tesserae of a mosaic but failing to see the picture that their totality forms.
In Maki’s case, this picture, begun in the mid-­1960s, is not complete yet, since
happily more essays may be expected—for example, in connection with recent
designs. But the important outlines of the image are clearly recognizable. They
describe a solidly structured theoretical framework that has enabled Fumihiko
Maki to succeed where so many of his contemporaries have failed; he worked out
an approach to modernism and the city in which fundamental positive elements of
modernism were saved and creatively rejuvenated without a retreat to ­retro-­utopia
or stylistic acrobatics, relying instead on a mastered technology, the “strength and
nobility”6 of urban space, and the possibility of seeing the present and the past
integrated with the future. Basic motives in the picture’s composition are also a
profound respect and care for the human beings who are affected by a design and a
comparable attitude regarding nature. Both these motives are beautifully apparent
in two projects, one from the beginnings of his design career and one from three
decades later: Hillside Terrace and the crematorium on the “Hill of the Winds”
(Kaze-­no-­Oka).
Hillside Terrace was built in six phases between 1967 and 1992. My wife and I
visited the project early in the process of its genesis. At that time we did not realize

FOREWORD xi
its importance for the architect’s research about collective form, but we immedi-
ately noticed the positive qualities of the place: the way the buildings responded
to the contours of the hilly site and incorporated some natural green, the human
scale, spatial richness, brightness, and a friendly atmosphere—in short, we felt this
is a place where it would be pleasant to live. From Fumihiko Maki’s essay about
Hillside Terrace, I learned that some members of the architect’s family now live
in Hillside Terrace and that he frequently visits there. “Over time,” he writes, “I
have come to think of the buildings I have designed there as extensions of myself.”
There is nothing better than this an architect can say.
The 1997 Kaze-­no-­Oka Crematorium is very closely embedded in the
surrounding landscape; it even seems partially to grow out of it. The group of
elements that make up the building on the brow of a gently sloping hill are
characterized by a simplicity of geometric forms and materials that lends great
dignity to the ensemble. The bereaved family and friends, once they have reached
the building, are softly guided through a sophisticated sequence of spaces to the
various areas where the last rites are performed until the climax is reached in the
funeral hall. In all the rooms used for ritual purposes, the selection of natural
materials, the reticence of form, and the extremely careful use of natural light
combine to create a mood of serious solemnity in an architecture that in its pow-
erful simplicity is as truthful as some early Romanesque churches. This and the
proximity of nature’s unending cycle of death and renewal combine to create an
experience where, as at the Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachu-
setts, and the Woodlands Cemetery and Crematorium in Stockholm, sadness does
not entirely preclude consolation.
Nurturing Dreams presents a stimulating wealth of valuable information and
observations in a straightforward way while you are looking over the shoulder
of a great designer. Beyond this, however, there are also profoundly thoughtful,
even poetic, moments when this book may take you to unexpected places in your
thought.

Eduard F. Sekler
November 28, 2007

xii
Edit o r ’ s N o te

When I first met Fumihiko Maki, in the spring of 1990, I was an architecture
student at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design completing my thesis work and
nervously contemplating postgraduation employment. Having been a genuine fan
of Maki’s architecture for years, I introduced myself after his lecture and—with
the naive, ­nothing-­to‑lose self-­assurance of a Harvard student—proceeded to ar-
range a meeting with him the following day so that I could question him in detail
about his work and his writings. Little did I imagine that within a few months of
that conversation, I would be working in Tokyo as a designer at his office.
During the six intense years I spent as one of two or three gaikokujin (foreign-
ers) he employed in an otherwise ­Japanese-­speaking office of ­thirty-­some archi-
tects, I collaborated on the design and construction supervision of several projects,
most notably the Tokyo Church of Christ (1995). Through firsthand experience,
I learned not only about Maki’s precise approach to materials and detailing, for
which he is justly famous, but also—and perhaps more unexpectedly—about the
importance he placed on a strong urbanistic approach as the basis for architectural
design. Nothing in my previous employment experience had prepared me for the
depth of Maki’s investment in the intellectual life of his office. Having devoted
many years to university teaching, Maki paid great attention to mentoring his
young staff members. On those Saturdays when we were putting in extra hours
on competitions, he would sometimes invite us to lunch, and there we would
discuss architecture and enjoy his stories.
My role at the office sometimes involved helping Maki prepare various texts
in English. I enjoyed the chance to advise my mentor on how to express an idea
most clearly in my native tongue, particularly for the insight it gave me into his
thought process. Maki always chose his words with the most precise attention to
detail and nuance. Texts were written iteratively in successive drafts until the parts
fit together smoothly and produced a precise effect—yet without losing a certain
spontaneity. This process was completely in keeping with the gradual, evolution-
ary process by which he arrived at his refined architectural designs. After a few
years of working on occasional writing and editing projects, Maki invited me to
collaborate with him in writing a major new essay in English. “Space, Territory,
and Perception” (included in this volume) was originally prepared for a conference
at the University of Weimar, Germany. Though I eagerly dove into the theme and
worked very hard on that text, earning a coauthor’s credit, I must admit here my
feeling that the genius of the essay lies in ideas Maki brought to it from the start.
Having enjoyed those earlier writing collaborations in Tokyo, I was delighted
when, more than a decade after my return to Cambridge, Massachusetts (where I
now teach and have my own architecture firm), Maki proposed to me the idea of
editing a new collection of his essays to be published by the MIT Press.
Intended as the definitive ­English-­language anthology of Fumihiko Maki’s
most important writings, this book presents ­twenty-­one essays selected to ap-
peal to practicing architects, to students and scholars of modern architecture and
urban theory, as well as to a general audience of readers. The essays are drawn
from a variety of sources—full references to each text’s provenance are found in a
separate appendix for those who are interested—and together they reflect nearly
a half-­century of Maki’s evolving interests and philosophy as architect, academic,
and critic from the early 1960s up to the present day. Although a few essays were
originally conceived and written in English, the majority were written in Japa-
nese and then translated into English by Maki’s longtime friend and collaborator,
Hiroshi Watanabe. The extraordinary skill that Watanabe has brought to bear on
his translations, with equal attention to Maki’s precise meaning and to his uniquely
poetic phrasing, has certainly made my job of editing a great deal easier.
My guiding ambition as text editor has been to leave the essays in their origi-
nal state as much as possible, particularly given the importance of the contem-
porary historical context to many of Maki’s arguments. However, in considering
the experience of general readers, I decided at an early stage to allow three kinds
of revisions that would give greater coherence to the volume, and for these I
beg the indulgence of those purists who would have preferred an unedited form
of anthology. First, nearly all time expressions appearing in the essays have been

EDITOR ’ S NOTE xv
rephrased so that they make sense to the contemporary reader—a specific date
is given, for example, in place of a phrase like “last year.” The fact that such
relativistic time expressions have occurred frequently throughout Maki’s essays,
particularly those contributed to magazines, shows that he has always been keenly
aware of the timeliness of his thoughts. A second, more complex task has been
to identify repeated accounts of Maki’s experiences as they appeared originally in
multiple texts and to condense or delete those repeated instances without break-
ing the flow or meaning of each essay—a delicate task indeed, given the tightly
wrought nature of his writing. Lastly, while retaining all original notes and bib-
liographic references that appeared in the original essays, I have also inserted ad-
ditional references wherever the text seemed to demand it. I hope that, in spite of
such well-­intended editorial intrusions, the unique cadence and rhythm of Maki’s
prose will be immediately recognizable, and that his ideas will reach and inspire
the reader as effortlessly as when they first appeared in print.

Mark Mulligan

xvi
NURTURING DREA MS
I ntr o duc ti o n

Writing and designing are very different activities, but for me they have the same
starting point: it is by thinking about architecture, the city, and contemporary so-
ciety that I begin. Writing allows me to document a set of related thoughts at any
given moment and to communicate them immediately to others. The process of
designing a building might originate from a similar set of related ideas; a work of
architecture, however, takes a long time to be designed and constructed, and once
completed, buildings take on lives of their own. Over a building’s lifespan, the
initial design ideas that generated it are constantly tested by changing uses, tastes,
and priorities. Thus while designing, like writing, holds an enormous power to
communicate ideas to people and society, the mode of perceiving these ideas is
entirely different. Interpretation is frequently richer, more ambiguous and even
problematic.
As an architect in practice since the 1960s, I have designed a large number
of works. Each of them has evolved as a response to diverse conditions, includ-
ing pragmatic issues of site and program; questions of appropriate materials and
technologies; responses to contemporary theoretical discussions; and readings of
society’s less tangible psychological needs and desires. Still I wonder whether in
the future my buildings—or those of any other architect—will, by themselves, be
able to tell the full story of their genesis, of the cultural and intellectual climates
from which they emerged. In response to this doubt, I conceived the notion of
compiling a number of my own essays, documenting my own more-­than-­fifty-
­year experience of a critical period in architectural and urban history, into the
present book.
 There are two general themes to this collection of essays: one is the contem-
porary city, the other is the modernist philosophy of architecture and the diverse
phenomena it has generated.
Notions of the city—ranging from idealized organizational concepts to the
very pragmatic realities of urban life—have long intrigued and challenged me at
a fundamental level. The city has provided both my writing and my architecture
with fertile soil from which ideas have grown. Two factors in particular have made
my involvement with the city extremely close. One is my chosen profession as an
architect, which confronts me on a daily basis with the numerous challenges of
designing buildings in an urban environment; the other factor is my experience
over the past seventy years living and working in Tokyo, one of the world’s most
complex, fascinating, and continuously changing cities.
The verdant Tokyo of my childhood, which still retained many traces of the
great garden city known until 1868 as Edo, had been reduced to ashes by the end
of World War II. Following Japan’s postwar reconstruction and ensuing rapid ur-
banization, ­present-­day Tokyo came into being as a great concentration of global
capital, information, power, and desire. Few cities in history have undergone
physical and social changes of such magnitude within a single century. As a result,
Tokyo has created in its residents, including myself, distinctive feelings toward cit-
ies, both conscious and unconscious. In many old European towns, one encoun-
ters well-­preserved, almost ­fossil-­like environments ruled by silence. The city and
its architecture make the past perfectly manifest and, by their unchanging reality,
clearly suggest to residents what their own future will be like. No such continuity
between past, present, and future can be felt in Tokyo, however; because of its
radical changes in time and space, my own native city can often appear to me as an
alien place. For an architect working in such an urban context, dramatic physical
and perceptual changes necessitate a continual reconsideration and reinterpreta-
tion of the city.
My perspective on cities is by no means exclusively based on Tokyo. Though
I was born in Tokyo and lived there until graduating from university in 1952, I
spent most of the following thirteen years abroad, mainly in the United States.
Studying, teaching, and working in the States during this formative period of my
life enabled me to experience American cities fully. From 1958 onward, I also
had opportunities to visit cities and regions in Asia, the Middle East, and Europe.

INTRODUCTION 3
During the years spent living and traveling abroad, I began to adopt a relativistic
perspective, one that compared Tokyo and other Japanese cities to cities in other
parts of the world. In recent years, as information technology and globalization
have narrowed some cultural gaps, and as opportunities for me to design build-
ings in North America, Southeast Asia, and Europe have increased, my views on
the nature of the contemporary city and modern architecture have continued to
evolve. I am increasingly aware of the unprecedented speed and scale of urban
development today—particularly in places like China—resulting in ever more
complex relationships between architecture and city form.
A century ago, the architect’s scope of work was not nearly as complex as it
is today. For progressive designers in the West, modernism developed primarily as
a movement repudiating the nineteenth century’s eclectic, historicist architecture
and embracing the rational functionalism demanded of the twentieth century’s
new, technologically advanced society. Under such a narrow definition, modern-
ism has over the years been equated with yet another historical style, one which
a contemporary architect could accept, reject, or adapt to new circumstances.
Indeed, much of the theoretical debate in architecture in the past half-­century
has focused on literal or reductive readings of early modernism, its ideals and
principles. More broadly speaking, however, modernist philosophy has contin-
ued to thrive and evolve in shaping our lives. To paraphrase the Mexican poet
Octavio Paz, modernism can be seen as nothing less than an expression of how
each human being intends to live his or her present; inevitably, therefore, there
are a thousand modernisms for every thousand persons. Clearly, by using the
word “present,” Paz is referring not to current fashions or trends but, rather, to
the expression of what each individual believes to be the essence of the here and
now. The sum total of those expressions might be said to constitute the spirit of
the age. When discussing modernism, therefore, it is necessary to examine more
closely this idea of the present—one so full of contradictions that it does not
permit generalized interpretation.
Inspired by Paz’s notion of modernism—and to clarify and validate how I
choose to live my present as an architect—I have always been drawn to writing
about the city and architecture (my own works and those of others). In this re-
spect, I am fortunate to have been educated and to have practiced within Japan’s
unique architectural culture, where writing has long been valued as an intellectual
endeavor. The Japanese architectural world enjoys a free and open atmosphere, in

4
which theoretical or speculative essays are by no means entrusted solely to his-
torians and critics. For example, in the 1960s Kenzo Tange wrote a critical book
on the Katsura Palace. Recently, his former disciple Arata Isozaki—whose efforts
to establish architecture as an intellectual discipline deserve special mention—has
written a book offering his own interpretation of the Katsura Palace. And I, who
also studied under Tange, have even more recently written a review of Isozaki’s
book, which continues the thread of critical discussion in publication. The writ-
ings of Hiroshi Hara, Toyo Ito, Kengo Kuma, and the architectural ­historian-
­turned-­practitioner Terunobu Fujimori have also played an extremely important
role in areas where architecture and social issues overlap.
In this intellectual climate—which may seem closer to Europe’s than to that
of the United States—architects are asked to write on many different occasions
and from many different quarters. Commissioned essays are often opportunities to
make public the architect’s opinions on various matters, particularly those related
to themes with which he has been preoccupied in practice. Many of the essays
contained in this book are ones that I wrote in response to such requests over a
­forty-­year period.
This book is organized in four parts. The first two concern my own life
experiences from the 1950s to the early 1960s, from my decision to study archi-
tecture to the opening of my professional office in Japan. Part 1 takes the form of
a personal history, beginning with my first encounters with modern architecture
in childhood and including my experiences studying and teaching in the United
States; journeys through America, Asia, the Middle East, and Europe; participation
in the ­avant-­garde movement called Metabolism; and encounters with members
of Team X. Part 2 then focuses on a series of studies that I undertook during those
early years on the relationship between architecture and the city, culminating in
the 1964 publication of Investigations in Collective Form. It concludes with more
recent reflections on those early studies, which, looking back now forty years,
have continuously inspired and guided much of my work as an architect.
In part 3, I turn my gaze directly to the city and present a group of essays that
describe and analyze certain qualities of urban form, organization, and perception.
Most of these essays were published originally in Japanese, and several appear in
the current volume for the first time in English translation. “America: High-
ways, Detached Houses, and Skyscrapers” discusses the centripetal character of
American cities and architecture. In “The Drawing Called Brasília,” I discuss the

INTRODUCTION 5
ambition concealed in a single line drawn in the architect’s sketch of the city—a
line which inextricably binds the city and architecture together. “The Japanese
City and Inner Space” emerged from a study into morphological and perceptual
characteristics of the Japanese city that have survived from the Edo period into
contemporary Tokyo.
Part 4 returns to the theme of modernism—particularly the modernism of
Japan—with which part 1 begins. In “The Le Corbusier Syndrome,” I consider
Le Corbusier’s unparalleled influence on the emergence of modernism in Japan.
In “Making Architecture in Japan,” I describe a number of qualities that have
continuously characterized architectural production in modern times. Over the
years, I have been asked to contribute my views on the works of several Japa-
nese architects, and by including here two studies on the life and works of Togo
Murano and Yoshio Taniguchi—two architects who offer perhaps the sharpest
possible contrast—I hope to suggest the broad range of expression and design
method in modern Japanese architecture. The last two essays, “On Universal-
ity” and “Architectural Modernity and the Consciousness Called the Present,”
are reflections on what it is that, transcending special temporal or spatial factors,
constitutes architecture.
This collection of essays is intended to be a meaningful—if incomplete—
presentation of thoughts on cities and architecture that I myself have seen and
experienced over the past half-­century. Deliberately wishing to avoid making this
book a commentary on my own architectural œuvre, I decided initially to keep
such illustrations to a minimum. As this book developed, however, I began to
doubt whether my initial statement—that writing and designing share a common
starting point, a common inspiration—could be fully tested without making some
reference to the design work that has occupied me these past decades. Without
demonstrating clear relationships between writing and designing, the reader might
ask, how could this book be distinguished as the work of a practicing architect
rather than the work of a critic or historian? I have therefore decided to include
images and critical commentaries on three representative works, following related
essays in the later chapters. The Hillside Terrace complex, built between 1967 and
1992, is a response to what is for me an eternal question concerning the relation-
ship between the city and its architecture—the symbiotic relationship of the whole
and its parts. The Kaze-­no-­Oka Crematorium suggests how the expression of inner
depth, or oku—a timeless characteristic of Japanese architecture and cities—might

6
emerge within a work of contemporary architecture. Finally, the notion of an in-
dustrial vernacular developing in various regions amid globalization finds expres-
sion in the Fujisawa Gymnasium. If the examples given are not perfect realizations
of the ideas behind them, I will ask for the reader’s understanding. In my attempt
to demonstrate relationships, I will have drawn attention to the ways in which
words and objects may overlap in the case of the architectural profession. For this
reason I have chosen to give the book its particular form.

More than a half-­century has passed since I decided to enter the architectural profes-
sion. Looking back, I see that experience and knowledge accumulated over the years have
expanded like the rings of a tree around a number of key events and ideas, though some of
what I learned or experienced in the past has been sloughed off or only imperfectly absorbed.
Architectural designs and writings have punctuated my life experience at regular intervals
like the seasonal budding of a tree, each giving life to new ideas. Naturally, some buds
wither and die, but others develop into branches from which new buds will emerge; under the
influence of external conditions, a branch may grow in an unexpected direction. And just as
it takes many years for a tree to develop into its full form, a long time must pass before the
shape of one’s life, or the survival of one’s ideals, can be perceived or judged.

INTRODUCTION 7
 F o r mat i ve Y ear s 1
F o r m at i v e Y e a r s

Experiences in youth tend to leave a more powerful impression, because they are
unanticipated and without parallel. As one grows older, experiences are incorpo-
rated into an already established intellectual system and therefore do not evoke
such intense emotions. Instead, with age there is a steady accretion of experiences
that evoke a quieter response.
My relationship to modernism began with a youthful encounter, and since
becoming an architect, I have seen both its good and its bad sides. It has been at
times the standard by which to judge excellence; at other times a teacher by bad
example. Experience of buildings, people, and literature gradually constructed an
internal world in me, as in so many other architects.

Fi r st E nco unter wi th Mo dern ism

I was born in the Yamanote district of Tokyo in 1928. The townscape in the district
then consisted primarily of buildings in subdued brown and gray against a back-
ground of dark green. Most of the houses were of wood construction, storefronts
were finished in cement plaster, and many large buildings such as office buildings,
department stores, and theaters were ­pseudo-­Western-­style structures faced with
stone or tile. The several white houses I happened to encounter therefore made a
vivid impression, even though I was only a child at the time. It was not simply that
they were white. There was something liberating and magical about them.
The year of my birth was also the year Kunio Maekawa and Yoshiro Taniguchi
graduated from the Department of Architecture at the University of Tokyo, the
school from which I too was eventually to graduate. The 1930s were a period in
which they and others such as Sutemi Horiguchi, Junzo Sakakura, and Antonin
Raymond at last introduced into Japan the architectural ideas of modernism rep-
resented by the Bauhaus and the Esprit Nouveau. Their works, however, were few
in number and limited to certain areas, so I consider myself fortunate in having
encountered a number of representative buildings of the era early on. My good
fortune lay in the fact that, as a child, I was able to experience these buildings
directly, as I would a new type of train or airplane, unfiltered by an understanding
of the radicalism the architects advocated.
My first actual encounter with a work of modern architecture took place
quite by chance when I was seven years old. I accompanied a neighbor, Masachika
Murata, on a visit to the home of the architect Kameki Tsuchiura, with whom
Murata was apprenticing at the time. I recall the Tsuchiura House in Meguro as
a simple white structure. That in itself was nothing unusual, since both Murata
and I lived in houses that were white. But the multilevel space inside and the
slender steel railing in the entrance area made a very strong impression on me as
a child; the materiality of the glass and steel as perceived in that white space was
completely new to me. From this and other modern houses that I subsequently
visited, I sensed how exciting modern, white architecture must have been for
young architects who were embarking on their careers at the time.
In my childhood I also had a number of opportunities to go with my parents
to see foreign ships enter the port of Yokohama. I would invariably dash from
the wharf to one of the piers, and there in front of me would be these layers of
decks and vertical masts and stacks, like lines and planes in a De Stijl composi-
tion. The cabins with their portholes were like capsule spaces, and the ­first-­class
salon and dining room were decorated in splendid Art Deco design. The polished
wood decks, the steel railings, the canvas stretched over boats, the white painted
surfaces—each of these elements projected its own powerful materiality. The ship
was a huge machine that constituted a far more powerful statement of modernism
than any work of architecture.

At e l i e r a n d La b o r ato ry: Center o f Cr eat ivit y

In the 1950s, Japan was rebuilding, still feeling the effects of the war’s devasta-
tion, while the United States was at its zenith as the world’s most powerful and
affluent nation. I spent that decade studying architecture, first at Tokyo University

F O R M AT I V E Y E A R S 11
and then in the United States. In Japanese universities, upperclassmen and gradu-
ate students pursue their studies in groups called kenkyushitsu (literally “research
laboratories”) organized around individual faculty members. The Kenzo Tange
Laboratory at Tokyo University had a number of outstanding graduate students
and was engaged at the time in preparing construction documents for the Hiro-
shima Peace Center, which had been the subject of a competition. From the time
of my graduation thesis and during the short time I spent in Tange’s kenkyushitsu
until my departure for study in the United States, I was able to get a brief but
intense exposure to Tange’s way of working on architectural and urban designs.
Arata Isozaki and Kisho Kurokawa would also pass through Tange’s kenkyushitsu
a few years later.
The university kenkyushitsu’s sphere of activity was then officially limited
to Japan, but Tange was already seeking to bring an international perspective to
his laboratory’s work. Tange was only one of several architects who emerged in
postwar Japan, but he was perhaps the most aggressive in testing out what was
new. It was an exciting time for architecture globally, particularly in the United
States. Exploration into new forms of architectural expression—through the use
of new materials, curtain walls, and ­large-­span structures such as shells and tensile
members—had been suspended for many years surrounding the World War, and
was now being resumed at last. Eero Saarinen and Paul Rudolph were among the
leading American architects of the time. Saarinen in particular had an approach
to design very similar to that of Tange, and it is widely known that Tange and
members of his atelier were keenly aware of Saarinen’s work.
Looking back after the passage of several decades, I find that, in its readiness
to test out new ideas, Tange’s kenkyushitsu had qualities of both the atelier of an

1.1 Interior of Kameki

Tsuchiura House, Tokyo,
1935.

12
artist and the laboratory of a scientist. The artistic side of design studies was then
and is today well understood, but the scientific laboratory’s mode of investiga-
tion required the existence of issues that could be clearly tested and resolved. Of
course, countless new issues emerge for architecture in every generation, but in
comparison with the broad technological and societal issues of those postwar
years, the issues under discussion today may appear quite specialized; seem-
ingly few, with the possible exception of environmental sustainability, affect
architecture as a whole. In parallel with this gradual trend toward dividing is-
sues into specialist camps, as more experts view architecture as an autonomous
domain of knowledge, the ­laboratory-­like kenkyushitsu format has gradually
fallen into disfavor and disappeared from many architecture schools. I consider
myself fortunate to have had the opportunity, however brief, to experience
the excitement of scientific inquiry in the process of my design education.
That is because the dual character of Tange’s kenkyushitsu—part atelier, part
laboratory—revealed to me the strange, often paradoxical nature of design in
architectural offices. The kenkyushitsu may simply have been a product of the
times, but it has exerted an enormous influence on the way I have subsequently
organized my own practice.
Perhaps it was due to Tange’s influence that I began to understand that every
architect must have an ideal approach to design, for that approach is in itself a
work of design. The issue is always how to proceed from a blank sheet of paper to
realization—that is, how to direct and influence group behavior in a concentrated
and unique way toward a certain objective. I hold as my ideal an organizational
structure in which the group, while centered around one person and one theme,
is in a state of flux, pushed this way and that way by internal contradictions

1.2 Members of the Kenzo Tange

Architectural Lab at Tokyo University
meeting at his house (Tange sits with
folded arms at left), 1960s.

F O R M AT I V E Y E A R S 13
and conflicts of imagination. Decisions are gradually made on the basis of ob-
jective reasoning, as is necessary for the creation of something as concrete as
­architecture.
Any discussion of architectural ideas must include an examination of how
architecture is made. This is something I constantly sensed as, over the next thirty
years, I saw at close hand how architects in Japan and overseas conducted their
lives and produced their designs, and I continued to ask myself what the essential
nature of modernity was.

Se rt’s E x am pl e at Ha rvar d

Upon graduating from Tokyo University in 1952, I went to the United States to
continue my architectural education. After studying at Cranbrook Academy for
one year, I entered the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University in 1953.
It was in that year that Josep Lluis Sert became dean of the school, while also as-
suming duties from Walter Gropius as Chairman of the Architecture Department
and director of the Master’s Degree design studio. As one of sixteen members
in Sert’s first class, I had the opportunity to receive his instruction directly, and
that was how more than thirty years of cherished friendship with him began. By
late September 1953, the days were already cool and the show of autumn foliage
had begun in New England. In those years, the GSD was located in Harvard
Yard’s Robinson Hall, and Sert’s office was in its southeastern corner. I vividly
remember how, at our first meeting, his black suit and bow tie stood out against
the white background of the room. As he came forward to greet me, an intense
energy emanated from his short, stout figure, an energy somehow different from

1.3 Josep Lluis Sert, dean of

the Harvard Graduate School
of Design, 1953–­1969.

14
that of an American. In rapid succession he asked me for news of Kenzo Tange,
whom he had come to know through CIAM meetings, and of his old friends,
Kunio Maekawa and Junzo Sakakura.
Like Maekawa and Sakakura, Sert had worked in Le Corbusier’s atelier on rue
de Sèvres in his youth. Having long served as chairman of CIAM, Sert had strong
connections to numerous architects and scholars around the world; as dean of the
GSD for the next twenty years, he would invite many of those prominent figures
to teach and lecture at the school in his quest to make Harvard a point of contact
between foreign (primarily European) architects and American architectural edu-
cation. Those invited included not only practicing architects and city planners but
also historians such as Sigfried Giedion and sculptors such as Costantino Nivola
and Naum Gabo.
In 1953, the studio for the Master’s program was in a high-­ceilinged room on
the first floor, on the west side of the building; it was there that twice a week, on
Tuesdays and Fridays from two to six, Sert came around to each one of us in turn
and gave us critiques. The American drafting tables were slightly high for him.
His forearms resting on the table, he would peer at our drawings and offer criti-
cism that was fair and always to the point. The basis of his architectural criticism
even then was an urbanism that was humane and—to borrow a word that became
fashionable only much later—contextual. The given problems were always for
actual sites, and he placed great importance on key design issues such as adapting
buildings to surrounding conditions; exterior spaces created by architecture; clar-
ity of planning; appropriate scale to accommodate the ebb and flow of human
movement; sectional development of space and the introduction of natural light;
and rhythm and variety in fenestration. While these concerns followed a certain

F O R M AT I V E Y E A R S 15
tradition of orthodox, modern architectural thought, they nevertheless placed a
greater emphasis on the human experience of space, compared to the functional-
ism espoused by Gropius. Sert was unsparing in his criticism toward projects that
did not display sensitivity for such concerns. Whereas Gropius had been more
a verbal critic, Sert often picked up a pencil and made sketches to get his ideas
across. As I discovered later in working at his atelier, what he preached in the class-
room he practiced in his own design work. Sert’s humanist philosophy is manifest
today in his many built works.
At the same time, however, Sert attempted to develop a wide range of criti-
cism within the school, inviting as visiting professors such notable figures as Er-
nesto Rogers, partner of the Milan-­based firm BBPR and editor of Casabella. An
emotional, expressive man of large build, Rogers would often have differences of
opinion with the diminutive, highly rational Sert. We students took pleasure in
listening to their exchanges, as well as to Rogers’s anecdotes and witticisms about
architecture or architects. He once memorably commented that “to an architect,
design is like a flirtatious girlfriend: you never get enough in return, no matter
how much love, money, and time you invest.” A few years later, in 1958, Rogers’s
firm was to design and build Torre Velasca in Milan. This building was strongly
criticized by members of Team X at the 1959 CIAM meeting in Otterlo; the criti-
cism was leveled in an atmosphere suggestive of a religious trial. Rogers died not
long afterward, but with time Torre Velasca was indeed recognized as a work of
historic significance, marking the advent of postmodernism in Europe.
Despite the presence of such charismatic and controversial figures on the
GSD faculty, still the greatest fortune for those of us graduating in 1954 remained
the fact that Sert gave so much of himself to the studio.

Pr o fessi o nal Inter nshi p i n Ne w York an d Cambridge

Finishing the Master’s course in June 1954, I became a junior designer under
Gordon Bunshaft at the New York office of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM).
About a year had passed when a Harvard classmate, Dolf Schnebli (later a profes-
sor of architecture at the ETH-­Zürich), informed me that he would soon be
returning to his native Switzerland and suggested that I try working in his place
at Sert’s New York office. Having by this time become fairly well acquainted with
the organizational approach of a large office, and looking for new kinds of design

16
challenges, I soon left SOM and joined Sert’s office. In those years Sert was work-
ing in partnership with Paul Wiener and principally involved in urban planning
projects in capital cities throughout Latin America. When I joined his office, he
was commencing work on what would be his first real architectural project since
his arrival in America. It was the schematic design for an American embassy com-
plex to be built in Baghdad, facing the Euphrates River. Incorporating various
water channels drawn from the Euphrates, the project included the ambassador’s
residence, staff quarters, a chancellery, and other facilities. Above all it was a work
of urban design, and since the university was now in summer recess, Sert could
devote all his energy to this project in New York.
Unlike SOM’s office, Sert’s studio was small and informal; it occupied a pent-
house on the fifth floor of a modest building not far from Times Square, in an
area where women of dubious character loitered in doorways even in the daytime.
Working late at night, we would sometimes hear an orchestra performing at a
wedding reception in the hotel across the street and see people dancing. Emerg-
ing onto Times Square at five in the morning after an all-­night stint at the office,
we found the crowds of the previous night gone and the streets empty, save for
newspapers blown about by the wind; the only sign of human presence would be
the sight of a few customers sitting in a ­twenty-­four-­hour cafeteria.
I recall that when we finally got to the stage of preparing to send our model
of the Baghdad Embassy to the U.S. State Department, Sert’s beautiful, petite
wife, Moncha, showed up at the office to help add trees to the model. There was
a ­family-­like atmosphere in Sert’s studio which does not exist in large offices,
only in small ones, particularly in those that are just starting out. Aside from
one American employee, everyone was European or, like myself, Asian, and we
all held strong convictions about architecture. When our discussions became too
heated, Paul Wiener would come into the room to restore calm, saying “pianis-
simo, pianissimo!” as though he were a conductor chiding his orchestra.
When September approached—and, with it, the need to return to university
duties—Sert decided to move his office to Cambridge. I was then thinking of
entering a doctoral program at Harvard, and it was soon agreed that I would work
part-­time in his office while taking some classes. The Serts chose as a temporary
office a detached house in a quiet neighborhood, not far from Harvard Square,
with a connected room above the garage. There were only four of us working
there: a Pole, a Dane, an American, and myself.

F O R M AT I V E Y E A R S 17
 The ­Polish-­born Joseph Zalewski, who also taught at Harvard, had miracu-
lously escaped from the Warsaw Ghetto during World War II and had come to
know Sert through Le Corbusier’s office after the war. Eventually he became
Sert’s most trusted partner. He possessed an acute formal sensitivity, and though
he could be stubborn, he was a very gentle soul. Among the students who got to
know him well at the university, many praised him unreservedly as a great teacher.
In Sert’s office, it was common to see Sert discuss things with Zalewski as he de-
signed. In a reversal of the usual ­employer-­employee relationship, Sert was often
the designer and Zalewski the critic.
When we had to work late, Sert would sometimes invite us for ­before-­dinner
drinks and talk to us of his ideas on European history, art, and architecture in a
relaxed atmosphere that could not be duplicated in school. The Serts, who had
no children, were extremely fond of their beautiful, gray Persian cat. When from
time to time they left for a weekend in their house on Long Island, the cat was
left in our care. Once, when we weren’t looking, the cat got out of the house and
disappeared; fortunately for all of us, it reappeared some time later.
As the staff gradually expanded, the atelier became cramped, and we moved
to the second floor of an apartment building less than two minutes from Harvard
Square with an address I still remember: 54 Boylston Street.1 This wood-­frame
building was divided in two in the middle, and each side had its own stairway. My
own apartment was on the same floor as the office, but on the other side. This is
as close as my residence and workplace have ever been or probably ever will be. In
the half-­basement facing Boylston Street was the Patisserie Gabriel, a coffee shop
with a French atmosphere. When I got up in the morning, I would first go down
and have a breakfast of coffee and croissants and then either go to the university or
ascend the other stairway to go to the office. Such was the simple life I led then.
My bedroom was separated from Sert’s office only by a wood-­framed wall; more
than once when I had overslept, on Sert’s orders someone in the office would
bang on that wall. The arrangement did have its advantages in that I could always
go home and take a quick shower if I got a little fatigued; this came in handy,
because just at that time I was often working straight through the night on the
competition for the American Embassy in London.
Near the end of my time working at his office, in 1956, Sert organized the
first Urban Design Conference at Harvard. Richard Neutra gave the keynote
speech, and many members of CIAM took part. What impressed me most at

18
the conference, however, was the feeling that a new movement in urbanism was
beginning in the United States. Jane Jacobs, who was then writing The Death and
Life of Great American Cities, gave an impassioned speech; Edward Bacon intro-
duced his new redevelopment plan for the central district in Philadelphia and the
philosophy behind it; and Victor Gruen unveiled a bold proposal for turning the
central district in Fort Worth into a ­pedestrian-­only zone. We sensed something
new was about to be born.
A sense of solidarity developed among those of us who took part in that
moment in history, just as it does among participants in movements in art or
technological revolutions. However, every movement or revolution will eventu-
ally mature and wane. The only alternative then is to start something new. There
is no guarantee that that something new will succeed, but such a course of action
is unquestionably preferable to adhering to the status quo. That is what moves his-
tory along, even if the contribution made by each individual is modest.

M y Year s at Wa shi ng to n Uni v er si ty

In spring of 1956, as I was taking several courses at Harvard and working part-
­time in the office of Sert and Jackson, I became friends with the architect Paul
Rudolph. He was then designing the Jewett Center at Wellesley College and
had moved temporarily from New York to Cambridge. Our friendship was based
on a shared passion for discussing everything new and topical in contemporary
architecture; in the 1950s, this included the recent works of the great ­twentieth-
­century masters such as Le Corbusier and Mies, who were still alive at that time.
I still recall a lively discussion Rudolph and I had over a meal regarding the sculp-
tural silhouettes of two of Le Corbusier’s late works, the Millowners’ Building in
Ahmedabad and the monastery of La Tourette. Then as now, there was nothing
more interesting, no better conversation topic for young architects than to discuss
other architects and to evaluate their works.
One day Rudolph told me that Washington University in St. Louis was
searching for young design instructors, and that he would recommend me if I
was interested in applying. I did apply and eventually gained an interview with
the new dean, Joseph Passonneau, who was just then beginning to reshape the
School of Architecture’s program. At the time, I also had received an offer from
the architecture department at North Carolina State University. It seemed to me,

F O R M AT I V E Y E A R S 19
however, that Washington University was at a critical turning point in its history,
and so I took the opportunity to be a part of it.
After four years on the U.S. East Coast, St. Louis would provide my first
experience of living in the Midwest. I initially found myself a studio apartment in
what was for its neighborhood a relatively tall building, on a corner of Delmar,
the east-­west avenue on the north side of Forest Park. The city I saw from my
apartment window was, aside from a few low hills, basically flat. Like Chicago
and Kansas City, this city on the Mississippi River had developed westward. It
was a typical example of a city with what urban geographers referred to as a
concentric zone system. The development of its suburban districts had come at
a price; St. Louis’s downtown area and the old residential districts immediately
around it were suffering a decline that was already palpable by the mid-­1950s.
The ­Pruitt-­Igoe Housing Project, which the community planning studio at the
university took up, was still in good condition then but was fated to disappear
not long thereafter.
In Tokyo, Cambridge, and New York, my relationship to the city, its streets
and blocks, had always been as a pedestrian. My lifestyle in St. Louis was quite
different from what I had known previously: it involved traveling by car between
various points. Those points were my apartment, the commercial area where
Delmar Avenue and the gate to University City met, the university campus, the
restaurants and movie theaters to which I went at times with friends, and the
homes of close friends. St. Louis as I knew it was merely the sum total of those
points and the lines connecting those points. Naturally, had I lived longer in St.
Louis, or had I been of the age when strolls again became part of my daily regi-
men, my relationship to the city might have been different. However, I built up a
strong image of St. Louis—the long vistas of avenues, the spaciousness and green-
ery of Forest Park, the railway station and masonry gate that were symbolic of
­nineteenth-­century culture, and the massive concrete piers of steel bridges—with
little physical contact of that kind.2
My life in St. Louis thus began within an extremely simple temporal and
spatial framework, with the activity of the School of Architecture at its center.
A simple life can also mean a full life. Architects today carry datebooks full of
appointments, and life seems to be largely a matter of getting through those ap-
pointments, one after another. Architects back in the 1950s, whether in practice
or in teaching, were surely not as tied up with engagements as we are today. A

20
person in his late twenties (as I was then) had hardly any appointments at all. For
me, this was an era full of chance encounters and events that had the potential to
be turning points in life.
The 1950s were an exciting time to be a part of the architectural world in the
United States, particularly in places like New York and California.3 On a regional
level, the practitioners active in a given city and the buildings that provoked dis-
cussion were clear indices of the vitality of local architectural schools. Factors
such as the caliber of architects that a school was able to attract as permanent and
visiting faculty, the quality of the commissions that a city might offer those faculty
members, and the number of job opportunities available locally for ambitious
graduates were all vital benchmarks in gauging the potential of that architecture
department.
As I recall, in 1956 St. Louis boasted many excellent buildings constructed
from the nineteenth to the early twentieth century, including a number of Neo-
classicist works and at least one well-­known example of the Chicago School, the
Wainwright Building by Louis Sullivan. However, there were very few works
of recent contemporary architecture that might attract visitors from outside the
region. One such work was the synagogue by Erich Mendelsohn in University
City. The St. Louis Airport, which was to become a representative work of 1950s
concrete shell structure, was still under construction at that time, and the comple-
tion of the Gateway Arch by Eero Saarinen was still several years away. As for local
practitioners, Harris Armstrong was introduced to me as the city’s most senior
modern architect; another firm working in a modern idiom, Smith and Enzeroth,
also maintained close ties to the university. Still, for a city with a population of
nearly 850,000, St. Louis could not boast a wealth of human resources as far as
architects were concerned.
Passonneau was probably more aware than anyone else of St. Louis’s deficien-
cies in this area. One of the most important strategies of his tenure as dean was
to make students aware that the world of architecture was much larger than what
most local architects, faculty, and students of the School of Architecture imagined.
His predecessor, Buford Pickens, though a brilliant architectural historian with
many contacts with the design world, had not capitalized sufficiently on those
assets during his deanship. Passonneau was determined not to commit the same
error, and so he set about assembling a young, international team of design in-
structors for his students. He invited the Lithuanian architect George Anselevicius

F O R M AT I V E Y E A R S 21
to teach at Washington University the same year I arrived.4 Roger Montgomery
came from Harvard a year later.5 Constantinos Michaelides arrived from Greece
and William Roberts from England to join the faculty in 1960, and later Team X
members such as Aldo van Eyck, Jacob Bakema, and Shadrach Woods were invited
as visiting professors during the years I spent at Washington University.
During this period, the university also strengthened its domestic ties, reaching
out to architects not just on the East Coast but also in Chicago. Passonneau was
already well acquainted with many partners of SOM in Chicago, and we young
instructors also had contacts in the city. Ben Weese, for example, was a close friend
of mine from our days at Harvard. In graduate school, I had spent Christmas with
his family and had been overwhelmed by the rich architectural legacy of Chicago
as well as the intensity of its contemporary architecture scene. I came to realize
that Chicago held not only an enormous wealth of buildings by Chicago School
architects but also the greatest number of works by two of the twentieth century’s
greatest masters, Frank Lloyd Wright and Mies van der Rohe. The next genera-
tion of Chicago architects was also full of promise, producing figures such as Ben’s
older brother Harry Weese, Fred Keck, and Bruce Graham of SOM.
I discovered in my first semester as an instructor that virtually none of my
students had ever gone to look at buildings in Chicago. I promptly decided to
organize a weekend trip to the city for them during the semester. We split up
into several cars and made a wonderful adventure of this trip, going as far north
as Racine, Wisconsin, to visit Wright’s stunning headquarters complex for the
Johnson Wax Company.
By 1956, more than a decade had passed since World War II, but at Washington
University, as at Harvard, a considerable number of students were there studying
on the GI Bill. Still in my late twenties, I was younger than several of my students.
Talking to one of them, I found he had been stationed in Tokyo during the Oc-
cupation. I had been in high school when the war ended in 1945, and there was a
time when the tall, gun-­toting American soldiers I saw around me had seemed as
strange as beings from another planet. Ten years later, there we were in the United
States, an instructor from Japan and an ex‑GI as his student. The fact that our
relationship was no different from other ­teacher-­student relationships seemed to
me a reflection of the ­large-­hearted character of Americans.
The design studio met every week on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and
then there were the preparations and reviews. Under Passonneau’s superb leader-

22
ship, the School of Architecture gradually came to be known not only in the rest
of the United States but in the international architectural community, and my
colleagues and I were able to lead fulfilling lives as teachers.

A F i r s t C ommi ssi o n: Stei nb er g Ha l l

As a young architect, however, I must confess I was not satisfied with every as-
pect of my professional life. As someone from abroad, I did not have—nor did I
much expect—opportunities for actual design work in the area. In addition, the
workload at the university did not permit me to look for part-­time work. One
outlet for my budding career as an architect was to participate in competitions.
Although design competitions were not as frequently held in the United States as
in Europe or Japan, I had a chance to enter a few while at Washington University,
including those for new city halls in Boston and Ottawa. Although I did not place
in either of those competitions, I did manage to become a finalist, together with
a few studio colleagues, in a competition for a housing project in San Francisco’s
Diamond Heights.
Soon a new opportunity arose to launch my career as a designer of buildings.
In my second year at the university, former dean Buford Pickens—now serving
as director of the Campus Planning Office—asked me to help devise the various
planning projects that had come his way. The Campus Planning Office was a quite
modest affair, occupying the northeastern end of Givens Hall and including Pick-
ens’s office, a corner for his secretary, and a single workroom for the staff—which
meant me, essentially, having been given the title of Campus Planning Associate.
Whenever models or drawings had to be prepared, I would find students to do
part-­time work. Although my responsibilities were modest, I welcomed the op-
portunity to take part in campus planning; the hours were flexible, and I often
worked late into the night in the workroom.
Early in 1958, Pickens told me that a new building was to be donated by Mrs.
Steinberg, a widow living just south of the campus, to the School of Architecture
and the School of Art. He asked me to develop a proposal. The program called
for a library, an auditorium and gallery to be shared by both schools, and offices
and special classrooms for the art history department. I found the project quite
interesting, especially as it was closely related to the School of Architecture. I was
given a free hand in the design. Pickens was content to give me friendly counsel

F O R M AT I V E Y E A R S 23
from time to time and never suggested an alternative scheme of his own. Dean
Passonneau, however, being an architect and a future user of the facility, never
hesitated to offer more detailed advice. Drawing on his background as a structural
designer, he offered professional guidance on the ­folded-­plate structure at the core
of my design proposal. At the time of this unexpected commission, I was still a
young, nameless architect; looking back now, I see that without the warm support
given by these two men, it would have been difficult for me to realize my design.
Neither the donor nor the university exerted any pressure. Being young, I did not
fully realize then what a rare opportunity I was being given: to be able to devote
myself, by myself, to the translation of a wonderful program into a building.6
There was a great deal of interest in the potential of new concrete structures
in the United States at the time. Eero Saarinen’s TWA Terminal at Idlewild (now
JFK) Airport in New York and Gyo Obata’s concrete shell structure for the St.
Louis Airport were the focus of great attention in the architectural world. Obata
later became a founding partner of HOK, headquartered in St. Louis, where he
designed another innovative concrete shell structure for the city’s planetarium.
­Folded-­plate concrete structures were also becoming a popular solution among
architects for creating long-­span, columnless interiors.
The site for Steinberg Hall, between Bixby Hall and Givens Hall, was by
no means large. I felt that, if possible, Steinberg Hall ought to be more ethereal
in character than the two box-­shaped buildings flanking it; this, rather than an
inherent structural necessity for long spans, led to the ­folded-­plate, cantilevered
roof parti of this building. The study progressed smoothly, and by spring of 1958
the proposal was ready to be shown to Mrs. Steinberg. I had students build the
­sixteenth-­scale presentation model, but I did all the perspectives and drawings

1.4 A first commission:

Steinberg Hall on Washington
University campus, St. Louis,
completed in 1960.

24
myself. Mrs. Steinberg liked the proposal from the start; I later heard that she
declared her willingness to donate all the funds required for the building, with
the stipulation that it be constructed exactly as designed. I have no way of know-
ing if her statement was simply an expression of her warm feelings toward the
design or a strategy for forestalling the kind of outside criticisms that might have
compromised the process of its realization. In either case, the trust and generosity
implicit in her statement demonstrated the spirit of patronage that has long been
an essential factor in advancing architectural culture.
It was through this encounter with an exceptional patron that I had the good
fortune to design my first work in the United States. Around this time I met
with a second stroke of good fortune that would also have a major influence on
my subsequent career as an architect: I was chosen that year to receive a Gra-
ham Foundation Fellowship. The Foundation had in the previous year established
generous fellowships to enable architects and artists from all over the world to
engage in research, free from teaching and other responsibilities. The grant of ten
thousand dollars that went with the fellowship was the biggest in the art world at
the time, and was sufficient to support an artist for about two years. The research
theme I had proposed to the Graham Foundation was a comparative study of
urbanism in Asia, the Middle East, and Europe.
Entering my sixth year of life in the United States, I felt myself at a turning
point, and the grant gave me a golden opportunity. It did not take long, once the
news of the fellowship came, to decide to embark on a journey. Through Passon-
neau’s kind intervention, I was able to get a two-­year leave from the university.
With the basic design of Steinberg Hall proceeding smoothly by the end of spring
1958, I could hand over the remaining work on its construction drawings to a

F O R M AT I V E Y E A R S 25
local architectural firm, Schwarz & Van Hoefen, without much regret.7 I returned
to Tokyo briefly to organize what would become two years of travel and study
through cities, towns, and landscapes across several continents and cultures.

A Westwar d Jo ur ney

Just as in the flow of history the significance of a phenomenon is understood only

after the passage of several decades, the period in one’s life that was most critical
is often recognized only much later. The two years from 1958 to 1960 that I spent
on the Graham Foundation Fellowship were an unforgettable period of my life;
perhaps I was certain of this even then. The only obligation for the nine fellows
chosen in 1958 was to gather at the Foundation headquarters in Chicago for a
week at the beginning of the fellowship year, in September 1958. The fellows
that year included the Indian architect Balkrishna V. Doshi (with whom I have
remained close friends ever since), the Spanish sculptor Eduardo Chillida, the
Cuban Surrealist painter Wilfredo Lam, and the ­Austrian-­born architect Frederick
Kiesler. Kiesler differed from the rest of us in being of a more advanced age and
having an already established career—he was well known for his design of the
“Endless House”; his lively wit helped to galvanize the group’s sense of fellowship.
After this initial meeting week in Chicago, we went our separate ways.
I made two long trips in 1959 and 1960 to Southeast Asia, India, the Middle
East, and Europe. My intention was to study cities and their formation in a number
of different climates and cultures. The book Fudo by philosopher Tetsuro Watsuji
(1889–­1960)8 had made a deep impression on me when I was a college student; it is
an excellent work of comparative civilization of three regions, based on observations
Watsuji made while traveling from Japan to Europe and experiencing in succession
the monsoon region of Asia, the desert region of the Middle East, and the meadow-
lands of Europe. My own journey, to some degree, retraced Watsuji’s steps.
I will never forget the thrill I felt on seeing the Mediterranean for the first
time in my life. I had traveled from Damascus, Syria, by way of the Golan Heights,
and was on my way to Beirut when I stopped on a small hill in Byblos and saw
the blue sea in the distance. I visited not only ancient ruins, famous temples and
palaces, but also contemporary buildings that were much discussed at the time. I
made a special point of going to those by Le Corbusier.

26
 Of the many cities and villages I visited on my two extended trips, the ones
that made the greatest impression on me were communities of houses built with
walls of sun-­dried brick and tiled roofs, of the kind that are scattered along the
Mediterranean coast in countless numbers. The sight of those houses, with their
features thrown into sharp relief by deep shadows, linked and piled on top of
one another on the hillside under the strong sun and against a deep blue sky,
was remarkable in itself. But what was even more striking was the fact that the
community—that is, the collective form—was composed of quite simple formal
and spatial elements, such as rooms arranged around a small courtyard. At that
time architects and historians in Japan had not yet begun to undertake surveys of
villages. I saw in those collective forms from the Mediterranean both an expres-
sion of regional culture and a body of wisdom accumulated over many years.
Here, as nowhere else, I became aware of the existence of a historical and decisive
relationship between cities and architecture. For those cultures, creating buildings
and creating cities were one and the same thing. The significance of architectural
typology, the principles of grouping, and the use of architecture by society as a
mnemonic device all arise from that phenomenon. During this period I began to
reflect on various issues of urbanism that I had barely considered in my first ten
years in the field of architecture.
The memory of collective forms in Middle Eastern and Mediterranean com-
munities—and the architectural devices that made those communities possible—
remained with me long afterward and led me to write out some thoughts on the
principles of architectural and urban grouping—informally at first, later in essays
for publication. Eventually my ideas on group form would mature and develop
into an ­English-­language publication: a little red booklet entitled Investigations in
Collective Form, published by the School of Architecture of Washington University
and reprinted in part 2 below.

Part i c i pati o n i n Metab o l i sm

In 1958 an idea emerged within Japan’s architectural and design circles to host an
international conference and to invite leading practitioners from abroad to partici-
pate. Following a groundswell of support, preparations began for the first World
Design Conference, which would take place in Tokyo in May 1960.

F O R M AT I V E Y E A R S 27
 A group of architects centered on Junzo Sakakura and Kenzo Tange took pri-
mary responsibility for organizing the architectural portion of the conference. The
conference director, Takashi Asada, however, was on close terms with a separate
architectural faction centered on the young Japanese architects Kiyonori Kikutake
and Kisho Kurokawa and the critic and editor of Shinkenchiku magazine, Noboru
Kawazoe. Around that time, Kikutake, Kurokawa, and Kawazoe were attempting
to make a statement about a new kind of urbanism for Japan. In Europe, architects
from the Italian Futurists and Russian Constructivists to Le Corbusier had been
developing and presenting proposals of their own, independent of any commis-
sion or the prospect of a commission, for a long time. In Japan, however, few had
previously offered such unsolicited ideas in the architectural world. Asada’s con-
nection to the young architects led to discussions about the possibility of making
the 1960 conference an occasion for airing such new proposals.
In the fall of 1958 I was temporarily back in Japan preparing for the next two
years of travels as a fellow of the Graham Foundation. It was then that my acquain-
tance with these architects began and that, with the designer Kiyoshi Awazu, the
group movement called Metabolism was formed. Those developments eventually
led to the publication of a manifesto entitled Metabolism 1960.
My own contribution to this manifesto was an essay entitled “Toward a
Group Form,” coauthored with Masato Otaka and reflecting impressions gathered
on my journey that year to cities and villages of the Mediterranean and Middle
East. At the time of our essay, many people, including prominent architects and
politicians, were discussing the development of large tracts of land to the west of
Shinjuku Station, formerly occupied by a water purification plant. Concurrent
with our essay, Otaka and I made a joint urban design proposal for West Shinjuku,

1.5 Proposal for new urban

development in West Shinjuku,
coauthored by Maki and Otaka
as their contribution to the
manifesto Metabolism 1960.

28
intended not so much as an actual scheme for that area but as a demonstration
of the idea of group form. The proposal clearly was not intended to replicate
the actual forms of villages seen on my journey but, rather, to confirm in more
abstract terms what I had discovered: the notion of an urban order based on a
collection of elements. I believed that this notion offered an alternative paradigm
to the kinds of order that architects and Utopians had been proposing since the
start of the twentieth century, based on enormous structures built on the scale of
civil engineering works.
When Metabolism 1960 was produced, Masato Otaka, the eldest member of
our group, was 37; Kurokawa, the youngest, was 26; Kikutake and I were both 32.
Except for Kikutake, none of us had an office of our own yet. We did not imagine
that with Metabolism 1960 we would suddenly attract such great interest from the
international architectural world, and that Metabolism itself would subsequently
come to be seen by historians as one of the important architectural movements
of the 1960s.
Why did Metabolism 1960 attract so much attention and make such a powerful
impression on overseas intellectuals at the time? Perhaps it was because, as Joan
Ockman has written in Architecture Culture 1943–­1968, our proposals combined
technology and symbolism in architectural forms that were more specific than
other utopian proposals advanced up to that time.9
In his book Metabolism,10 the critic Hajime Yatsuka records a conversation
between two members of Archigram, Dennis Crompton and Peter Cook, that
touches on their amazement and impression on first encountering the Metabolist
manifesto. What was noteworthy and made the proposals seem so fresh to them
was the way the road system, capsules, and housing were integrated. In particular,

1.6 Ocean City project by

Kiyonori Kikutake, 1959.

F O R M AT I V E Y E A R S 29
the roads proposed by Kurokawa were in smooth, ­spaghetti-­like tubes that en-
twined, twisted, and climbed. Metabolist works seemed almost like continuous
organisms. The other thing that impressed them in particular was the boldness of
Kikutake’s Ocean City proposal.
Around the time of the World Design Conference, I recall our group assembling
in a small inn in Ginza at the invitation of Takashi Asada, our mentor and advisor
(though not himself a member of Metabolism). Sitting on the tatami and drinking
beer, we discussed our views and proposals in a free and open way, unmindful of the
differences in our ages. Such a gathering would be unimaginable today.
Our group was bound together by shared ideals and experiences. Asada, Kuro­
kawa, Isozaki, and I had all belonged to the Tange Atelier at one time or another;
and Tange was, in his own way, always conscious of work by the younger Ki-
kutake. I think all of us believed that the time had come for Japan to stop viewing
its architecture and cities in terms of achieving parity with the West; instead, we
could now present to the world bold new ideas on urbanism and architecture that
were uniquely our own. That belief—and the fact that, apart from myself, we had
little firsthand knowledge of the West—probably accounted for the boldness of
those proposals.
From 1960 on, there were plans to expand our group, to create a slightly
looser organization around the central figure of Tange that would include Isozaki
and other young architects; but these plans were never realized because ­would‑be
members became too busy with their own work. The Metabolist manifesto was
not followed by a second publication. Metabolism is widely regarded as a ­short-
­lived movement compared with Team X or Archigram. However, a number of
realized projects, such as Kurokawa’s Nakagin Capsule Tower Building (1972),
Kikutake’s Aquapolis in Okinawa (1975)—a smaller version of his Ocean City—
and the Low-­Cost Housing in Lima, Peru designed by Kikutake, Kurokawa, and
myself (1972), can claim to have tested and, in some measure, achieved the Me-
tabolist ideal of growth and change. Tange’s 1960 “Plan for Tokyo” was clearly an
elaboration and extension of Kikutake’s Ocean City idea. And even today, we still
remember the Osaka Exposition in 1970 as an event that brought together the
­avant-­garde architects of the day and enabled them to develop their own indi-
vidual ideas—not least of all Tange, who was responsible for the Festival Plaza.
The specific, fresh architectural character of Metabolism can be seen both as a
consequence of the Zeitgeist of Japan’s postwar economic miracle and as a product of

30
Japan’s rapidly maturing architectural culture, increasingly centered around Tange
during those years. That movement led to Japan’s emergence as a global center of
new architectural ideas, a position it continues to occupy today.11

Team X : T he ­Bag no l s-­s ur -­C è z e Co nfer en c e

Among the leading American architects invited to Tokyo for the 1960 World De-
sign Conference were Paul Rudolph, whom I knew from my days in Cambridge,
and Louis Kahn, whose lecture I translated into Japanese. Other invitees included
the British ­husband-­and-­wife architectural team Peter and Alison Smithson. At
the time of the conference, I was planning my second trip to Europe, and the
Smithsons invited me to participate as an observer at the Team X meeting they
would be holding that July in the small city of ­Bagnols-­sur-­Cèze in the south of
France.
The core participants at the ­Bagnols-­sur-­Cèze conference were Jacob Bakema
and Aldo van Eyck from the Netherlands; the Smithsons and John Voelker from
Great Britain; Giancarlo De Carlo from Italy; Ralph Erskine, a Briton working
in Sweden; Georges Candilis, a Greek working in France; Shadrach Woods, an
American working in France; Oskar Hansen from Poland; and Stefan Wewerka
from Germany. Many of them brought their wives and children. The mayor of
­Bagnols-­sur-­Cèze had kindly made a room in the city hall available, and the
members of Team X brought project drawings and photographs and hung them
on the walls. The conference was held in English, and took approximately five
days. Half a day was devoted to each project under discussion, and at times there
were intense arguments. Today most international architecture conferences are
formal affairs with severe time constraints, but that meeting was quite informal
in character. Members felt a strong camaraderie, even amid fierce exchanges of
views, and a sense of pride in being in the ­avant-­garde of the time—the atmo-
sphere was not dissimilar to that of our discussions on Metabolism at that time in
Japan.
The focal point of the ­Bagnols-­sur-­Cèze conference was housing, especially
the question of how great numbers might be dealt with in designing collective
housing in cities. The members of Team X were trying to establish a new urban
typology from the architectural vocabulary of modernism. Beyond application
to housing typology, the theory of groups and principles of formal manipulation

F O R M AT I V E Y E A R S 31
concealed in groups were also intently discussed, using vernacular African villages
as examples. Van Eyck had led a number of architects and photographers in cross-
ing the Sahara Desert the year before. It was also at this conference that Van Eyck’s
famous Orphanage in Amsterdam and Woods’s scheme for the Free University in
Berlin were discussed.
The members of Team X, who had joined forces in rebellion against the doc-
trinaire ways of CIAM, were mostly in their late thirties and forties. In exploring
the relationship of architectural form to regionalism, hence imbuing architecture
with human and cultural associations, they were attempting to combat the uni-
formity of existing urban theory. As is evident from subsequent history, however,
the enormous monster called the contemporary city rejected the establishment of
new typologies envisioned by these European architects.
Bagnols-­sur-­Cèze was also a place for personal interaction. The morning ses-
sion was interrupted around one o’clock, and a ­multi-­course meal in the European
style was served in the roadside restaurant of the hotel where everyone was staying.
The group would move to the poolside after the meal, and then the afternoon
session would be held until around eight in the evening. Many architects’ wives sat
in a corner of the room, knitting and listening in on the discussion. From eight
until late at night there would be a ­multi-­course meal again. During the dinner, of
course, the discussion would continue. At times, in between meetings, we would
go visit Roman ruins in Avignon or go to some nighttime festival to carouse. It
was in this setting—equally intense in its social and intellectual dimensions—that
I became acquainted with a number of leading architects from Europe, many of
whom I would continue to meet in the following decades.12

1.7 Meeting of Team X members in

­ agnols-­sur-­Cèze, France, July 1960.
B
Fumihiko Maki is seated to the far left.

32
T h e Sea s o n o f Ur b ani sm

The years following my Graham Foundation Fellowship were packed with en-
counters with people and architecture. Remaining in contact still with the Tange
Laboratory, and having participated in the World Design Conference, the Me-
tabolist group, and Team X’s ­Bagnols-­sur-­Cèze conference—all in 1960—I was
developing a wide network of contacts with architects both established and newly
emerging in Japan and abroad. I felt the ease of not belonging to any organization
and possessed all the free time I wanted. It was a life filled with dreams but no am-
bition, in which everyone was quite sociable. It was an era when even celebrated
architects had control over their time and were not overburdened with jobs and
the various outside activities that now come with jobs.
Returning to Washington University after my two-­year fellowship had ended
in 1960, I moved to an apartment on the first floor of a low-­r ise building near
Rosebury Street, on a hill south of the campus. Other young instructors in the
School of Architecture also lived in this district, and there was a great deal of
interaction among the families. I remember that we often went out together for
meals near Gaslight Square, then a thriving pocket of gentrification in midtown St.
Louis.13 With Steinberg Hall now complete, I undertook a number of new projects
at the Campus Planning Office, including the design of a small meditation chapel.
At Washington University, as at other architecture schools, the 1960s were an
era when studio instructors began to focus on urban design—that is, the relation-
ship between the city and architecture. We gradually began to emphasize the need
to approach design from the context of the given site or the surrounding urban
condition rather than considering buildings to be autonomous objects. In 1961 a

F O R M AT I V E Y E A R S 33
new graduate program emphasizing urban design got under way with ten students,
many of them from foreign countries (Denmark, Austria, India, Japan), as the first
entering class. At that time, the only graduate programs known for their urban de-
sign emphasis were Harvard’s GSD under Sert and the Architecture Department at
the University of Pennsylvania, where David Crane was the driving force. Some
years later Colin Rowe developed his own distinctive approach to teaching urban
design at Cornell. At Washington University, naturally, it was Passonneau who led
the new undertaking, while Roger Montgomery and I participated as advisors in
the development of the curriculum. As with the design commission for Steinberg
Hall, everything was much more informal and expeditious than it would be today:
the dynamics of our small group of instructors was responsible for writing a new
chapter in the history of the School of Architecture. Through our efforts to define
a new program and curriculum in urban design, our students came into contact
with a broader range of reality and ideas and gradually began to discover a new
architectural world full of possibilities.
In 1962, I decided to accept a new invitation from Sert to join in the GSD’s
Urban Design faculty, and so I left St. Louis to spend another three years in Cam-
bridge before returning to Japan to embark on new activities in that country. In
the GSD’s urban design program, the atmosphere among both the faculty and the
students was decidedly non-­American. In particular, people from Europe, though
mostly modernist in outlook, had strong views and positions with respect to Eu-
ropean history. To them, history, whether something to be affirmed or rejected,
was an essential part of their education, a cultural foundation that they had totally
assimilated. Kunio Maekawa, Junzo Sakakura, and Takamasa Yoshizaka—leading
Japanese architects with whom I became acquainted around that time—seemed to
me to have something in common with such European architects, whereas many
American architects, even those who were well known, gave the impression of
being simply practitioners.
Many Team X members were invited to Harvard and MIT as visiting profes-
sors in the years following the ­Bagnols-­sur-­Cèze conference. I subsequently had
the opportunity to teach studios together with a number of them. The two with
whom I was closest and from whom I learned the most were De Carlo and Van
Eyck. Van Eyck and I taught at both Washington University and Harvard Univer-
sity at the same time and had opportunities to spend a great deal of time together.
He had a profound knowledge of European architectural history, literature, and

34
modern art. Van Eyck was also an incomparable storyteller, and in his words the
Maison de Verre (1931) of Pierre Chareau became a house out of a modernist fairy
tale. A man who sympathized with the philosophy of Martin Buber, he wrote
monologues from time to time and was always in search of a foe to combat.
Indeed, it was through contacts with Team X members that I became aware
of a richer, more varied history of modern architecture in Europe. Around 1962,
Peter Smithson edited an issue of Architectural Design that introduced representa-
tive European buildings from the 1910s to the 1930s—a period he referred to as
“the heroic age” of modernism. Those buildings have since been taken up again
by magazines, but very few of them had appeared in Giedion’s Space, Time and
Architecture.14 It was a time when the history of modern architecture was begin-
ning to be reexamined, as witnessed by the rediscovery of the Futurists by Reyner
Banham. Colin Rowe’s essays on the early works of Le Corbusier were at last
attracting attention. Masterpieces of early modernist architecture such as Johannes
Duiker’s Zonnestraal Sanatorium (1931), Amsterdam Cinema (1934), and Grand
Hotel (1936), and J. A. Brinkman’s apartment building in Rotterdam (1922)—all
of which had somehow been neglected by midcentury historians—were redis-
covered. It was also around this time that I visited the Schroeder House (1924)
in Utrecht together with Van Eyck. Mrs. Schroeder herself showed us around,
and we were given a small autographed pamphlet. I also went to see Brinkman’s
Cigarette Factory (1930) and other contemporary works, rediscovering in them
the ­avant-­garde character and the mature expression of modernism.

M y M o d e r ni sm

It was around 1965 that I returned to Japan and opened an architectural office. At
about this time, people’s conception of architecture underwent a major change
as a result of a series of events—the Vietnam War, the global energy crisis, the
student revolt that began in Paris and spread rapidly to the United States and
Japan—that are now understood to have been historically inevitable rather than
isolated, chance occurrences. The attempt to understand architecture as an auton-
omous discipline represented a rejection of functionalist, doctrinaire modernism
and foretold the coming of postmodernism.
Looking back today, however, we might take a more moderate view of the
historical rupture claimed by postmodernists, for despite the intellectual crisis of

F O R M AT I V E Y E A R S 35
the 1960s and 1970s, it is possible to say that modernism never simply disappeared,
or even waned. Modernism may have changed its guise with the times, but it has
continued to exist into the ­twenty-­first century because it is in fact a system of
change. Modernism has permitted changes to occur from within, but in the end
it has subsumed those changes. That it has been able to survive with its essential
character intact for more than one hundred years, despite the various formal and
spatial adaptations that have been made due to drastic changes in technology, envi-
ronment, function, and urban life, is itself proof of the resilience of the system.
In my work I have always tried to ascertain what remains constant and what
undergoes change in modernism. The first phase of Hillside Terrace belongs to the
early period of the practice I began upon my return to Japan, and the sixth phase
of that same project was completed in 1992. Each phase was in itself a fairly modest
project, but work on Hillside Terrace as a whole took approximately ­twenty-­five
years. A consistently modernist idiom was employed throughout those years to
create a group form unified spatially, but encompassing changes in form reflecting
the differences in the periods in which the individual buildings were constructed.
The work expresses a view of architecture that has been shaped by various experi-
ences described above. Similarly, the series of designs I produced in the 1980s—
beginning with the Fujisawa Gymnasium and the Spiral Building and ending with
the Tokyo Metropolitan Gymnasium—follows the arc of an alternative modern-
ism that I have long considered. These more overtly figural projects reflect criti-
cisms leveled by postmodernists toward the earlier, doctrinaire modernism. I have
been interested, however, not in the use of direct historical references typical of
postmodernist vocabulary but, rather, in a reconsideration of more basic principles
of architecture that can be observed in history. My concern was also with the
expression of a new material sensibility in the surfaces of ­buildings.
I believe that modernism is not an architectural style that changes completely
every three years, like fashion; rather, it is a more continuous, cumulative move-
ment. Commentary on architecture is not merely an ­avant-­garde activity but also
a “rearguard” action. Distant yet distinct memories of the Tsuchiura House and
of foreign ships I saw as a child were stirred several decades later when I saw for
the first time Pierre Chareau’s Maison de Verre in Paris, with its large wall of glass
blocks backlit by soft winter light; the railing in the mezzanine of Tsuchiura’s
house is strikingly similar to the railing of the stairwell in Duiker’s Zonnestraal
Sanatorium that I visited thirty years later. Although these encounters all left vivid

36
impressions, each had entirely different meanings: it is by examining the differ-
ences in meanings that one’s individual modernism develops.
New ideas and sensibilities are always required of contemporary architects.
The architects I have mentioned in this chapter—talented practitioners, idealistic
theorists, passionate educators—each played an important role in his or her re-
spective era and made a critical contribution to architecture and to contemporary
society. Many of them have died, and of the rest, not a few are in their old age. Yet
it seems to me that, compared to many of today’s architects who are the offspring
of the information society, my predecessors and mentors had far more attractive
human qualities. By “new ideas and sensibilities,” I mean that architects must be
flexible in thought; at the same time, those architects who have gone ahead of
us have shown by the way they lived that a certain tenacity is also required. The
way architecture and architects ought to be—that is the theme with which I have
wrestled since my first encounter with modernism.

F O R M AT I V E Y E A R S 37
 C o llec t i ve F o r m 2
C o l l e c t i v e F o r m : A Preface

In the fall of 1960, at the age of 32, I returned to teaching at Washington Univer-
sity after two years of travels through Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. Over the
course of the following year, using notes I had made during my travels, I wrote
a paper describing three paradigms of collective form that would subsequently
become the first chapter of a booklet entitled Investigations in Collective Form. I
sent copies of this “underground” publication to the members of Team X as well
as to American architects and urban designers with whom I had recently become
acquainted. I received an unexpectedly large number of responses from people
like Walter Gropius, Kevin Lynch, and Jacob Bakema, who kindly took the time
to send me their comments.
One reason my paper met with such a response was that the early 1960s were
a time when critical questions were being asked about the relationship between
architecture and the city. The notion of megastructure—a popular approach to
merging architecture and urban design into a single system—had arisen and was
being tested in both theoretical and actual built projects. Although it is out of favor
today, the megastructure must be seen in the context of the time as an attempt
to expand the realm of architectural possibility based on an unrestrained faith in
technology. Many leading architects, including the members of Team X, took a
humanist and regionalist approach and rejected megastructures, but still they were
troubled by “the issue of great numbers”—that is, the effectiveness of architects
in dealing with the problem of housing large numbers of people in the postwar
period. My approach, which was to study the relationship between architecture
and the city from the perspective of collections of buildings and ­quasi-­buildings,
offered something new to this discussion.
 My experience in visiting Mediterranean hill towns and Middle Eastern vil-
lages—each a convincing urban unity that had evolved over time without the
guidance of an architect’s master plan—convinced me that ultimately, in a truly
organic form such as a city, the urban order can be maintained only if the au-
tonomy of individual buildings and districts is assured. The notion of starting
with individual elements to arrive at a whole was not only elaborated in my essay
introducing the notion of collective form, but it subsequently became an essential
theme for my own architectural aesthetic and logic.
Investigations in Collective Form was published by Washington University in
1964. It was a small pamphlet with a red cover, about eighty pages long, and
included an appendix in which a number of urban design projects I was working
on at the time were introduced.
The first section may appear at first glance to present the three paradigms of
collective form—compositional form, group form, and megaform—as opposing,
antagonistic patterns. On the contrary, the three patterns or modes are not mutu-
ally exclusive but can coexist in one configuration; they define the three basic
relationships that always exist between individual elements and the whole.
One premise of my argument was that the elements of compositional form
are architecturally more self-­sufficient than those of either group form or mega-
form, but perhaps I ought to have undertaken a more extended analysis of modes
of exterior space and the interstices among elements within the composition.
My lack of experience in actually designing buildings may have accounted for
this oversight. It was only later, in planning projects such as Hillside Terrace, Ris-
sho University, Keio University’s ­Shonan-­Fujisawa campus, and, most recently,
Republic Polytechnic campus in Singapore that I gradually gained experience in
designing collective forms and learned that their coherence depends as much on
the creation of exterior spaces as it does on architectural forms. Through these
experiences I also discovered a more subtle technique: by emphasizing the au-
tonomy of individual architectural elements and deliberately creating weak link-
ages between them, one enables those elements to become more distinct indices
of time and place. Both opposition and harmony characterize urban relationships
on many different levels, and their cumulative effect determines our actual image
of the city.
The second section, which I wrote with Jerry Goldberg—then a research
student at Washington University—was an essay on collections of elements from

C OLLE C TIVE F ORM / A P R E F A C E 41

the perspective of linkage on various levels. If each building—that is, each struc-
tural unit of the city—has its own lifespan, then different elements are apt to
be replaced at different times. The relationship that ought to be created among
elements of different ages becomes an issue of organic linkage among elements.
The city can be seen as the sum total of countless events being generated simul-
taneously. When the architect or planner introduces something new under such
circumstances, that action fits into certain operational categories. Our essay on
linkage attempted to reveal the stance of the designer with respect to the city in
the process and method of the particular operation; the historical context that
each individual carries with him is made apparent by such operations. This argu-
ment recognizes that the city as a physical place and social system depends on the
autonomy of individual elements and seeks ways in which each individual ele-
ment may participate in the whole.

42
I n v e st i g at i o n s i n collect iv e form

C o l l e c t i v e F o r m : Three Parad igm s

B e g i nni ng

There is no more concerned observer of our changing society than the urban de-
signer. Charged with giving form—with perceiving and contributing order—to
agglomerates of building, highways, and green spaces in which men and women
have increasingly come to work and live, they stand between technology and
human need and seek to make the first a servant, for the second must be para-
mount in a civilized world.
For the moment, we are designers only, interested in technology and order
insofar as these may be divorced from the political and the economic. Of course,
the progenitors of any formal idea include politics and economics. The reason,
in fact, for searching for new formal concepts in contemporary cities lies in the
magnitude of relatively recent changes in urban problems. Our urban society is
characterized by (1) coexistence and conflict of amazingly heterogeneous institu-
tions and individuals; (2) unprecedented rapid and extensive transformations in
the physical structure of society; (3) rapid communications methods; and (4) tech-
nological progress and its impact upon regional culture.
The force of these contemporary urban characteristics makes it impossible to
visualize urban form as did Roman military chiefs, or Renaissance architects such
as Sangallo and Michelangelo. Nor can we easily perceive a hierarchical order, as
did the original CIAM theorists in the quite recent past. We must now see our
urban society as a dynamic field of interrelated forces. It is a set of mutually in-
dependent variables in a rapidly expanding infinite series. Any order introduced
within the pattern of forces contributes to a state of dynamic equilibrium—an
equilibrium that will change in character as time passes.
 Our concern here is not the “master plan” but the “master program,” since
the latter term includes a time dimension. Given a set of goals, the “master pro-
gram” suggests several alternatives for achieving them, the use of one or another
of which is decided by the passage of time and its effect on the ordering concept.
As a physical correlation of the master program, there are “master forms” that
differ from buildings in that they, too, respond to the dictates of time.
Our problem is this: do we have in urban design an adequate spatial language
(an appropriate master form) with which we can create and organize space within
the master program? Cities today tend to be visually and physically confused.
They are monotonous patterns of static elements. They lack visual and physical
character consonant with the functions and technology that compose them. They
also lack elasticity and flexibility. Our cities must change as social and economic
uses dictate, and yet they must not be “temporary” in the worst visual sense. We
lack an adequate visual language to cope with the superhuman scale of modern
highway systems and with views from airplanes. The visual and physical concepts
at our disposal have to do with single buildings, and with the compositional means
for organizing them.
The wealth of our architectural heritage is immense. One cursory look at
architectural history is sufficient for us to see that the whole development is char-
acterized by an immense human desire to make buildings grand and perfect. True,
they have often mirrored the strengths of their civilizations. They have produced
the pyramids, the Parthenon, Gothic cathedrals, and the Seagram Building. This is
still a prevailing attitude among many architects—the creation of something new
and splendid in order to outdo others.
A theory of architecture has evolved through this one issue: how one can cre-
ate perfect single buildings. A striking fact against this phenomenon is that there is
almost a complete absence of any coherent theory beyond that of single buildings.
We have so long accustomed ourselves to conceiving of buildings as separate enti-
ties that we now suffer from an inadequacy of spatial language to make meaningful
environments. This situation has prompted me to investigate the nature of collec-
tive form. Collective form concerns groups of buildings and ­quasi-­buildings—the
segments of our cities. Collective form is, however, a collection not of unrelated,
separate buildings, but of buildings that have reasons to be together.
Cities, towns, and villages throughout the world do not lack rich collections of
collective form. Most of them have simply evolved; they have not been designed.

COLLECT I VE FORM / I N VESTIGATIO N S I N C OLLE C TIVE F ORM 45

This explains why today so many professionals, both architects and ­planners, often
fail to make meaningful collective forms—meaningful in order to give the forms
a forceful raison d’être in our society.
The following analysis has evolved through two questions: first, how has col-
lective form been developed in history?; and second, what are its possible implica-
tions for our current thinking in architecture and urban design?
The investigation of collective form is extensive, but promising. The first
step is to analyze structural principles involved in making collective form. I have
established three major approaches:

Compositional Form Compositional Approach

Megastructure/​Megaform Structural Approach

Group Form Sequential Approach

The first of these, the compositional approach, is a historical one. The second
two are new efforts toward finding master forms which satisfy the demands of
contemporary urban growth and change.

Co mpo si ti o nal Fo r m

The compositional approach is a commonly accepted and practiced concept in the

past and at present. The elements that comprise a collective form are conceived
and determined separately. In other words, they are often individually tailored

2.1 Three approaches to

collective form (from left to
right): compositional form,
megaform, and group form.

46
buildings. Proper functional, visual, and spatial (sometimes symbolic) relationships
are established on a two-­dimensional plane.
It is no surprise that this is the most understandable and widely used tech-
nique for architects in making collective form, because the process resembles one
of making a building out of given components. It is a natural extension of the
architectural approach. It is a static approach, because the act of making a compo-
sition itself has a tendency to complete a formal statement.
Most contemporary ­large-­scale urban designs fall into this category. Rock-
efeller Center, Chandigarh Government Center, and Brasília are good examples
of compositional urban design. The compositional approach is a familiar one,
and it has received some treatment in works on architecture and planning. We
will, therefore, let it stand on its own merit and introduce two less well-­known
approaches.

M e g a s t r u ctur e

The megastructure is a large frame in which all the functions of a city or part of a
city are housed. It has been made possible by ­present-­day technology. In a sense,
it is a ­human-­made feature of the landscape. It is like the great hill on which Ital-
ian towns were built. Inherent in the megastructure concept, along with a certain
static nature, is the suggestion that many and diverse functions may be beneficially
concentrated in one place. A large frame implies some utility in combination and
concentration of functions.
Urban designers are attracted to the megastructure concept because it offers a
legitimate way to order massive grouped functions. One need only look at work

2.2 Compositional form: Oscar Niemeyer’s

capital complex for Brasília.

COLLECT I VE FORM / I N VESTIGATIO N S I N C OLLE C TIVE F ORM 47

in a recent Museum of Modern Art show on “Visionary Architecture” to sense
the excitement generated among designers by megaform. While some of the
ideas displayed in the show demonstrate virtuosity at the expense of human scale
and human functional needs, others have a quality which suggests no divergence
between compacted economic function and human use.
That utility is sometimes only apparent. We frequently confuse the potential
that technology offers with a compulsion to “use it fully.” Technological pos-
sibility can be useful only when it is a tool of civilized persons. Inhuman use of
technological advance is all too frequently our curse. Optimum productivity does
not even depend on mere concentration of activities and workers.
As Percival and Paul Goodman say in Communitas:

We could centralize or decentralize, concentrate population or scatter it. If

we want to continue the trend away from the country, we can do that; but if
we want to combine town and country values in an agrindustrial way of life,
we can do that. . . . It is just this relaxing of necessity, this extraordinary flex-
ibility and freedom of choice of our techniques, that is baffling and fright-
ening to people. . . . Technology is a sacred cow left strictly to (unknown)
experts, as if the form of the industrial machine did not profoundly affect
every person. . . . They think that it is more efficient to centralize, whereas it
is usually more i­nefficient.1

Technology must not dictate choices to us in our cities. We must learn to se-
lect modes of action from among the possibilities technology presents in physical
­planning.

48
 One of the most interesting developments of the megaform was done by
Professor Kenzo Tange with MIT graduate students when he was a visiting pro-
fessor there. In a series of three articles in the September 1960 issue of Japan
Architect, Tange presented a proposal for a mass human scale form that includes a
megaform and discrete, rapidly changeable functional units which fit within the
larger framework. He writes:

Short-­lived items are becoming more and more ­short-­lived, and the cycle
of change is shrinking at a corresponding rate. On the other hand, the ac-
cumulation of capital has made it possible to build in ­large-­scale operations.
Reformations of natural topography, dams, harbors, and highways are of a
size and scope that involve long cycles of time, and these are the man-­made
works that tend to divide the overall system of the age. The two tenden-
cies—toward shorter cycles and toward longer cycles—are both necessary to
modern life and to humanity itself.2

Tange’s megaform concept depends largely on the idea that change will occur
less rapidly in some areas than it will in others, and that the designer will be able
to ascertain which of the functions he is dealing with falls in the longer cycle of
change and which in the shorter. The question is: can the designer successfully
base his concept on the idea that—to give an example—transportation methods
will change less rapidly than the idea of a desirable residence or retail outlet?
Sometimes the impact and momentum of technology become so great that a
change occurs in the basic skeleton of the social and physical structure. It is dif-
ficult to predict into which part of a pond a stone will be thrown and which way

2.3 Megaform: Kenzo Tange’s

1960 proposal for Tokyo’s
extension into Tokyo Bay.

COLLECT I VE FORM / I N VESTIGATIO N S I N C OLLE C TIVE F ORM 49

its ripples will spread. If the megaform becomes rapidly obsolete, as well it might,
it will be a great weight about the neck of urban society.
On the other hand, the ideal is not a system in which the physical structure
of the city is at the mercy of unpredictable change. The ideal is a kind of master
form which can move into ever new states of equilibrium, yet maintain visual
consistency and a sense of continuing order in the long run. This suggests that
a megastructure composed of several independent systems that can expand or
contract with the least disturbance to others would be preferable to one composed
of a rigid hierarchical system. In other words, each system that contributes to the
whole maintains its identity and longevity without being affected by the others,
while at the same time it engages in dynamic contact with the others. When an
optimal relationship has been formed, an environmental control system can be
devised. The system that permits the greatest efficiency and flexibility with the
smallest organizational structure is ideal. A basic operation is necessary to establish
this optimal control mechanism. It is to select proper independent functional sys-
tems and to give them optimal interdependency through the provision of physical
joints at critical points.
Although the megastructure concept has its problems, as outlined above, it
also has great promise for several fields:

1. Environmental engineering. Megastructure development necessitates collaboration be-

tween structural and civil engineers. Possibilities for large spans, space frames, light
skin structures, prestressed concrete, highway aesthetics, and earth forming will be
developed far beyond their present level. Large-­scale climate control will be studied
further. A new type of physical structure, environmental building, will emerge.
2. Multifunctional structures. We have, thus far, taken it for granted that a building is
designed to fulfill one specific purpose. In spite of the fact that the concept of
multifunctionalism must be approached with caution, it does offer useful possi-
bilities. Within the megaform structure we can realize combinations such as those
in Kisho Kurokawa’s project, Agricultural City.
3. Infrastructure as public investment. Substantial public investment can be made in
infrastructures (the skeleton of megastructures) in order to guide and stimulate
public structures around them. This strategy can be further extended to a new
­three-­dimensional concept of land use where public agencies will maintain the
ownership and upkeep for both horizontal and vertical circulation systems.

50
Group Form

Group form is the last of the three approaches in collective form. Group form is
form that evolves from a system of generative elements in space. Some of the basic
ideas of group form can be recognized in historical examples of town buildings.
Urban designers and architects have recently become interested in them because
they appear to be useful and suggest examples for making ­large-­scale forms. Me-
dieval cities in Europe, towns on Greek islands, and villages in North Africa are a
few examples. The spatial and massing quality of these towns is worth consider-
ation. Factors which determine the spatial organization of these towns are:

1. Consistent use of basic materials and construction methods as well as spontaneous

but minor variations in physical expression;
2. Wise and often dramatic use of geography and topography;
3. Human scale preserved throughout the town (frequently in contrast to superhu-
man land forms); and
4. Sequential development of basic elements such as dwellings, open spaces between
houses, and the repetitive use of visual elements such as walls, gates, towers,
open water, and so forth. The idea of sequential development has recently been
explicated by Professor Roger Montgomery of Washington University, who sees
a series of buildings or elements without apparent beginning or end as a con-
temporary compositional theme, distinct from the closed composition of forms
characterizing classical or axial themes.

The sequential form, as seen in historical examples, developed over a period

of time much longer than that in which contemporary cities have been built
and rebuilt. In this sense, then, the efforts of contemporary urban designers are
quite different from those of their historical counterparts, and the forms which
they consciously evolve in a short timespan must accordingly differ. The lesson is,
however, a useful one. A further inquiry of the basic elements, and particularly of
the relationship between these elements and groups, reveals interesting principles
involved in making collective form.
In the past, many Japanese villages developed along major country roads.
Houses are generally U‑shaped and juxtaposed against one another perpendicular
to the road—they are basically ­court-­type row houses. The front part of the house

COLLECT I VE FORM / I N VESTIGATIO N S I N C OLLE C TIVE F ORM 51

is two stories high, and forms a tight continuous village façade together with other
units. Behind it is an enclosed yard used for domestic work, drying crops, making
straw, and so on. A barn is located at the other end of the house, and faces an open
country field. There exists unquestionably a clear structural relationship between
the village and the houses, between village activities and individual family life, and
between the movement of villagers and cows. Here the house unit is the genera-
tor of the village form, and vice versa. A unit can be added without changing
the basic structure of the village. The depth and frontage of the unit, or the size
of the court or barn, may differ from unit to unit, but an understanding of basic
structural principles in making the village prevails.
Another example is ­sixteenth-­century Dutch housing. The Dutch have a
reputation for living in communal units. Volunteer cooperation has long been
promoted by limiting personal liberty through common obedience to self-­made
laws. Their houses reflect this spirit. In Towns and Buildings, Steen Eiler Rasmussen
describes:

a ­stone-­walled canal with building blocks above it on each side, covered

with houses built closely together and separated from the canal by cobbled
roadways. The narrow, gabled ends of the houses face the canal and behind
the deep houses are gardens. . . . Finally, just outside the houses is a special
area called, in Amsterdam, the “stoep,” which is partly a pavement and partly
a sort of threshold of the house.3

The stoep is actually part of the house, and the owner takes immense pride in main-
taining it. It is also a social place where neighbors exchange gossip and children

2.4 Group form: the town of

Hydra, Greece.

52
play. By raising the ground floor of the house, it gives privacy to the residence
even with large glass panes in front, and also reduces the load on pilings under
the house. There is again a unity between canals and trees, paved roadways and
stoeps, and large glass windows and rear gardens. A set of relationships has emerged
through long experience and the wisdom of the people.
Forms in group form have their own ­built‑in links, whether expressed or
latent, so that they may grow within the system. They define basic environmental
space which also partakes of the quality of systematic linkage. Group form and its
space are indeed prototype elements, and they are prototypes because of the im-
plied system and linkage. The elements and growth patterns are reciprocal—both
in design and in operation. The elements suggest a manner of growth, and that in
turn demands further development of the elements in a kind of feedback p­ rocess.
On the other hand, the elements in megaform do not exist without a skel-
eton. The skeleton guides growth, and the elements depend on it. The elements
of group form are often the essence of collectivity, a unifying force, functionally,
socially, and spatially. It is worth noting that group form generally evolves from
society rather than from powerful leadership. It is the village, the dwelling group,
and the bazaar that are group forms in the sense we are using this term, not the
palace complex, which is compositional in character.
Can we, then, create meaningful group forms in our society? The answer is
not a simple one. It requires new concepts and attitudes of design. It also requires
the participation of cities and their social institutions.
Remarks by two modern architects cast light on this definition of group form.
The distinction between form and design was made by Louis Kahn in a speech at
the World Design Conference in Tokyo in 1960. Kahn said on that occasion:

2.5 A Japanese linear village

beautifully articulated along a spine
of growth. Each of the units is
composed of the same repetitive
elements: a large communal entry,
house, court, and fields to the rear.

COLLECT I VE FORM / I N VESTIGATIO N S I N C OLLE C TIVE F ORM 53

 There is a need to distinguish “form” from “design.” Form implies what
a building—whether it be a church, school, or house—would like to be,
whereas the design is the circumstantial act evolving from this basic form,
depending on site condition, budget limitation or client’s idea, etc.4

As soon as form is invented, it becomes the property of society. One might almost
say that it was the property of society before its discovery. A design, on the other
hand, belongs to its designer.
John Voelcker, in his CIAM Team X report, commented on a similar subject.
Referring to Oscar Hansen’s and Jerzy Soltan’s work in Poland, he said: “In an
open aesthetic, form is a master key not of any aesthetic significance in itself,
though capable of reciprocating the constant change of life. . . . Open aesthetic is
the living extension of functionalism.”5
Both Kahn’s “form” and Voelker’s “open aesthetic” describe a form that
would be a catalyst, that may become many forms rather than just a form for
its own sake. Whereas they are speaking of it in an architectural idiom, we are
interested in examining the form in a much larger context—collectivity in our
physical environment. Nonetheless, both statements are significant in assuming
that such a form can be created by architects today.
It is relatively easy for someone to invent a geometric form and call it a group
form because such a form has the characteristic of being multiplied in a sequential
manner. But this is meaningless unless the form derives from environmental needs.
Geometry is only a tool of search for group form. One cannot seek group form
in hexagons and circles. James Stirling, in his article “Regionalism and Modern
Architecture” in Architects’ Year Book 8, says:

2.6 New plan for ­Toulouse-­le-­Mirail,

outside the city’s historical center, by
­Candilis-­Josic-­Woods.

54
 The application of orthogonal proportion and the obvious use of basic geo-
metrical elements appear to be diminishing, and instead something of the
variability found in nature is attempted. “Dynamic cellularism” is an Archi-
tecture comprising several elements, repetitive or varied. The assemblage of
units is more in terms of growth and change than of mere addition, more
akin to patterns of crystal formations or biological divisions than to the static
rigidity of a structural grid. The form of assemblage is in contrast to the de-
finitive architecture and the containing periphery of, for example, a building
such as [the] Unité.6

One finds the source of generative elements in dynamic human terms such as
“gathering,” “dispersal,” or “stop.” The human quality which determines form has
to do with way of life, movement, and the relation between individuals in society.
If the function of urban design is the pattern of human activities expressed in city
life, then the functional patterns are crystallized activity patterns. Le Corbusier
limits generative human qualities to “air,” “green,” and “sun,” while exponents of
group form find a myriad of suggestive activities to add to that list.
The visual implications of such crystallized patterns of human activity be-
come apparent. The way in which one activity changes to another as people move
from work to shopping to dining suggests physical qualities that are used to express
transformation in design rhythm, change, and contrast. Characteristic spaces may
be named in accordance with the way in which human groups use them—that
is, transitional space, inward space, outward space, and so on. The addition of
activities to physical qualities in a search for form determinants in the city suggests

COLLECT I VE FORM / I N VESTIGATIO N S I N C OLLE C TIVE F ORM 55

a new union between physical design and planning. The investigation of group
form inevitably leads us to give our attention to regionalism in collective scale.
Until recently, our understanding of regional expressions had very much been
confined to those of single buildings. But in an age of mass communication and
technological facility, regional differences throughout the world are becoming
less well defined, and it is less easy to find distinctive expressions in building tech-
niques and resultant forms.
If materials and methods of construction or modes of transportation are be-
coming ubiquitous, perhaps their combinations, especially in large urban com-
plexes, now reflect the distinguishing characteristics of the people and the places in
which they are structured and used according to value hierarchies. Thus it may be
possible to find regionalism more in collective scale and less in single buildings. The
primary regional character in urban landscape will probably be in the grain of the
city. Both group form and megaform affect the urban milieu at precisely this level.
Homogenization of environment is not, as many people feel, the inevitable
result of mass technology and communication. These very forces can produce
entirely new products. With modern communication systems, one element (or
cultural product) is soon transmitted to other regions, and vice versa. While each
region uses a set of similar elements, each region can express its own characteris-
tics in certain combinations of these elements. Here regionalism arises not from
indigenous elements or products but, rather, from the manner in which such
elements are valued and expressed. This suggests a concept of open regionalism,
which is in itself a dynamic process of selecting and integrating vital forces. These
forces, however, may conflict with inherent cultural values. Thus the genuine
strength of different cultures can be tested and measured in this light. This is the
thesis initially developed in collaboration with Roger Montgomery.
In group form the possibility of creating grain elements, or regional quali-
ties, exists. The reciprocal relationship between the generative elements and the
system can produce strongly regional effects. In megaform it is a large form that
represents all the power of technique, and that may represent the best aspects of
regional selectivity. In coming decades the investigation of regional expression in
collective scale will be one of the most important and fascinating issues of archi-
tecture and planning.
Finally, these three approaches are models for thinking about possible ways
to conceive large, complex forms. It is likely that in any final design form, these
three concepts could be combined or mixed.

56
L i n k a g e i n Collect ive F orm

W r i t t e n i n collaborat ion wit h Jerry Goldber g

I n t r o d u c tio n

Investigation of collective form is important because it forces us to reexamine the

entire theory and vocabulary of architecture, principally that of single buildings.
For instance, the components of collective form, as conceived here, differ from
the traditional elements of single structures.

1. Wall: any element that separates and modulates space horizontally. Walls are places
where outward and inward forces interact, and the manner of their interactions
defines the form and functions of the wall.
2. Floor or roof: any element that separates and modulates space vertically. In a broad
sense, these terms include underground, ground, and water surfaces, and even
elements floating in the air.
3. Column: architecturally a supporter of gravitational loads, but environmentally an
element that transfers certain functions—people, goods, and other things.
4. Unit: a primary space in which some of the basics functions of human existence
and society are contained and occur.
5. Link: “linking” and “dissolving linkage” are invariant activities in making collec‑
tive form out of either discrete or associate elements. In operational terms there
are a number of linkages—physically connected link, implying link, ­built‑in link,
and so forth.

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Collective form also requires a new dimension in conceiving construction meth‑
ods and structural and mechanical systems. The aesthetics of collective form ne‑
cessitate new definitions of scale and proportion of buildings. Above all, this
entire essay questions the very act of design in our society; it contains no answers,
but seeks to ask the right questions and to draw out further discussion.

The Unity o f Ex pe r ie nce

Observation is the primary tool of the urban designer. What he sees in the city he
can relate to his own experience. Fact and observation are combined in order to
comprehend new problems and to create new ­three-­dimensional solutions. The
whole group of articles on collective form is a means of ordering observation.
What the categories of analysis are is not of great importance. They provide a
framework within which we can present extremely important observable phe‑
nomena in cities. Only through seeing accurately can we locate the specific results
of forces in the city—forces that sociologists, economists, and novelists have de‑
scribed in other terms.
We are fond of observing that our urban world is a complex one, that it
changes with a rapidity beyond actual comprehension, and finally, that it is a dis‑
jointed world. At times in our urban lives we relish the diversity and disjointedness
of cities and bask in their variety. Certainly cities have been the locus of human‑
kind’s most creative moments because of the varied experience they afford us.
But when a plethora of stimuli begins to divert us from receptive conscious‑
ness, the city renders us insensible. Then, in our inability to order experience, we
merely suffer the city and long for some adequate means to comprehend it as a
product of human creation—a product of intelligent, ordering forces. Just as the
scientist is frustrated when the order or pattern of phenomena is too fleeting to
observe or too complex to recognize with existing tools, so is the city-­dweller
frustrated when human order cannot be found in the environment. At such mo‑
ments, when one sees only the results of mechanical and economic processes
controlling the form and feeling of place, one feels estranged and excluded.
If urban design is to fulfill its role in making a contribution to the form of
the city, it must do more than simply organize mechanical forces, and make physi‑
cal unity out of diversity. It must recognize the meaning of the order it seeks to
manufacture: a humanly significant spatial order.

58
I n t r o d u c tio n to L inkag e

Urban design is always concerned with the question of making comprehensible

links between discrete things. Furthermore, it is concerned with making an ex‑
tremely large entity comprehensible by articulating its parts. The city is made of
combinations of discrete forms and articulated large forms. It is a collective form—
an agglomeration of past decisions (and abnegations of decisions) concerning the
way in which things fit together or are linked. Linking and disclosing linkage
(articulating the large entity) are integral activities in making collective form.
With regard to historical examples of collective form, we should refer to the
work of Aldo van Eyck, who finds in vernacular building a substantial clue to the
natural process of human association in urban situations. Vernacular unit and link
evolve together and appear in the end as a perfectly coordinated physical entity:
a village or town. But one need not go to completely vernacular situations to
discover examples of a similar character. Builders of the cities we admire—cities
that we sense are good environments—have generally been generations of men
and women working over decades, even centuries. We perceive what they have
done in our limited span of study. More importantly, we must build in our own
environment in an abbreviated time.
One thing is certain: we have spent too little time observing the successes of
our predecessors with an acute eye. Moreover, we probably do not approach par‑
ticular parts of our cities with sufficient understanding to extrapolate from them
what is useful in human terms. It is one thing to grunt ecstatically in the presence
of a significant work. It is another to learn what it can offer for the future.
The specific subject of scrutiny here is linkage—in particular, the act of
making linkage. In what follows, the business of putting things together is stud‑
ied in detail. First, there are examples of historical linkage. Each place and each
moment has had its characteristic way of making coherent physical form. We are
interested in how and why particular links were used. In the end, as designers,
we are concerned with making collective form. The examples that follow have
been discovered in a framework of operational definitions. Looking at these ex‑
amples, we must ask ourselves what the act of making a particular juncture among
elements was, and how, theoretically, that act can be reproduced. This loosely
operational framework is useful for purposes of analysis, but it does not work for
an entire survey of material.

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 It is perhaps a mistake to insulate types of links from one another by cat‑
egorizing them. The activity we are discussing is, after all, a singular one: that of
making a comprehensible and humanly evocative urban environment. It is one of
the primary theses of this study that once a link is established for any reason, it
takes on a complicated secondary system of meanings and uses. Consider the stoep
in Amsterdam, or Bologna’s arcades. One can see the medieval street bridges over
the Via Ritorta in Perugia as an example of a link that began as a simple means
for reinforcing structurally weak walls. The bridges, which connect two buildings
at the ­second-­floor level, also serve to define “overhead” in the street, and to re‑
inforce the street spatially as a passageway. The bridges have all of these functions
because they are repetitive along the street. It is no longer important which is the
primary linkage and which the secondary.
What does this study of historical linkage suggest for the future? Certainly
this: whatever we use to determine the form of urban linkage in urban design
must come from a body of largely untapped information about cities as we know
them. We are involved in an investigation of the morphological results of forces
now present in cities. And this too is certain: the primary motive is to make unity
from diversity. There is diversity in every unit of sufficient scale to admit more
than one function, or one angle of vision.
That we have not previously adequately identified form-­giving forces is per‑
haps due to the fact that they seem to defy formulation. At a particular scale of
urban activity, they have more to do with movement through space than with a
standard vision of the shape of a space. Thus we have been notably remiss in our
ability to conceive of shapes for paths of high-­speed movement or commercial
clusters or power lines. Each of these things seems to defy relation to a human
collective scale—their functional and social aspects seem diametrically opposed.
Yet the Romans succeeded in making enduring aqueducts, and in the United
States, TVA dams integrate functional and symbolic characteristics.
If a garage can serve as an architectural stop between the moving world of a
highway and the static world of a town center or shopping area, it can, if handled as
Louis Kahn suggests, become a symbol of the collective and human aspect of what
occurs in the town or the shops. Garages (or rapid transit stations) can be conceived
as stops, as links between the highway (or train) and pedestrian movement. If they
are designed with sufficient understanding, each can serve as a defining wall, or
perhaps a built mountain, for the activity each links to the world of the highway.

60
 Another thing that seems destined for future consideration is the realization
of a wholly new concept of ­three-­dimensional linkage. If we are successful at
making unified and meaningful complexes of form and activity near the ground,
we are notably unsuccessful at going into the air with linked functions. A high-
­r ise tower—for either apartments or offices—provides us with little integrated
experience of its form, or of the excitement of rising through its many layers.
Somehow, each deck of a tower or slab must be transparent to us, and each level
of activity must be unique. Then, and only then, will we sense ­three-­dimensional
linkage. This type of linkage is necessary because we have to construct more high
buildings as land in our cities becomes scarcer. And this is possible because of our
building techniques and our love of communication. Antonio Sant’Elia gave some
indication of what t­hree-­dimensional linkage might look like as early as 1913.
If we must learn to make use of our knowledge of ­short-­range movement,
movement through cities from point to point, we must also attach a more subtle
time concept, one that deals with the constant cycle of decay in cities. An urban
dwelling lasts 84 years on average. If we allow all the old dwellings in a given area
to become unsuitable for use at the same time, we are forced to declare extensive
blight, clear hundreds of acres, and build new housing. There is, then, no link
between such a cleared and renewed area and the city around it. People who, by
choice or by force of economic circumstances, move into such developments feel
isolation so keenly that they do not regard themselves as anything but “project”
people. There is nothing less productive of cosmopolitan mixture than raw re‑
newal that displaces, destroys, and replaces in such a mechanical way.
The cycle of decay can be a linking force in our cities. If it is recognized, it
can provide an opportunity to replace old structures in an old environment with
new structures, still in an old environment. Such diversity in age is itself a kind of
linkage. It gives a morphological demonstration of the ever-­changing and diverse
character of city life. It offers a new kind of choice to people in cities—the pos‑
sibility that one can live in a historically significant place, but in a new house.
Our cities are fluid and mobile. But it is difficult to conceive of some of them
as places, in the real sense of that word. How can an entity with no discernible be‑
ginning or end be a place? It is certainly more appropriate to think of a particular
part of a city as a place. If it were possible to articulate each of the parts of the city
more adequately, to give qualities of edge and node to now formless agglomerates,
we would begin to make our large urban complexes at least understandable, if not
easily visualized.

C O L L E C T I V E F O R M / INVE S TIGATION S IN C O L L E C TIVE F ORM 61

 By the same argument, the rapidity with which the urban system expands
suggests that there must be some means of linking newly established parts with
parts not yet conceived. In short, there is a need for something that may be
termed “open linkage.” Such an idea is inherent in the linkage of group form.
Links become integral parts of both unit and system and suggest that the system
can be expanded indefinitely and with variation.

The City as Patte r n o f Ev en t s

Linkage is simply the glue of the city. It is the act by which we unite all the layers
of activity and resulting physical form in the city. Insofar as linkage is successful,
the city is a recognizable and humanly comprehensible entity. We are at home in
it. We depend on understanding how events in a city are combined to make a
living sequence, and we depend on understanding how we can get from place to
place in the city. Each at its own level contributes to our ability to know and enjoy
experience—social, temporal, and spatial linkage.
All of these kinds of linkage are described in physical terms in the analysis that
follows. It is necessary to describe linkage in operational terms, to say what must
be done to make a link. But each operation ends by suggesting a multitude of
nonspatial facts. Ultimately, linking is assembling patterns of experience in cities.

Ope r atio nal Cate g o r ie sw

There are five basic linking operations: to mediate, to define, to repeat, to make a
sequential path, and to select. All of these terms need explanation using diagrams

2.7 Diagrams representing

linkage operations (from left
to right), mediation; definition;
repetition; and making a
sequential path.

62
as well as text, and presenting examples of each type of linkage as evidence that
each exists or could exist. Keep in mind that each type of linkage may be done
in physical fact (as a wall or bridge between two buildings) or by implication (as
in the carefully balanced composition of buildings and spaces on a site). Physical
links may be introduced into form as external elements, and the designer thus
produces an a‑a‑a‑a or a‑b‑c‑d pattern. On the other hand, they may appear as
­built‑in links. That is of particular consequence in group form, where integral
link and unit are the basis of formal, functional, and structural results. Repetition
and combination occur in accordance with the logic of the ­built‑in link.
Implied links are used to compose elements in the landscape. Using either
­quasi-­mathematical standards, as in Italian Renaissance composition, or subjec‑
tively seeking combinations of void and solid that seem “right,” designers pro‑
duce (hopefully) compelling combinations. Space is an adhesive in compositional
design. A paragon of this kind of composition should appear inevitable to all
observers. The question of inevitability does not arise in most cases of contem‑
porary group form. Combinations of linkage and element can do no better than
to express the process from which their growth in combination has come. All the
ways of implying linkage—by composing, by injecting transitional elements, by
surrounding disparate things—depend largely on some kind of homogeneity. If
elements in ­large-­scale design are of the same order of magnitude (by virtue of
mass, color, or surface quality), they become a “grain” or a texture. Elements of
vastly different size are linked by implication only with difficulty. Transitional
bits, or unifying surroundings, are frequently injected between them to make the
implication strong and clear.

C O L L E C T I V E F O R M / INVE S TIGATION S IN C O L L E C TIVE F ORM 63

 To mediate: to connect with intermediate elements or imply connection by
spaces that demonstrate the cohesion of masses around them. An interesting thing
about mediation is that once done, it is almost impossible for an observer to assign
a single cause for it. Mediation accomplished by adequate physical means con‑
notes multitudes of other transitions. It suggests that a link, properly conceived,
changes with changing primary needs. The arcades of Bologna, for example, pro‑
vide shelter from sun and rain, and visual unity to the street. Steen Eiler Rasmus‑
sen, in “The Dutch Contribution,” says that the stoep is a place that is half house
property, half public way.

The house itself cannot be built upon the stoep but it may be used for the
cellar entrance or for the stairway up to the high ground floor. The entrance
staircases in Amsterdam are often works of art, carried out in magnificent
bleu belge ­stone-­work which forms a striking contrast to the dark red brick
of the house. . . . When not taken up by the stairway or other projections,
the stoep is raised a step above the roadway and paved with fine tiles or other
decorative facing.7

The stoep is a functional transition between the public way and the private house.
It is conceptually the meeting of the family with the urban world, and it is visu‑
ally a means by which one sees the streetscape as an entity. From house to street,
it is a link by mediation, and from house to house along the street, it is a link by
repetition.
To define: to surround a site with a wall or any other physical barrier and thus
set it off from its environs. The wall around a medieval town says that everything
inside it belongs and is different from everything outside. Putting a wall around
elements implies a visual connection among them, even though they have nothing
in common. A wall may be many things, such as a loop of rapid transit tracks in
the heart of Chicago, or a ring of parking structures in Louis Kahn’s proposal for
Philadelphia. Depending on its nature and location, a wall may be either oppressive
and confining or pleasantly protective. Walls in African villages on the plains are a
welcome relief from the endless vistas that otherwise occupy the inhabitants’ gazes.
To repeat: to link by introducing one common factor in each of the dispersed
parts of a design or existing situation.That common factor may be formal, material,

64
functional, or historical. Perhaps the best-­understood example of this kind of link
occurs in Italian hill towns which may be identified by the hundreds of private
defensive towers standing above the house tops. A more subtle example of repeti‑
tion as a linking device is in what Kevin Lynch has called the “grain.”8 If the plan
of an urban place reveals clusters of buildings which have spaces between them of
a common size and shape, we see such a cluster as just that: a cluster of elements
relating to one another in a way different from the way those of other buildings in
the vicinity do. They are an identifiable group in plan because they have a peculiar
grain or pattern. On the ground one perceives the same unity because of the
repetitive size of building and size of space between the masses of buildings. The
only difference between this situation and the compositional means of linking by
implication is that this repetition need not be a case of intent. Grain occurs in
the historic buildup of an area because the use of the buildings is similar, the style
of building in a given time is similar, and the amount of space deemed adequate
between them is similar.
To make a sequential path: to arrange buildings or parts of multiuse buildings in
a sequence of useful activity. Further, to reinforce such a path by any means nec‑
essary to propel persons along a general designated path. Finally, to design a path
or reinforce a path in the natural landscape which will catalyze and give direction
to new development along its course. Designers make sequences of functions on
paper, connect them with arrows, and establish the logic of the flow diagram.
In some cases the ­three-­dimensional realization of that diagram is a building in
which each symbol has become a room and the arrows have become doors. The
case we are interested in, however, is one in which each symbol is a place at the
scale of a building. The arrows then become ­three-­dimensional paths between
buildings or progressions through the megaframe that contains ­quasi-­buildings.
A large multifunctional structure may be described as a frame that contains many
discrete ­quasi-­buildings (or monofunctional structures) and a transportation system
for going from one function to another within the frame. Such a symbiotic entity
is an example of a ­three-­dimensional activity sequence. The temporal sequence
sometimes becomes so long that it overwhelms the visual aspects of an activity
path. A two- or ­three-­month temple pilgrimage on Shikoku Island can be seen as
a kind of activity sequence—it is a linked experience. The afterimage of some 88
temples and rituals is a demonstrable residue of the activity.

C O L L E C T I V E F O R M / INVE S TIGATION S IN C O L L E C TIVE F ORM 65

 To select: to establish unity in advance of the design process by choice of site.
The designer may preselect a link for a ­large-­scale project. That is, he may choose
a piece of land for a town (or an element in the town) prominent enough both
to affect his design and to be a unifying visual force when the project is built.
Obvious examples of this kind of situation exist in towns like Miletus and Priene
in Turkey. We frequently identify an area in a larger context by referring to some
overriding topographical feature, such as Russian Hill in San Francisco. Unfortu‑
nately, designers infrequently utilize the formal potential of land in contemporary
America.

2.8 Plan of Miletus, an ancient Greek

city on the Turkish mainland. The town
is defined by the limits of the peninsula,
where it was sited for reasons of defense.

66
Ti me a n d L a n d sc ape: Collectiv e Form at Hillside Ter r ace

The Hillside Terrace project, a ­medium-­density ­mixed-­use development of apart-

ments, shops, restaurants, and cultural facilities, took exactly ­twenty-­five years
from the first plans I drew in 1967 to the completion of its sixth phase in 1992.
Although I have designed buildings and complexes far greater in physical scale
over the past several decades, no other project has occupied my thoughts so con-
tinuously over time as Hillside Terrace has. The flow of time can be measured
against its diverse buildings and their relationship to the city of Tokyo as it grew
to envelop them. Changes in the project’s architectural character, materiality, and
expression from phase to phase also reflect shifts in my own consciousness with
the passage of time. The opportunity to design Hillside Terrace—a commission I
received almost immediately after setting up my architectural practice in Tokyo—
was my first chance to confront the idea of modern architecture engaging, even
creating, its urban context. Though I was unaware of it at that time, the project
would bring me a deeper understanding of the “collective form” phenomenon
that had fascinated me in my early years of architectural study, strengthening the
notion that architecture and cities share a distinct relationship to time.
In the mid-­1960s, the Daikanyama district still retained traces of the wooded
hills for which the greater Musashino region was once known. After each rain,
the air was heavily laden with earthy scents. Zelkova trees rose high over the low
townscape. Downtown Tokyo, though geographically close, was still perceived as
a distant place. It was in this context that my clients, the Asakura family, who for
many generations had owned a 250‑meter-­long strip of land along Daikanyama’s
main road, asked me to design a number of apartments and shops to be built in
separate phases. I was still in my late thirties when I started on Hillside Terrace,
 2.9 Aerial view of Daikanyama,
with buildings of Hillside Terrace
highlighted.

Phase III 1977 Royal Danish Embassy 1979

Phase IV 1985
(Motokura Associates)

Phase II 1973

Phase I 1969 Phase V 1987

Hillside Plaza

Phase VI 1992 2.10 Hillside Terrace site plan.

CO L L EC T IVE F ORM / T I M E A N D L A N D S C A P E 69
and I felt quite fortunate to be given the opportunity to design several buildings
on a single site at that age. I realized that in designing a group of buildings, I could
also generate exterior public spaces of a particular character.
The issue to be addressed in Hillside Terrace’s first phase, which was located
in the southernmost part of the property where the lot was relatively thin, was
the deployment of space along the street. The formal vocabulary was typical of
modern urban design of the time and included such features as a corner plaza,
a small transparent lobby serving several ­g round-­floor shops, a sunken garden, a
raised pedestrian deck, and ­maisonette-­style duplex apartments. More than any
individual feature, however, what impressed most people about the project was its
laconic, abstract geometrical character. A low, horizontally extended ensemble of
white masses arranged along a fairly wide street was still a rare sight in Tokyo in
1969, and perhaps that added to the novelty of the landscape.
The second phase, completed four years after the first, was separated from
the earlier structures by a parking lot. It, too, was an instance of ­street-­oriented
architecture, and the deepening of this portion of the property allowed for a small
enclosed plaza with shops surrounding it on all sides. However, circumstances had
changed in the four years that had elapsed: the surrounding district had developed
more commercial activity, my clients had modified their program, and my own
design consciousness had evolved. These changes were readily apparent in the
design of the new building. I was still very much in favor of incremental planning,
and if I felt the consequence of time’s flow in the new design, it was only in the
context of such external forces.
With the design of the third phase, however, I began to incorporate more
overt gestures to mark the passage of time. The new building facing the main
street, for example, was given a tiled façade and spatial configuration deliberately
different from those of the previous two phases. Shops were interiorized, and
the inner courtyard thus preserved as a quiet space of greenery, centered on an
ancient burial mound that had been preserved on the site. The formal departures
of the third phase created a more heterogeneous complex—the character of the
architecture and space changed perceptibly as people walked from one end of the
site to the other.
The trend toward heterogeneity would continue in a different way in the
fourth phase, which consists of two small office buildings, together known as the
Hillside Annex. Located facing each other across a sloping side street, these are the

70
 2.11 Daikanyama in the
mid-­1960s.

2.12 Entrance plaza,

phase one.

2.13 Street façade, phase two.

2.14 View to inner courtyard,

phase two.

CO L L EC T IVE F ORM / T I M E A N D L A N D S C A P E 71
 work of Makoto Motokura, who opened his own architectural office after having
supervised the ­third-­phase construction at my office. Not surprisingly, Motokura
employed a design method different from his mentor’s. Each of his two buildings
possesses a clear geometry and is more closed in character when compared to
earlier structures at Hillside Terrace. I believe in the value of such an intervention,
which creates a formal dialogue. Groups of buildings generated in such a way may
be the most desirable kind of collective form in a city.
In the years that followed, I designed an embassy for the Danish government
on a site immediately north of the ­third-­phase buildings as well as a small ­fifth-
­phase project, an underground event space known as Hillside Plaza. Both of these
projects preserved the scale and spatial flow of the original three phases. Yet by the
time I began work on the sixth and final phase some years later, in the late 1980s,
Daikanyama had undergone a dramatic change in character. What had previously
been a quiet residential neighborhood was quickly becoming a bustling ­mixed-­use
district—partly due to increased traffic and a rezoning of the district to eliminate
the previous 10‑meter height restriction and increase its ­floor-­area ratio (FAR).
At the start of the sixth phase, I had many thoughts about what should be
expressed and what sort of landscape should be created. With the development
of three new buildings on the final piece of land owned by the Asakura family,
across the street from all the previous phases, I wanted to re-­create, in a sense,
the landscape of white masses surrounded by greenery that had existed at the
completion of the first phase. The new site, however, was surrounded not by trees
but, rather, by a more typical urban fabric of buildings; so new trees would need
to be introduced within it. The urge to re-­create that original whiteness, long
since vanished in the weathered ­first-­phase buildings, suggested to me another
finish treatment: a combination of reflective aluminum panels, white ceramic
tile, and paint. The building mass was treated in such a way as to create an overall
impression of lightness, since the sixth phase, with its greater height and volume,
was apt otherwise to seem disproportionately large compared to earlier phases. A
prominent eave line was created at a height of ten meters to echo the heights of
previous phases across the street.

72
 2.15 Greenery centered on
an ancient burial mound,
phase three.

2.16 Courtyard, phase six.

CO L L EC T IVE F ORM / T I M E A N D L A N D S C A P E 73
Pub l i c Space

Spatial character usually determines what is public in the city. A metropolis can
provide overwhelming spaces unavailable in small cities or villages. However,
public spaces in cities do not exist just for crowds or communities; they are also
places that allow people to enjoy solitude. Our urban spaces become much richer
when there are many different layers of public spaces and meanings. In a me-
tropolis, people take strolls, just as people in the countryside go to mountains or
rivers; in that way, they are able to establish a special, spatial relationship between
themselves and portions of the city. The extent to which streets and other public
spaces suitable for walking are provided can be considered an effective index in
determining the quality of urbanity in a city. Sadly, the contemporary city is being
gradually divested of such public character. There are certain limits to the types
of spaces that an architect can provide; at best, the spaces they design can form a
relationship with parts of the city bordering on the site to create landscapes that
many people can share. Cities like Tokyo today possess few standards of urban
form. Architects are required to create new landscapes in an urban environment
full of heterogeneous elements. The challenge is the same whether the project in
question is a single building or a complex of buildings: the creation of topos in the
city through the medium of landscape.
Looking back, I believe that the process that led from Hillside Terrace’s first
phase to the sixth phase suggests not only the changes in our notion of public
space and the evolution of modernism, but also what I would call “the landscape
of time.”
The singular sense of place that people strolling among the various buildings
and outdoor spaces of Hillside Terrace feel is no accident. It is the result of a delib-
erate design approach that has created continuous unfolding sequences of spaces
and views, taking advantage of the site’s natural topography and, indeed, enhanc-
ing it with subtle shifts in the architectural ground plane. The various green areas,
plazas, sunken gardens, exterior stairs, sidewalks, and transparent entrance halls
are interconnected by views to one another, giving an impression of substantial
depth and extent across the site. One does not physically experience urban space
by simply gazing at buildings or looking at them from above—space is experi-
enced only through sequential movement. Like music, movement in space can be
a source of elemental joy, something to which one can give oneself up entirely.

74
 2.17 Diagram showing layers
of space.

2.18 Creation of sense of

depth through the layers of
space, phase six.

CO L L EC T IVE F ORM / T I M E A N D L A N D S C A P E 75
At Hillside Terrace, long views pass through multiple spatial boundaries created
by topography, stairs, roads, trees, and low walls. Several possible loops are offered
for passage through the site and back to the street, and glimpses of greenery seen
around the corner are just as important as fully transparent views for suggesting
a path.
Although their architectural expression has varied in response to the times,
the buildings of phases one through six share a consistent scale of massing, using
a combination of staggered, cubical volumes, generally one and two stories tall,
with apartment blocks frequently lifted above street level on transparent and/or
recessed ­ground-­floor volumes. Several unifying spatial elements, such as corner
entrances and interior stairs echoing exterior topography, are repeated in different
guises to create a sense of continuous townscape while allowing localized varia-
tions. Within such an evolving framework, I have viewed each individual build-
ing design from the perspective of its urban presence and meaning—aiming to
discover in this process a modern language for the creation of group form.
During the ­quarter-­century of its design, gradual shifts occurred not only in
the architectural language of Hillside Terrace but also in its use. Having developed
extensive and inviting open space throughout the site, the owners felt strongly
that the project should not be limited to commercial and residential uses, and so,
in later phases, they introduced a number of cultural programs to be hosted there.
The large underground hall of the ­fifth-­phase Hillside Plaza, used for events such
as musical performances and exhibitions, is one example. An additional multipur-
pose hall intended for similar programs and gatherings was incorporated into the
design of the sixth phase, facing a ­ground-­level plaza and adjacent to a café serving
as catering and overflow space for those events. In these and other ways, the pro-
gramming of the Daikanyama property has been adapted to meet the perceived
demand for increasingly varied public use.

Hi l l si de Te r r ace i n Co nte xt

Although modest in scale, with all six phases covering only 1.1 hectares, Hillside
Terrace has been recognized as one of postwar Tokyo’s best examples of urban
design. The history of its design in distinct phases shows the project both an-
ticipating and adapting to lifestyles of the times. Over those ­twenty-­five years,
the surrounding area of Daikanyama became extensively redeveloped. Different

76
 2.19 Multipurpose hall,
phase six.

2.20 Art gallery, phase six.

CO L L EC T IVE F ORM / T I M E A N D L A N D S C A P E 77
buildings, many of them designed with Hillside Terrace in mind, have together
formed a townscape. As a result, a district has been created with an ambience
unique in Tokyo.
At the same time, no urban design project of similar character or quality has
since been realized in Japan, although it would seem an easy enough example to
follow, and despite the fact that many communities and local governments have
expressed eagerness to do so. Why?
The answer lies partly in conditions unique to this project: until the late
1980s, the district had been designated for “first-­class residential” use with a maxi-
mum building height of ten meters and an FAR of just 1.5—an unusual condition
in Tokyo for any site along a broad, tree-­lined street such as ­Yamate-­dori. It is also
uncommon in Tokyo for such a large, integrated parcel of land in a residential
district along a public street to be held by a single owner and yet not developed
all at once. The fact that development took place over ­twenty-­five years was due
to an initial shortage of capital—yet this condition proved an immense advantage,
enabling the client and the architect to adapt at each stage to the rapidly changing
environment and lifestyle of Tokyo and to offer fresh designs, both program-
matically and architecturally. If the development had been undertaken by interests
with deeper pockets, such a slow pace of construction would not have occurred;
nor would the resulting townscape have reflected the gradual passing of time, as it
does now, even if the project had been left to the same architect. There may have
been other factors and fortuitous circumstances contributing to Hillside Terrace’s
success, but the three conditions mentioned here were unique to this project and
have never been duplicated since. This demonstrates that the framework for urban
design in metropolitan Tokyo is enormously varied, and that urban design as a
skill requires commensurate precision and delicacy, as well as a great deal of sheer
luck.
Before the Industrial Revolution, architects and master carpenters were
responsible for the communities in the districts where they lived; they learned the
essential nature of architecture through the slow, steady passage of time. I have
been fortunate to work over a long period of time in Daikanyama; even today,
long after the project’s completion, I continue to be involved with Hillside Ter-
race and in broader neighborhood activities, including the preservation of the old
Asakura Residence. Some members of my family now live and work in Hillside

78
 2.21

Terrace, and so I have reason to visit frequently. Over time, I have come to think
of the buildings I have designed there as extensions of myself.
What is the nature of an urban community today? How does human behavior
respond to space? Where do buildings first begin to show signs of age? Hillside
Terrace has provided me with daily opportunities to learn the answers to such
questions. As buildings become bigger and projects become more dispersed over
the globe, architectural experiences such as those I have had in Daikanyama be-
come ever more valuable. It is in such experiences that both love for architecture
and fear for its future are born.

CO L L EC T IVE F ORM / T I M E A N D L A N D S C A P E 79
 On the City 3
C i ty a n d M o d e r n i sm

The Char acte r o f Pl ace i n a C ity

Ever since I was a child, the city has had something of the character of an out-
land—that is, a faintly alien environment. Unlike the ­present-­day city, Tokyo at
the beginning of the Showa period had many dark, secret places.
Disneyland and vast atriums did not yet exist, but places in the immediate
environment appealed to a child’s sense of adventure. There were shadows, espe-
cially in the ­still-­verdant districts where large estates or temples were clustered,
and wooden houses and stone paving also created areas of darkness. Compared
with villages or wooded mountains, where shadows were mostly cast by objects in
nature, Tokyo, of course, had a more human character. One could stand on the
street and see into the inner depths of many merchant houses. One smelled food,
heard dogs barking and workmen making things, and at times caught a glimpse
of some pale, consumptive woman sitting up in her futon in a back room. Such
incidents all reinforced the alien character of the city. Unlike a village, Tokyo was
an endless series of overlapping scenes, and I could even imagine a frontier start-
ing just beyond my vision. It was not so much a physical world as a world of the
imagination, a world that could expand at any time in new directions. The twist-
ing passageway through a display of figures created out of chrysanthemums, the
dim interior of a German circus tent, the mazelike spaces in a foreign ship moored
in Yamashita Wharf in Yokohama—these out-­of‑the-­ordinary experiences gave
an added dimension to the city of my memory. The city, to the extent that I was
familiar with it, was full of highly concentrated places and was by no means a
domain susceptible to conceptual or abstract manipulation. Later, after I entered
the field of architecture and urban design, such experiences provided a starting
point for understanding and developing urban spaces. I am not referring simply
to urban spaces in Tokyo, for the principles discovered in Tokyo were applicable to
cities throughout the world.
The early 1960s were for me a time of intensely felt experiences, when I
gradually developed a point of view with respect to architecture and the city.
Through my travels abroad, my studies in the United States, and my participation
in design conferences, I came to see that individual buildings could indeed give a
place its identity, and that buildings collectively could give a distinctive character
to a domain. Such thinking was at odds with the prevailing approach to city plan-
ning, which was to impose character from the top down.
In the United States in the 1950s and the early 1960s, I personally witnessed
and experienced the emergence of a mass society produced by advanced capitalism.
Yet that society began to entertain doubts about itself as the social contradictions
generated by the full development of capitalism became apparent. The Lonely
Crowd by David Riesman, Nathan Glazer, and Reuel Denney, which provided a
brilliant analysis of urbanites and organization men in a mass consumption society
and explored new alternatives, made a strong impact upon publication.1 Among
intellectuals, the most actively debated question was the nature of individual iden-
tity. Needless to say, the urban hardware for this new industrial society was being
created by modernism. City planning ideas based on modernist ideology—crys-
tallized in CIAM’s Athens Charter—were starting to be criticized by American
authors such as Kevin Lynch and Jane Jacobs, and by European architects such as
Aldo van Eyck and Alison and Peter Smithson.
I was inevitably drawn to the issue of identity in a mass society and the search
for ways in which cities might accommodate individual places with identity. My
interest in the question of the whole and the parts—in the collective form and
the elements that make up a collective form—was nurtured by the cultural and
social conditions of the times.

P o rt e n t s o f an Info r mati o n So ci e ty

In May 1968, a massive student protest broke out in Paris, inspiring revolts on other
university campuses across the world. At the time, after eight years at Washington
and Harvard Universities, I was doing less teaching and was increasingly engaged

O N THE C ITY / C I T Y A N D M O D E R N I S M 83
in design work in Tokyo. Nevertheless, the confrontation with the younger gen-
eration I experienced at Harvard, the year before universities in Japan erupted in
protest, had an enormous impact on me. For one thing, as an architect and urban
designer who had just entered his forties, I had thought of myself as relatively
young, even though I was not by any means ­avant-­garde. The emergence of a
younger generation with entirely different, revolutionary values as a result of the
student unrest, therefore, came as quite a shock. Although it was not clear what
their ultimate aims were, or how they actually proposed to achieve an architectural
revolution, the very fact that members of the younger generation were demand-
ing that they too be heard seemed to me quite significant.
Much of that passion, however, dissipated in ten years’ time, at least in the
architectural world. Those years seemed placid after all the unrest, but the peace
was deceptive and bittersweet for the older generation. The end of the period of
intensive economic growth, brought about by the energy crises in the early 1970s,
had a more direct impact on the city and the way the city was viewed than the
student revolution. Portents of the postindustrial society were becoming evident
in the city. It was around this time that the concentration of so‑called knowledge
industries began in cities hitherto dependent on heavy industries, and office build-
ings began to occupy a central place in the new urban typology.
It was also a time when various environmental problems that Japanese me-
tropolises had come to face as the result of intensive growth began to make
themselves felt on a global scale. A major contradiction of the consumer society
became apparent: that those who participate in the benefits of the city are both
perpetrators and victims of its ecological degradation. In the mid-­1960s I opened
an office in Tokyo and concentrated on design. With the support of many friends
and through the efforts of my staff, I was able to get my practice on track from
the start. Early in my career I had reflected on—and occasionally made declara-
tions about—the kind of places a city ought to have. Now, I was considering
what form architecture ought to take in order to create such places and putting
my ideas into practice, and it was quite fulfilling. My work gradually diversified:
my architectural commissions included public and private elementary and junior
high schools, housing, a community center, and a branch bank office. In addi-
tion, through commissioned studies of urban design, I had many opportunities
to involve myself with the city on a neighborhood level. I felt I was able to deal

84
with the abovementioned contradictions, at least within the limited scope of such
projects.
Even as fears about the future of Tokyo were gradually coming true, there
was still a stability and a gentleness about the environment in the city at the end of
the 1960s that suggested the possibility of a dialogue between architecture and its
surroundings. As the phrase “ethnic Tokyo” (coined by the architectural historian
Hidenobu Jinnai) implies, Tokyo, though a modern city, still had in common with
other Asian metropolises a relaxed, informal quality. A truly contextual architec-
ture, if such a thing were possible, would have been the translation into form and
space of the hopes and expectations that a regional society entertained of a city.
Still a modernist as far as my architectural vocabulary was concerned, I be-
lieved it was possible to respond to, or comment on, the given urban context
using a modern architectural vocabulary. That was one of the means available
to create community architecture. It was my belief that an approach to design
grounded in personal experience would eventually restore power and identity to
the various parts of the city. However, the larger city stood in the way. When an
architect sets limits on the themes and the areas with which he deals, then a closed
circuit is established, albeit temporarily, between his work and the city. Shutting
oneself off from the outer world often makes it possible to explore the world of
art in greater depth. The pleasure of the art of sukiya,2 for example, is probably
derived from the autosuggestion inherent in such a world.
In this period, an empirical approach to the city seemed to me valid. If there
was another turning point, it was occasioned by the turnabout in the perception
of the city, which I will now discuss.

T h e C i t y a s a Wo r l d o f Symb o l s

The transformation of the social, economic, and cultural system—often described

as the advent of a postindustrial society—gathered pace. The Vietnam War, the
student unrest, and the energy crises had erupted as unexpectedly as the 1991
Gulf War was to do. They can be seen as the inevitable conclusions to historical
circumstances, but like the weather, the market, or population statistics, they were
not events that could be forecast precisely. The postindustrial global metamorphosis
did not trigger any of these events, strictly speaking, but these events undoubtedly
helped to accelerate the transformation of society.

O N THE C ITY / C I T Y A N D M O D E R N I S M 85
 In the process of this metamorphosis, Japanese cities, especially metropolises
such as Tokyo, experienced cataclysmic changes that affected their very nature.
One was the destruction and loss of the classical community, particularly in the
inner areas. In ethnically diverse cities in the United States, once-­stable commu-
nities had been turning into slums even before the war and were gradually being
destroyed. By comparison, local communities still survived in so‑called “low-­city”
and “high-­city” districts in Tokyo in the 1960s. In Japan, which quickly suc-
ceeded in converting to the economy of a postindustrial society, a concentration
of knowledge industries in metropolises began anew amid unprecedented eco-
nomic prosperity. Vacillating land policies by successive governments and a skewed
tax system that imposed excessive taxes on inheritance exacerbated the problem.
As the price of prosperity, Tokyo, which has a dispersed polycentric structure
found nowhere else in the world, began to suffer the loss of the very communities
that had given it an urban character.
Local conditions distinctive to Japanese cities accelerated the loss of commu-
nity, but the process could be seen as part of an inevitable global development—
that is, the emergence of a mass society, or what Riesman had called “the crowd,”
as the consequence of modern capitalism. It was a time in which a number of
important questions were being asked. If the gradual loss of community since the
1970s was an irreversible process, was there anything else that could take its place
and provide cohesion, or were we fated to stand by helplessly as the classical city
came to an end?
A number of things were happening in my life in the late 1970s. In 1979, I be-
came a member of the faculty at my alma mater, Tokyo University. Although my
design activities did not cease, I was engaged once more in teaching and research,
this time for ten years, until my retirement from the university in 1989. During
that time, I had the opportunity to consider and discuss issues with students and
researchers and to encounter new friends, inside and outside the university. In
my practice, work included buildings such as art museums and gymnasiums that
addressed the entire city rather than just the local community.
In 1978, I published an essay entitled “The Japanese City and Inner Space,”
my first analysis of traditional urban spaces, or rather, of the mental image the
Japanese have had of cities and the way they have tried to translate that into reality.
Until then, I had been concerned primarily with the individual parts and their

86
place within the whole, and this was an attempt to reexamine from the viewpoint
of cultural and ethnic history the semantic structure behind urban form.
This essay was a rejection of the a priori adoption of community as the cohesive
force organizing the parts and the whole and any attempt to effect a convergence,
vertically, of the parts and the whole. It was instead an effort to reconsider the
overall semantic structure of the city: to ask, if symbolic values transcending direct
function or necessity are what makes a city citylike in form in any given society,
how such values are created, and what kind of symbolic meanings need to be at-
tached to form.
Many young scholars and researchers began to analyze Tokyo around that
time. Such analyses were motivated not by nostalgia but by a need to ask once
more exactly what a city is, or was, before the surviving fragments of the old city
have disappeared completely.
Philosophically and intellectually, modernism had been the force driving
culture in industrial societies since the nineteenth century. But to the extent
that our postindustrial society is defined by its very critique of earlier industrial
society (hence compelling a qualitative change in culture), this society has been
critical of modernism as well. It was at this point in our history that postmodern-
ism emerged. While in the broadest sense we are living in a postmodern society
today, the ­quasi-­historicist architectural movement known as postmodernism had
a shorter existence; it was fated to consume itself through the individuation and
differentiation of images inherent in a consumer society because, ultimately, it had
nothing to express. The fact that many works of architecture remained superficial
rhetorical gestures was a sign of the enervation of culture.
Mass society and doctrinaire modernism had produced monotonous, uniform
urban spaces. Postmodernism, which emerged in opposition to that development,
was itself unable to resolve the contradictions in contemporary society.
Earlier I stated that an external condition—the destruction of communities
in contemporary cities—was responsible for changing my viewpoint with respect
to architecture and the city, but in fact the change was not forced simply by ex-
ternal circumstances. Postmodernism ultimately did fall into an endless cycle of
self-­consumption, but did that mean that all symbolic values of architecture had in
fact been consumed? Certainly, superficial images had been manipulated to death,
but there is a domain to architecture that can never be totally exhausted. That
domain, I believe, is space—or, more precisely, urban space. Space, as a reflection

O N THE C ITY / C I T Y A N D M O D E R N I S M 87
of the city’s (or society’s) will to live, has a strength and nobility that can never be
entirely consumed.
In many great historical cities, a stable relationship between two types of ar-
chitecture—symbolic, public buildings (churches, government facilities, ­residences
of the powerful) and vernacular, private houses—once established a static order.
Contemporary cities have destroyed that relationship; architectural symbolism has
devolved into mere signage for consumption. So what can now supply the cohe-
sion necessary to connect individual elements or domains in the city? One answer
to that question may be the creation of spaces that possess, both internally and
externally, a public character symbolic of the times. That may account for the
present tendency for individual buildings to internalize the city. Moreover, public
spaces in the contemporary city can by no means be identified typologically, as in
historical cities. The forms of expression are multidimensional, and the semantic
structure is multilayered. Private and public are no longer antithetical concepts.
In the world of logic, there is no way out of a paradox. Urban space, how-
ever, has the power at times to resolve a paradox.
These inferences must eventually be corroborated by the act of design. De-
signing a multidimensional, polysemous network of public spaces will suggest an
image of the city of the future, just as Nolli’s map of ­eighteenth-­century Rome
provided an image of the classical city. Perhaps such a network will correspond in
some way to the deep structure of society.
The city as a slightly alien environment, as a collective form, as a representation
of community, and as a multidimensional, multilayered space of communication—
these notions were discovered in my efforts to better understand the city. Just as
the observation by scientists of the material world or distant astronomical bod-
ies yields clues to the principles of the physical world, so the study of the city
shows architects and urban designers that behind myriad urban phenomena lies
the source of creation. My own modernism has been defined by the way I have
approached and tried to tap that wellspring.

88
My Ci t y: T h e A c q uisit ion of M ental Landscape s

A cold wind blows through the canyons of New York on this day toward the end of Novem‑
ber 1975, but faint rays of light break through the clouds and illumine the leaves of trees on
the street. It is a typically quiet Sunday afternoon in late autumn.
The sidewalks are empty except for the occasional shadow of someone walking past
solemn façades of metal and stone. With the woods of Central Park visible several blocks
away to the right, I cross Fifth Avenue and arrive at New York’s Museum of Modern Art.
The dimly lit entrance hall and the bookshop to the right are crowded. The sculpture garden
lies beyond the glass screen straight ahead. Above the wall of the garden can be seen the
faintly blue sky. There are not too many other places in the middle of Manhattan where
one can see the sky at such a low angle of elevation. The sculpture by Moore, the Bertoia
chair, the bronze nude with a hand on her hip—everything is as it should be, as far as I am
concerned, on this afternoon in New York.

In the mid-­1950s, after completing my studies at the Graduate School of Design at

Harvard, I lived for nearly a year in a ­fourth-­floor apartment in an old brownstone
not so far from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. That apartment, though a long
and narrow studio, had French casement windows that opened onto a balcony
with a fancy stone balustrade. When the curtains were drawn, the red brick build-
ing of a private elementary school was visible across the street. The apartment
was within a reasonable walking distance of the architectural office on 57th Street
where I was then working. One block east of Fifth Avenue was Madison Av-
enue, which was lined with stores, restaurants, and art galleries. There was always
something on that street to intrigue pedestrians. The seemingly commonplace
area around my apartment, Madison Avenue, the office where I worked, and the
neighborhood of the Museum of Modern Art were, for me, New York.
 Since that time, there has been a sea change in every aspect of America, from
its political and economic environment to its arts and lifestyles. However, this part
of New York—or, to be more precise, the relationship between this part of New
York and myself—has, strangely, stayed on an even keel.
The relationship that existed between citizens of a Greek city-­state and the
agora or, alternatively, the significance of a medieval castle or fortified wall for
those who lived within it, has no equivalent in the contemporary city. In the Ba-
roque period, boulevards with splendid vistas were laid in cities. These boulevards
created new—one might say painterly—landscapes; but at the time, they were
expressions of authority intended to benefit a privileged class. Most citizens still
lived in the remains of medieval cities cloven by those boulevards. Cities began to
have multiple meanings for the first time, and the gap between meaning and form
widened, heralding the end of the city as pure form.
Being a citizen no longer guaranteed the establishment of a certain relationship
with the city. To put it another way: the relationship was henceforth determined
not by the city but by each individual. To those who have no interest in it, the city
is basically transparent. Because the city is transparent, people can pass through it
without negative consequences. Each citizen must construct his own special rela-
tionship to various small parts of the seemingly chaotic, contextless city of today.
The contemporary city is a unique reality for each individual. The landscape does
not exist as such; it must be conceptualized and constructed by a subject.
Jonathan Raban has written of his experience in London:

I’ve never in the past been so territorially possessive, so conscious of walls and
boundaries. It is not just that city life hems us in so closely together that we
develop the aggressive animal’s protective instincts towards our own scraps of
space; it is rather that the stranger in one’s hall or on the pavement outside is
so strange, so culturally different from oneself, so much a member of clubs
and castes to which one has no access, that his presence continually forces
one to question one’s own identity.1

People naturally seek to establish a stable relationship with a city that has a solid
architectural framework, such as New York or London. Yet the territory which
an individual can identify as his own is quite limited in extent. I imagine that the
territory I could identify would not have increased fivefold had I lived in New

ON THE C ITY / M Y C I T Y : T H E A C Q U I S I T I O N O F M E N T A L L A N D S C A P E S 91
York for five years instead of one. It would not have been that different from the
domain with which I was acquainted at the end of a year. There is something al-
most carnal about the sense of territoriality. A territory is a thing that is “entered”
and that wraps itself around the individual.
One’s territory—consisting of home, the area around the home, and scattered
places at some distance from the home—has not become larger today, though the
relationship to that territory may have become deeper. The contemporary urban-
ite, caught up in the seemingly spectacular, complex, and enormous phenomena
of the city, is able to acquire from all that only small scattered domains. Knitting
these small domains into a text of one’s own is an art each individual is given an
opportunity to practice.
With the help of small clues, the urbanite avidly acquires and establishes
his own territory. Thresholds are always delicate places, where even small land-
marks begin to possess meaning. The skies over New York and the lights twinkling
in countless high-­r ise apartment windows indicate the presence of thresholds
between the primary domains of occupants and the world of perfect strangers.
When the curtain is closed over a window, the occupants can reject even that
final possibility of contact. When night passes and dawn eventually arrives, the
city begins its existence all over again, as if it had totally forgotten the events of
yesterday.
Gifted writers and artists have continued to depict the city, offering us acute
perceptions and rich emotions. However, a historical change has clearly taken
place in literature and art as well. The medieval city—for example, the London of
Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales—was a whole enclosed by a wall. Like a home, it was
closed at night. In paintings of the time that show urban landscapes, an attempt
was often made to show the meaning of the city as a whole. The bird’s-­eye view
was an effective method of depiction. In the Renaissance, the discovery of per-
spective made possible the more accurate depiction of cityscapes, but that also led
to a gradual shift in interest toward the relationship between the observer and the
object. With the destruction of the city’s overall social image, the faithful descrip-
tion of the parts of the city became the goal. Eventually, the question became not
how one saw the city but what one saw from a subjective, secular point of view.
Despite magnificent developments in the art world—the depiction of urban man-
ners by the Impressionists and ukiyo‑e artists; the emergence of Social Realism;
the development of the world of Cubism; and in the postwar world, the arrival

92
 of Pop Art, that most powerful expression of the secular city—there have been
repeated reversions to old urban images motivated by nostalgia; the contemporary
city continues to inspire surprise, doubt, introspection, and experiment.
The old Yamanote district of Tokyo was still a quiet residential quarter with
abundant greenery when I was growing up there in the early part of the Showa
era. The entire area became a world of silence whenever it snowed. Yet on the
thoroughfare where the streetcars ran and at the bottom of the hill, small shops
clustered together much as they do now and created an atmosphere more like that
of the Shitamachi or “low city.” Places to play near home existed for children, and
when on occasion one traveled a bit further on a bicycle, one discovered secret
places. Each child developed what the critic Takeo Okuno has called a “primary
landscape.”2
However, Tokyo has undergone a radical transformation in the last several
decades, compared with New York or London. Expressways have intruded into
areas where there used to be no roads. Neighborhoods have been divided, and
high-­r ise buildings have begun to sprout on both sides of widened streets. Hills
have been leveled and greenery has been much reduced. We have been reduced
to seeking traces of the past in the hillsides, walls, and old trees that still remain.
There are places that live on only in names such as Kurayamizaka, Gohontsuji, and
Tansumachi. When even those memories are erased by new systems of addresses,
then one is forced to resort to forms of “acquisition” as far as the formation of
territory or mental landscapes in the contemporary city is concerned.
Compared with New York, Tokyo is a disorderly, relaxed city, whose archi-
tectural framework offers few constraints. That is precisely why the formation
of territory in Tokyo is either very delicate and personal or extremely abstract in
nature. Delicate expression and self-­assertion are practiced in very small spaces,
and signs of the changing seasons, such as wind chimes and reed blinds in summer
and ­bamboo-­and-­pine ornaments at New Year’s, set off the city. Perhaps reflecting
the low-­key nature of these forms of expression, the primary territories of many
individuals are faintly defined and modest.
A city like Tokyo has places with identity for every possible group in society.
People wander about, seeking small territories of their own, whether in ­members-
­only clubs and student hangouts or in bars and pubs around stations.
These modest territories, however, are unstable and unconnected. The empty
gaps between territories are filled by more abstract information concerning the

ON THE C ITY / M Y C I T Y : T H E A C Q U I S I T I O N O F M E N T A L L A N D S C A P E S 93
city. That is one of the major characteristics of the contemporary city. Information
insinuates itself in various forms through television, movies, paintings, and comics
into the empty areas of the consciousness. The media try to dictate to us their
view of the city. News programs on television at New Year’s are instructive. The
Marunouchi business district used to be shown on such programs to symbolize
Tokyo, but some years back it was replaced by a shot of the five skyscrapers in the
Shinjuku subcenter. Like a picture in an advertisement for an overseas tour, that
view of Shinjuku, with the snow-­covered peak of Mount Fuji in the background,
has undeniably entered people’s unconscious. The fact that in Hollywood pictures
the President’s room must have a certain interior and view reveals one aspect of
the contemporary city. Eventually, people’s views of the city become uncon-
sciously controlled. When at last an understanding is reached about links between
hitherto unconnected points through such manipulations and through the efforts
of individuals, the city begins to take on an existence much like a ­garment.
The city engages the individual through events as opposed to history or tradi-
tion. Unexpected encounters, trivial incidents, friends made at gatherings—even
small things can be an opportunity for a person to add something new to what
at first glance may seem like a fixed set of urban experiences. When an event
happens to be associated with a place or form, that new experience becomes for
him another part of the city with significance. When one’s impression of that part
fades, it is discarded. What pattern of territorialization is born in us from such
urban information and events transmitted continuously by the media?
Seeing these diverse experiences with new eyes is probably the first step in
improving the city. Raban concludes Soft City:

It could perhaps be otherwise; but we shall need more daring, more cool
understanding than we are displaying at present. We live in cities badly;
we have built them up in culpable innocence and now fret helplessly in a
synthetic wilderness of our own construction. We need—more urgently
than architectural utopias, ingenious traffic disposal systems, or ecological
programmes—to comprehend the nature of citizenship, to make a serious
imaginative assessment of that special relationship between the self and the
city; its unique plasticity, its privacy and freedom.3

94
My City

Everyone must have a city he can call his own, a mental, primary landscape cre-
ated from the relationship between the self and the city. My city is something I
have created, not something given to me by someone else. Each individual con-
tinuously acquires, selects, and assimilates territories, mental landscapes, and urban
fragments made up of information, ideas, and events, and from those actions arises
a new city. One can create such a place or landscape, even though it may be only
a temporary habitat.
Eventually, through dialogues, people will get an opportunity to discover
what parts of their separate cities they do in fact share. It is then that people will
discover that possession by each individual of a city of his or her own provides a
more stable foundation for the city as a community.

ON THE C ITY / M Y C I T Y : T H E A C Q U I S I T I O N O F M E N T A L L A N D S C A P E S 95
Ame r i c a : H i g h ways, Detached Houses, and Sk yscr ap er s

We create a history by selecting from innumerable facts and incidents those we

deem are important and building a system of relationships around them. Many
different histories can be created, depending on the selection and interpretation
of facts and relationships. There may be one account on which most of us are in
agreement, but history becomes highly relative once we go beyond what is gener-
ally agreed upon and begin to inquire into matters as individuals.
Today, new interpretations are constantly emerging regarding even ancient
history, where we thought we had agreed upon the facts and the overall schema
for those facts long ago. It is therefore extremely difficult to gain a sure perspective
on urban history in a society such as America, which has been in existence only a
short time and is currently undergoing such a radical transformation.
My first encounter with American cities took place many years ago. On an af-
ternoon in September 1952, the cargo ship I had boarded two weeks earlier ended
its voyage across the foggy Pacific at a pier in Seattle. Interestingly, my first impres-
sion of an American city was not visual but olfactory. For someone from Japan,
where automobiles were still relatively few in number, Seattle smelled strongly of
gasoline and metal. However, that novel olfactory experience was soon overtaken
by surprising visual and spatial experiences. Before long I was living in American
cities and gradually developing an image of American cities and architecture from
the things I experienced and learned. In the six subsequent years, I lived in four cit-
ies on the East Coast and in the Midwest: a suburb of Detroit, a suburb of Boston,
New York, and St. Louis. A two-­year trip through Europe, Southeast Asia, and the
Middle East from 1958 to 1960 was followed by a period lasting until 1965 in which
I shuttled back and forth between St. Louis, Cambridge (Massachusetts), and Japan.
Even after returning more or less permanently to Japan, I made frequent—albeit
short—visits to many North American cities, including several on the West Coast.
Some I visited only once, while others, such as San Francisco, I visited a few
dozen times.
My view of American cities inevitably underwent a transformation as my
outlook on cities and architecture gradually changed. It has always been a personal
view, changing as I changed, and not an objective urban history of America; its
evolution has not been linear. Instead, from time to time new light has been cast
on the same fact or phenomenon, so that what appeared to me at one time a
revelation seemed later a forewarning. What follows is an analysis, based on thirty
years of personal experience, of a number of issues of urban morphology in
America that most interest me.

S ta rt i n g Po i nt and Po i nt o f Or i g i n

A center can always be discovered in a city with a long history. When most of our
ancestors lived in the wilderness, the town represented the cosmos, that is, a world
of order, as opposed to the chaos outside. Two acts—the establishment of the
center and the confirmation of a boundary—symbolize man’s intent to construct
a world of order. In early societies in the ancient period, a hill or a great tree was
at times selected for the center, and this eventually evolved into a cosmic pillar
or tower. Later, the Greek city-­state came to have a dualistic structure centered
around the acropolis, the sacred domain, and an agora in the city area (or astu), the
secular domain. In the medieval city, the world of order was made manifest in
a nucleus—consisting of elements such as the church, the market, and the resi-
dence of the feudal lord—combined with a wall surrounding the central part of
the city. In a Japanese ­castle-­town, boundaries were not sharply defined, but the
castle itself provided an emphatic visual center. From the late feudal period to the
modern period, the form, function, and at times even the location of the center
of a city were affected by the expansion in population and the degree of change
in social and economic organization, and in the spatial guise of central authority.
Nevertheless, a city that had once possessed a nucleus nearly always retained in
the historical memories of its citizens a central point of origin, no matter how
great its formal and functional transformation. Today, the concentration of various
facilities of a highly public character—including department stores and railway

ON T H E CITY / A M E R I C A : H I G H W A Y S , D E T A C H E D H O U S E S , S K Y S C R A P E R S 97
stations—around such centers has more often than not reinforced that centrality.
A contour map based on the price of land would no doubt show concentric rings
emanating from the city’s erstwhile center. A close relationship is thus shown to
exist between the psychological center and the center as determined by a quite
material yardstick. That fact demonstrates the existence in these urban societies of
more or less fixed points of origin.
What, then, of American cities? Older, ­medium-­sized cities in the Northeast,
such as Boston (first settled in 1630) and Philadelphia (1680), and in the South,
such as Savannah (1740), had relatively small populations and grew only slowly at
first. New England towns often possessed a grid of nine squares in their center;
the town square was in the middle, and around it were arranged such buildings
as the church and the town meeting hall. This arrangement is not unlike the way
nomads once spent nights encircling their livestock for self-­protection. Obviously,
the spatial organization of the center is not so ­clear-­cut in a city like Boston,
which began as a seaport and whose oldest settled area, surrounded by three hills,
has a complex topography. Still, while accepting such differences of configuration
and growth, we discover in each of these old colonial cities a psychological point
of origin similar to those we have already found in European cities.
Unlike cities that developed in the first era, metropolises that grew up from
the nineteenth century on did not have clear centers—or, to put it another way,
they did not have clear points of origin on a semantic level, on the level of historical
memory. What are called downtown or central districts in these cities today have
quite similar cityscapes when seen from outside—boasting, for example, modern
high-­r ise office buildings, eclectic ­nineteenth-­century public buildings, railway sta-
tions, and hotels—but these do not signify a “point of origin” to the residents of,
say, New York, Detroit, St. Louis, and Los Angeles. Chicago, a ­nineteenth-­century
city with a symbolic center in the Loop District, is a slightly different case.
American cities have indeed undergone rapid changes in the last hundred
years. Something like a center may exist in the urban structure, but it does not
serve to maintain a fixed system of organization as in Europe; it more closely re-
sembles the nucleus of a nebula from which vast amounts of energy are released,
and which continually expands outward. To be sure, these metropolises too were
originally important nuclei bolstering civic consciousness, just like the centers of
European cities. Today, Wall Street in New York still maintains a distinctive urban
function as a center of finance, and the downtown areas in the other three cities

98
also continue to have various important urban functions in their respective metro-
politan regions. It must be noted, however, that the term “downtown,” distinctive
to the United States, is relative and used as the antithesis of “uptown,” which has
been the domain of urban prosperity for the past hundred years. To understand
the true nature of these central districts, we need to recognize that “uptown” and
“downtown” are different in meaning from “Yamanote” and “Shitamachi” as
used in Tokyo; instead, they represent the starting points for urban domains with
­still-­expanding vectors. The atmosphere of Tokyo’s Shitamachi or Paris’s Marais is
to be found in America only in ethnic districts such as the Little Italies and Chi-
natowns that have continued to survive near the central districts, though they have
become very Americanized by now. New York’s Downtown was an alien place for
many “Uptown” New Yorkers of the nineteenth century, and today, these dis-
tricts, which retain traces of the ebb and flow of urban development, are gradually
losing that quality of humanity with which they have long been associated.
A symbolic downtown can still be found in St. Louis. The city’s modestly
sized ­nineteenth-­century central district is situated on the west bank of the Mis-
sissippi. Residential districts for the affluent developed nearby, especially along
the boulevards, which form a main axis going through the center of town to-
ward the west. Eventually, the city began to focus its development and energy on
the suburbs. The central district and areas nearby saw an influx of low-­income
families from the South and the East who provided a source of cheap labor. In
urban ecological terms, it was the beginning of an invasion. The areas around the
abandoned downtown became slums, and eventually the high-­r ise public hous-
ing project known as ­Pruitt-­Igoe was built in the name of urban redevelopment,
receiving much national attention. When I was living in the city around 1956, this
project was considered a model and a symbol for the revival of the central district
in St. Louis; I happened to visit it with students as a part of a practical training
program at the university, and a young black man working at the district commu-
nity center told us of the hopes people had for it. Despite much effort, the project
became ­crime-­r idden within fifteen years, and fearful residents departed, leaving
behind nearly deserted buildings standing like ruins. Eventually, just twenty years
after their construction, the high-­r ise apartment buildings were destroyed with
dynamite. The area subsequently became a desolate urban wasteland. In November
1981, I had an opportunity to revisit St. Louis and went to the district in a car. The
downtown area of St. Louis had gone through many changes in this ­quarter-­century

ON T H E CITY / A M E R I C A : H I G H W A Y S , D E T A C H E D H O U S E S , S K Y S C R A P E R S 99
and still retained some life.Yet there was something pitiful about it that suggested
an old soldier, weary of battle but still desperately defending an isolated strong-
hold. The area that had been the ­Pruitt-­Igoe housing district had metamorphosed
into a vast urban wilderness filled with abandoned cars and furniture.The Jefferson
Memorial Arch, rising beyond it reflecting the faint light of winter, suggested to
me a monument to a city whose historical mission had ended.

Ro ads as Physi cal E x tension

Behind these ideas of the starting point and point of origin in American cities is
yet another pair of antithetical concepts—the open urban system and the closed
urban system. A city with a closed system is full of places with character and a
high concentration of meaning; a city with an open system is basically a set of
spaces that are uniform and have a low concentration of meaning. In the latter,
space is quite neutral and abstract, and its value is determined by the effect of
all actions taken with respect to that land. In a city with an open system, spaces
themselves become highly subject to manipulation.
The three models of urban form proposed by scholars at the University of
Chicago—the concentric model, the sector model, and the polycentric model—
represent the confirmation and clarification of patterns of settlement created or
destroyed in accordance with principles of ecological adaptation in such neutral
urban spaces by groups differentiated by ethnic background and economic class.
The property owners who, in a space of only a hundred years, simply sur-
rendered the central city areas that had been theirs for several generations to low-
­income families—and the administrative authorities of St. Louis who simply

3.1 Plan of Chicago, 1901.

100
destroyed a high-­r ise housing project after only twenty years of use—revealed a
mindset of urban planning in which everything is valued only for its effect. St.
Louis is one of the more typical examples of the dynamic development of Ameri-
can cities as open systems, driven by roads.
In Architecture and Utopia, the Italian architectural and urban critic Manfredo
Tafuri writes:

From as early as the mid-­eighteenth century, the great historical merit of

American city planning has been the considering of the problem explicitly
from the point of view of those forces which provoke morphological change
in the city, and controlling them with a pragmatic attitude completely for-
eign to European practice.
The use of a regular network of arteries as a simple, flexible support for
an urban structure to be safeguarded in its continual transformation, real-
izes an objective never arrived at in Europe. In the American city, absolute
liberty is granted to the single architectural fragment, but this fragment is
situated in a context that it does not condition formally: the secondary ele-
ments of the city are given maximum articulation, while the laws governing
the whole are rigidly maintained. Thus urban planning and architecture are
finally separated.1

A zone of homogeneous spaces and roads as a means of dividing that zone and
accessing each space—these two powerful concepts for manipulating urban form
freed the city from the myths surrounding character of place that European civi-
lization had created over several centuries. This trend was accelerated, particularly

3.2 Demolition of the ­Pruitt-­Igoe

housing project in St. Louis, 1972.

ON T H E CITY / A M E R I C A : H I G H W A Y S , D E T A C H E D H O U S E S , S K Y S C R A P E R S 101
from the nineteenth century on, by the separation of the dwelling from the place
of employment, along with the influx of population into cities and the growth of
urban regions as economic markets. The most distinctive aspect of this system was
that roads assured equal accessibility to all buildings, whether detached houses,
apartment buildings, or commercial facilities. Naturally, the increasing importance
of automobiles to urban life made that all the more necessary. Equal accessibility
plays a decisive role in urban form, as is revealed when we examine blocks. That
is, blocks are the inevitable by‑product of road construction, whether the roads
are a part of a grid pattern in the middle of the city or cul-­de‑sacs in the suburbs
or the main street in a small town, and whatever the size or function of buildings.
Moreover, with few exceptions, roads are not subdivided into narrow back streets,
as in Japan.
In the American urban structure, roads assuring uniform accessibility are at
the bottom of the hierarchy of roads. Above them is a network of urban arteries,
parkways, and freeways.
In American towns there are no back areas—or what in Japan we call oku,
or inner areas—that possess character of place. Of course we glimpse beautiful
gardens with plants, small swimming pools, or children’s play areas in the back of
affluent homes in the suburbs, or in areas like Georgetown in Washington, D.C.
There, people can talk to each other across low hedges. Such places, however, are
exceptions limited both to certain areas and to certain classes. That is, areas with
a high concentration of activity are created mostly in private domains invisible
from the road. By contrast, if one walks around to the rear of apartment build-
ings standing by a road, one usually encounters a desolate scene with little sign
of human activity. The clamorous back streets of Southeast Asia or the Mediter-
ranean, or the quiet, roji spaces full of ambience of Kanazawa or Kyoto, are not
to be found in America.
Once stated, this seems quite obvious, but the sense of incompatibility I felt
for several decades in American towns is accounted for by a structure based on a
different notion of territoriality. Americans satisfy their sense of territory through
constant focus on and passion for the richness of private things. That, of course,
can be said to have been the natural consequence of being a society more blessed
with space than any other, but it is probably more accurate to say that that focus
helped to produce the surfeit of private spaces. In Japan, the automobile is often
said to be a private space that offers freedom from life in a cramped apartment,

102
 but in America, the car is seen more as a flexible extension of the house. For an
American, the house, the garage, the road, and the freeway are metaphorically
a linked extension of his body. That is, the equal accessibility roads provide to
each house creates an arrangement not unlike that of a ­Thousand-­Armed Kan-
non: each arm is a house, and the torso is the main arterial road. Thus driving in
America, one often finds that—in contrast to the Japanese, who drive with such
serious concentration—Americans strike up conversations at intersections with
total strangers. They are like neighbors greeting each other from balconies on op-
posite sides of the street in Naples. Americans are like turtles carrying their shells
with them. The amenity and tension produced by the contact and friction of self-
­centered domains form the urban territory distinctive to this country. At the same
time, that is the underlying cause of the various problems of human relationships
troubling American cities.
Americans socialize principally in the private domains of houses. In the 1960s,
the hippies built their communes far from human settlements, and these places
were private worlds. Nostalgia for the extended family system of the past may lie
behind volunteer activities, perhaps the most distinctive aspect of the history of
American cities.
The freeways of Los Angeles are the ultimate extension of the self. There are
three levels to the meaning of the “free” in freeways. The freeways are toll-­free,
permit freedom of movement, and liberate the self psychologically.
Freeways figure in almost all automobile trips in Los Angeles. To go from
point A to point B, a Los Angeles resident goes to the freeway entry nearest A and
then travels to the exit nearest B. Cloverleafs are designed with a large turning
radius, and the freeways, equipped with numerous wide lanes, do not have gates
at entries and exits as in Japan. Except during rush hour, one can enter a freeway
without decelerating.
As a city planner has pointed out, there is no need to automatically move
when one changes one’s place of employment in this city where residential areas
are widely scattered. As long as freeways function smoothly, this city is the closest
thing to a motopia. Of course the various urban problems caused by the fact that
roads, parking, and freeways take up such a high percentage of the land area have
already been pointed out, but that is not the subject of this essay. My concern here
is the fact that freeways are a powerful symbolic extension of physicality, and what
that reveals about cultural character.

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 The architectural historian Reyner Banham had this observation to make in
Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies:

The first time I saw it happen nothing registered on my conscious mind,

because it all seemed so natural—as the car in front turned down the off-
­ramp of the San Diego freeway, the girl beside the driver pulled down the
sun-­visor and used the mirror on the back of it to tidy her hair. Only when
I had seen a couple more incidents of the kind did I catch their import: that
coming off the freeway is coming in from outdoors. A domestic or sociable
journey in Los Angeles does not end so much at the door of one’s destina-
tion as at the off-­ramp of the freeway, the mile or two of ­g round-­level streets
counts as no more than the front drive of the house.2

Though it may be an enormous belt, the freeway itself is perceived by the resi-
dents of Los Angeles as just a place. The freeway is indeed a front parlor for the
home they consider their castle.
In 1978 I spent two months in Los Angeles and used the freeways extensively
every day. Gradually I, too, came to see the freeway as a part of my body. Several
years earlier, a friend of mine, an architect now living in San Francisco who had
just moved to Los Angeles, was driving at full speed toward the airport when
a car coming up from the rear started honking its horn. He told me he took a
look and recognized the driver as an ex‑girlfriend whom he had not seen since
their ­split‑up. He waved, they exchanged shouted greetings, and at the next in-
terchange they parted. I began to understand the dry romanticism that flourishes
under the deep blue sky of California when he wondered out loud when they
would meet next on the freeway.

The De tached Ho use and th e Skysc rape r

If European civilization can be said to have created its own distinctive cities
and works of architecture through the creation and maintenance of order and
norms—and through the proposal of a new system of order whenever the exist-
ing order was threatened with destruction—then America, though it has a shorter
history, must be recognized as having produced its own unique cities and build-
ings through the promotion of laissez-­faire urban economic policies that extol the

104
frontier spirit and despite the failures that are the inevitable consequence of those
policies. Practically all developing countries have metropolises with open systems,
but so far they have not been able to match America’s achievement. The wealth
of urban and architectural culture America has produced in the last one hundred
years is remarkable, even when the slight head start it enjoys is taken into consid-
eration. Let us examine two of the most salient American symbols of freedom: the
detached house and the skyscraper.
In American Architecture and Urbanism, Vincent Scully writes that even after
the United States had reached a high level of material civilization, a deep-­seated
American attitude—distrust of urban civilization and a tendency to equate politi-
cal freedom with physical decentralization—gained strength and eventually found
expression in the most vital form of ­nineteenth-­century American architecture,
the ­single-­family, wood-­construction house in the suburbs.3 As I said earlier, the
detached house and the road are inextricably linked, not only in a direct, physi-
cal sense, but also in a symbolic sense. The detached house directly connected to
the road eventually became the ­middle-­class image of the ideal dwelling. People
instinctively understood that this was the one type of architecture that had no ties
to colonial culture and was truly American in meaning. It can be argued that the
deep-­seated desire to return to the soil on the part of Americans—that is, the
American yearning for an agrarian utopia—was expressed most directly, not in
the city as a whole, which was conceived as an open system, but in the detached
house. The detached house was actively introduced not only into suburbs but
also into ­medium-­sized cities. The so‑called “private street systems”—residential
enclaves with controlled access—were developed in the mid-­nineteenth century
as restricted utopias for the affluent of the time.
As Tafuri explains, revolt against the pressure of European tradition has always
been behind the American drive toward freedom. A desire to transcend the static
world of order—for example, the Palladian world—and to express a dynamic
worldview is constantly found in the stylistic history of detached houses. In con-
trast to the simple and rustic houses of the colonial style, Thomas Jefferson’s home,
Monticello (1780), in Charlottesville, Virginia, represents a magnificent resolution
of the conflict between the desire for stability and the will to expand horizontally
over the land—that is, between European and American paradigms. Eventually,
this line of development produced the even more liberated forms of the Prairie
Style houses by Frank Lloyd Wright; with them, detached houses became works
of spatial poetry distinctive to America.

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 In America, the strong conviction that “a man’s home is his castle” is an ex-
pression of yearning not only for freedom but for a self-­contained internal world.
Houses that are self-­sufficient worlds are to be found in other regional cultures,
especially in farmhouses, but in America, they developed in cities as early as the
colonial period. When the agora was built in the center of the Greek city-­state,
the citizens’ houses lost some of their independence. It was the beginning of a
European urban civilization revolving both physically and psychologically around
what was public. It was therefore not strange when the aristocrats’ residences as-
sumed the style of small temples. The fact that, by contrast, churches and meeting
halls took the form of oversized “houses” in the early colonial period in Amer-
ica is noteworthy. Conditions favorable for the acceptance of modern detached
houses in the International Style developed, such as the desire (referred to above)
to expand space horizontally, free planning, a perception of houses as containers
for a comfortable life. At least from looking at contemporary detached houses in
the urban context, it seems that in America, as in Europe, detached houses of an
original nature are ultimately unable to survive as types. Detached houses such as
Wright’s Fallingwater, Philip Johnson’s Glass House, and Bruce Goff ’s Bavinger
House must be regarded as valuable reference points in the history of the develop-
ment from modern to contemporary architecture—that is, as ­small-­scale experi-
ments of new ideas subsequently developed on a grander scale. This suggests that
while Americans valued freedom, which permitted and was a precondition of
creativity and originality, they wanted to be free, too, of things that were truly
creative or original. The individuality characteristic of detached houses as a type
had to mesh with the idea of freedom that has been the basis for transcendental-
ist thought since Emerson. Direct connections to roads, a stable relationship to

3.3 Vertical expression in the

Bavinger House, Norman,
Oklahoma, 1955, by Bruce Goff.

106
the earth, forms acceptable to the historical memory of Americans in the depths
of their consciousness, a certain level of comfort as actual machines to live in,
flexibility, scope to permit self-­expression or the possibility of expression—these
conditions guaranteed the success of detached houses as a type of architectural
vernacular. Vernacular forms do not easily accommodate change, including what
is new. The detached houses in the suburbs and the cities of America were able
to create an urban context because they possessed the essentially conservative
character of the vernacular.
How, then, should we interpret the other American symbol of freedom, the
skyscraper?
My first encounter with skyscrapers took place in December 1952 and left an
indelible impression. I was studying at the time at the Cranbrook Academy of Art
in a suburb of Detroit, and when my first Christmas vacation in America came
around, I flew to New York. I arrived at what is now called Kennedy Airport late
in the evening and took an airport limousine into the city. I will never forget my
first sight of skyscrapers shining against the night sky as the bus reached a point
near the ­Queens-­Midtown Tunnel, across the river from Manhattan. Since then,
the skyscraper has been an integral part of my image of American architecture.
Two conditions made it possible for skyscrapers to achieve their status in the
American urban context. The first, of course, was progress in technology related
to the development of ­steel-­frame structures, elevators, and air-­conditioning sys-
tems. The second was economic circumstances. From the middle of the nine-
teenth century to the beginning of the twentieth, American cities such as New
York and Chicago underwent rapid development, and the price of land in their
central districts rose sharply. Skyscrapers, however, made it possible to stack an

3.4 Horizontal expression in

the Ward-­Willetts House, Oak
Park, Illinois, 1902, by Frank
Lloyd Wright.

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almost unlimited number of floors for undefined use on a narrow piece of land.
Americans readily accepted the skyscraper, which promised unrestricted urban
growth in the vertical direction as opposed to the horizontal, as a new build-
ing type. Moreover, like boulevards constructed by rulers in the Baroque period,
skyscrapers were undoubtedly a way of demonstrating power and authority in
the name of progress for American industrialists and financiers. However, the
skyscraper achieved its unique status in the cultural context of American cities
because it was more than just a symbol of progress or a “machine” for producing
more floor area.
Earlier public and commercial buildings in the center of the city were mostly
designed by architects with a Beaux-­Arts education and so were inevitably mod-
eled on European architecture (though the beginnings of a uniquely American style
could already be found in mid-­nineteenth-­century Chicago). Skyscrapers, however,
were entirely different from massive masonry buildings designed to fit into a spatial
framework of figure and ground; they were instead independent of whatever stood
around them. Skyscrapers, in that sense, had the potential to be free.
Magda ­Révész-­Alexander states that the world can be divided into cultures
with towers and cultures without towers.4 It is important to note that America,
which had hitherto been one of the latter, became one of the former with the
development of skyscrapers. The tripartite composition of early skyscrapers into
base, body, and crown reveals architect’s (and society’s) deep interest in this form
of tower. The skyscraper became a metaphor for the column.
Around the turn of the twentieth century, eclecticism was in vogue in the
architectural world, and early skyscrapers sported diverse forms of stylistic or-
namentation, especially on top. It has been said that the skyline in New York,
with its hint of every style from Gothic to modern eclectic, was an instantaneous
recapitulation of history. The skyscraper acquired monumentality and achieved
its historic status in the American urban context because it was able to assimilate
diverse styles and to generate new architectural meaning. The skyscraper, like the
detached house, represented the emergence in American culture of a new building
type that suggested physical independence. However, unlike the detached house,
the skyscraper under the influence of modernism (and later postmodernism) con-
tinued to assume different guises symbolic of the age, with new garb emerging
still today. The contradictions inherent in architecture—conflicts between form

108
and function and between art and technology—continue to find expression in
the skyscraper.
The desire for freedom in American culture continues to be expressed in vari-
ous forms, including billboards along highways. Saul Steinberg has expressed this
freedom most eloquently with his pen. Steinberg’s landscapes reveal his awareness
of the way the distinctively American projection of physicality continues to affect
the environment.

ON T H E CITY / A M E R I C A : H I G H W A Y S , D E T A C H E D H O U S E S , S K Y S C R A P E R S 109
Th e D r awi n g C a l led Bra sília

Two hours after its departure from Rio de Janeiro, the plane began to descend. I
stared out the window, but nothing was visible in the darkness. Like a pearl neck-
lace flung into space, a cluster of lights suddenly emerged from between the faint
shadows of clouds. We had already arrived over Brasília, the capital.
A ­quarter-­century had passed since then-­president Juscelino Kubitschek de-
cided at the start of the 1950s to move the capital here. Brasília was to be con-
structed in the center of the country to correct a pattern of development weighted
toward the southern seaboard and to stimulate the development of the Amazon
basin.
As a daytime flight to Brasília quickly reveals, the soil in this highland region
is red. The earth is crisscrossed by wide roads, and here and there verdant lawns
have been created. Plants generally do poorly in the soil, and only scattered acacia
and eucalyptus trees grow in between buildings. The four straight roads arranged
nearly parallel in the east-west direction in the center of the city form an axis, and
administrative, financial, and commercial facilities are located in this district. At
the eastern end of the axis is Three Powers Plaza (Praça dos Três Poderes), which
often appears on television programs and in photographs introducing the city.
Like the wings of a bird, two systems of roads branch off from around the
middle of this east-­west axis. Housing—composed mostly of ­medium- and high-
­r ise apartment buildings—and community facilities are situated along this ­north-
­south network. What resembled a pearl necklace from the plane was the chain of
light created by streetlights along these roads. To the east, the plateau slopes down
gradually, and an artificial lake nestles, as it were, under the two wings.
 From a distance—for example, from a slight rise on the opposite shore of the
lake—one can get a panoramic view of Brasília. The white skyline of the city,
bathed in the evening sunlight and viewed against a background of the deep blue
sky of the highlands and the dynamic movement of white cumulonimbus clouds,
is impressive.
Only an expanse of unpopulated space exists between the observer and the
city. The city still appears the way that a small village in the countryside viewed
from a distance does. Yet Brasília is not a village of a few dozen houses but the
capital of a large country. By the start of the 1970s the population was approach-
ing 300,000. Nevertheless, the space suggests a ruin—or perhaps, rather, one of
the plazas Giorgio de Chirico depicted in his paintings, in which time has stopped
still. It is a world that exists only in the mind, a world without a hint of human
presence, noise, or movement of air above ground, yet full of unlimited light.
Brasília has something in common with the Esposizione Universale di Roma
(EUR), a suburban district outside Rome, where the façades of fascist buildings
had had a strangely bright and empty quality when I visited it ten years earlier.
Brasília is not the only new capital constructed in this century. There have
been many, including Canberra in Australia, Islamabad in Pakistan, and Chandi-
garh in the Punjab state in India. However, Brasília is especially abstract in charac-
ter. Where does this abstract quality originate? To me, one of the most fascinating
aspects of this story is the fact that modern architectural ideas and city planning
doctrines (or at least, some of those doctrines) that had developed primarily in
Europe from the late nineteenth century to the start of the twentieth century
were crystallized in Brasília without alteration and without any misgivings. Per-
haps “frozen” might be the more apt expression. As is often pointed out, practi-
cally no trace of an old indigenous civilization exists in Brazil, compared to other
countries of Central and South America; and the tolerance characteristic of the
Portuguese when compared to the Spanish, seen in their Brazilian descendants,
can be said to have facilitated this bold experiment in new architecture.
Certainly, securing greenery and sunlight and reorganizing urban spaces in
order to improve the material and social environment of cities, which had con-
tinued to expand and been laid to ruin by the Industrial Revolution since the
eighteenth century, were high among the priorities of modern city planning and
architecture. Those, however, were merely general urban planning principles, and

O N T HE C I T Y / T H E D R A W I N G C A L L E D B R A S Í L I A 111
adaptation to the particular environmental, climatic, and historical circumstances
of each case was of course needed in their actual application—in fact, that was
the main task for contemporary planning in regional societies.
Nevertheless, the concept of a healthy city was realized in Brasília in an ex-
tremely abstract manner. At the same time, a Baroque overemphasis on visual per-
ception and an obsession with formalistic principles can be seen in many aspects
of the city’s functional organization. For example, the hotel I stayed at was located
on the south side of the east-­west urban axis, and a hotel of the same form and
size was being constructed on the north side in the exact symmetrical location.
The two hotels were not close enough to produce any synergies, but they were
not so far apart as to be centrally located in their respective districts. The presence
of the two hotels separated by a distance of several hundred meters was strange.
Traffic was also completely separated by level. No traffic signals existed, even for
pedestrians, and I frequently came to intersections where I had to wait for a break
in traffic in both directions and run across at risk to my life. Many conveniences,
including housing, were considered for civil servants—since this was to be a city
of government—but a serene indifference was shown in planning housing for
people in low-­ranking service industries necessary to the maintenance of urban
life or for construction workers.
Brasília is perhaps one of the best examples of the brutal exercise of the
power of city planning. As someone of the same profession as Lucio Costa and
Oscar Niemeyer, who planned and designed this city, I cannot help but consider
the strange, almost magical power of the plan as a drawing.
Building or remaking a city is fundamentally an act of brute force. Mankind’s
long history has shown that city planning is often an expression of a concern

3.5 Lucio Costa’s original sketch

for the new capital plan, 1957.

112
for design on the part of those in authority. It is not strange that man has had
a persistent desire to give form to the city, since concern for design has been a
psychological force throughout history. City planning offered those in authority
the ideal opportunity for self-­assertion.
The many beautiful old cities of Europe that today offer such endless delights
to the traveler could not have been built without the enormous wealth brought
back from the colonies. The reconstruction plan of Paris by Haussmann during
the Third Empire in France produced the beautiful boulevards we see today, but at
the cost of destroying the semantic structures of many small districts. According
to his memoir Inside the Third Reich, Albert Speer, an architect who, as a confidant
of Hitler, became minister of munitions toward the end of World War II, was ob-
sessed with a plan to reconstruct Berlin until Hitler’s last days.1 All this is consistent
with the way cities have been constructed throughout history.
By the brutality implicit in the act of designing a city, however, I do not mean
merely acts of brute force perpetrated by those in authority. I am referring instead
to the power embodied in a single line or in a single drawing.
Why does a single line or a single drawing come to have such significance in
the act of creating a new city? Because all city planning acts begin with and boil
down to a single line, and because nothing can be initiated without that single
line, whether the community is a city of one million with complex functions or
a simple village of several dozen houses.
Many people no doubt believe that building a city requires the repetition and
accumulation of an enormous number of surveys, analyses, studies, discussions,
and decisions. The effort an individual must exert to create even a house on a tiny
lot may lead people to believe that creating a city must be an extraordinary task.

3.6 Brasília in 1972.

O N T HE C I T Y / T H E D R A W I N G C A L L E D B R A S Í L I A 113
Certainly, computers may help to analyze and supply various data. The reality,
however, is that nothing can be started without a drawing. Ultimately someone
must, with brutal finality, draw that single line on a white piece of paper and
produce that drawing.
In the early 1960s, a new industrial city was planned in the Guiana Highlands
of Venezuela, a country that shares a border with Brazil. In response to a request
from the Venezuelan government, top experts from the Joint Center for Urban
Studies at Harvard and MIT, with support from the Ford Foundation, developed
a plan over the course of several years. Many personnel were sent to the site, and
an enormous amount of research was conducted on everything from geography,
soil conditions, culture, economy, and transportation to human ecology. Naturally
a design team was included, and it undertook from the start a parallel study of
the form the regional city would take. I was affiliated with Harvard at the time
and was able to observe this process closely. What surprised me was that a single
bending arterial road appeared at an early stage in the process; as time passed,
various functions were attached to it. Several years passed, but that line stayed the
same. No doubt the actual formation of the town is today proceeding around that
single artery.
Lucio Costa’s proposal for Brasília is said to have been the winning scheme in
a limited competition. However, I can picture Costa lingering on that vast plateau
of red soil over which only a few thickets of trees and shrubs are scattered. I can
also imagine him back in his room silently confronting a blank sheet of paper in
the lamplight. The first line he drew on that sheet no doubt indicated the east-­west
axis. Nothing else is conceivable. An architect and planner, given this land with
little character except the slight downward slope to the east, could not possibly
imagine anything other than a self-­sufficient form. It had to be the equivalent of
a pyramid in the middle of the desert in ancient Egypt. With the addition of the
wings extended to the left and the right, and the lake, the image was complete.
Intuition is key to pattern recognition in an urban designer as well as a math-
ematician or a go master.2 His logic and scope of judgment provide a quick check
to see whether something is likely to succeed or not. People may call that irratio-
nal and imprudent. However, creating something from scratch more often than
not requires some peremptory act of judgment at first—or, more precisely, at the
first critical juncture. All rationales, from the assignment of functions to the system
of transportation, are developed on the basis of what has been drawn. Certainly

114
there are often cases where a scheme is discarded and everything starts over again
from square one. Whatever the final form, however, nothing can begin without
that first drawing.
That single line or drawing eventually begins to control and influence the
movement and the way of life of tens of thousands of people. It is perhaps the
most romantic act of brute force possible. A single painting by Picasso called
Guernica had a powerful emotional effect on many people of the time. The draw-
ing produced by an urban designer exercises power over countless people in an
entirely different way.
Albert Speer’s book Spandau examines the subtle psychological forces at work
in an architect to whom authority has been conferred.3 When in due course it
became time to shift from the near-­visionary world of the urban designer to
the actual realization of that world, he began to crave more authority for that
design. At times he gave in to temptation. He warns that a drawing that has been
authorized eventually takes on a life of its own and can no longer be controlled
by the person who originally produced it. Fear that a drawing would take on an
independent life warred with his design ambition.
At the western end of the east-­west axis drawn by Costa is a television tower,
and at the top is an observation deck. From there, I could see below the pattern
he had drawn translated into reality. The countless automobiles moving like insects
in all directions faithfully repeated the pattern he had created. The Three Powers
Plaza at the eastern end of the city is composed of two adjacent towers, the white
lid-­like Assembly Building at their feet, and the Presidential Palace and the Con-
gress Hall situated at both ends. There are rectangular boxes of diverse heights and
proportions. I began to wonder where in this huge collage people actually lived.
The people—and I did begin to see people moving about—were like grains of
rice. If I had had a movie camera with a zoom lens, I would undoubtedly have
been able to record many different lifestyles: the relaxed people sunbathing by the
poolside in the hotel where I had just had lunch, the group of youths in a drug
store complaining about the tedium against the background of Latin rock music
from a jukebox, the housewife washing the window of an apartment, and children
running around in the pilotis. Once one descends into its nether world, Brasília
shows unexpected signs of life here and there. The people in Brasília lead their
lives in the hope of forming small territories of their own where they can express
themselves, just as the people in Rio de Janeiro do.

O N T HE C I T Y / T H E D R A W I N G C A L L E D B R A S Í L I A 115
 I believe that, like an organism that slowly but surely breaks out of its given shell
and evolves or suffers extinction, a town, though it may start from a single drawing,
eventually begins to produce its own drawings—that is, to create its own destiny.
How much time must pass before a single drawing produced by several in-
dividuals begins to contain these countless individual designs and to undergo
­transmutation?
Like moss covering a stone, various transformations begin to appear in the
system and principle forcibly imposed by a single drawing. A planner I knew
once commented that even if a single drawing does violence, it is desirable if it is
open and permits a dialogue with individual inhabitants. I am not ready to accept
that, because the one who is producing the drawing is not then anticipating such
possibilities or able to anticipate them. I have stated that there is a strange magical
power in a single line; that is because the instant a single line is drawn, it takes on
a certain inevitability. Each city has its own historical destiny, which is different
from the evolution of organisms.
People somehow cling to and survive in this thoroughly transparent city that
is abstract to the point of indifference. Costa’s drawing has so far remained un-
changed. The southern wing has already been completed, and the northern wing
is steadily being built. For the foreseeable future, people will continue to accept
this heritage of the modern era; they will continue to scurry across streets, live in
the same concrete apartment buildings, and shop daily in the same markets. Little
by little, they will adapt to the drawing while beginning to produce drawings of
their own—in fact, the number of people who have gradually come to like this
city is said to be increasing. The residents have not yet had any significant impact
on the urban form of Brasília, yet no doubt something will eventually emerge like
a message in invisible ink written on Costa’s drawing.4

3.7 Brasília housing estate in 1998.

116
N o t e s o n U r b a n Spa ce

Ho me l and and Outl and

These days I often employ a pair of antithetical ideas in attempting to describe

the nature of cities, especially large cities. I am unable as yet to explain precisely
why the terms homeland and outland (or kokyo and ikyo in Japanese) are useful in
expressing the character of cities, but I find them rich in suggestions.
Why are people drawn to cities? They concentrate in metropolises despite vari-
ous negative factors. One possible attraction is freedom. However, the merits of an
urban environment are by no means obvious, at least with respect to freedom of
expression. Many different “group languages” exist in the metropolis. According to
the critic Takao Aeba, the political philosopher Simone Weil made a sharp distinction
between the “group” and the “individual.”1 It takes only a gathering of four or five
people for the “language of the individual” to gradually disappear and for the “group
language” to become dominant. A system comes into being, and the true “individ-
ual” is suppressed. In fact, the city is full of constraints and customs, yet it is precisely
in this environment that people hope to find freedom.The city creates this seemingly
paradoxical psychological condition. Perhaps that is what attracts people there.
Let us consider the question from another angle. In Shiso to shite no Tokyo
(Tokyo as an Ideology), Koichi Isoda writes:

A visitor from without is always perceived as “foreign matter” in a stable

cultural sphere. If the community is tightly knit, then the “foreign matter” is
either expelled or assimilated. An agrarian community confronted by an alien
value system tends to either reject it or be assimilated by it if its values are
superior. In Tokyo, however, neither rejection nor assimilation took place.2
Isoda attributes this to iki, the spirit of the natives of Edo, but I ascribe it to
the fact that Tokyo has always been for people both a homeland and an outland.
“Foreign matter” is accepted because Tokyo has always been a city of people who
come from other areas. Indeed, acceptance is a confirmation of a Tokyoite’s own
identity as someone whose homeland is a haven for outlanders.
That is, the spirit distinctive to large cities is based on the coexistence of
a homeland and an outland—or, more precisely, “homelandishness” and “out-
landishness.” Kyoto, a more ancient and conservative city, is not outlandish to
anywhere near the degree that Tokyo is. That is because outlandishness is a desta-
bilizing quality. Homelandishness and outlandishness are not recently developed
qualities, but have long been the salient characteristics of large cities.
I also find these terms useful because they clearly indicate an individual’s
viewpoint. Whether a place is a homeland or an outland depends entirely on the
individual in question. A homeland for A might be an outland for B, and vice
versa. That is, different human beings can have entirely different views, percep-
tions, and understandings of the same phenomenon. These terms thus recognize
that the city exists as the sum total of the actions people take daily to create their
own individual realities out of a hypothetical (or virtual) reality.
What does an outland signify? The word often means a strange, as yet unex-
plored frontier. One might feel a vague longing for the outland as well as anxiety
about one’s existence there. Anxiety can go hand in hand with hope for the future.
Takao Aeba, to whom I referred above, repeats the words of Franz Kafka, “anxiety
is at the core of my being,” in describing how in the case of the Jews, a people
denied a homeland for nearly 2,000 years of European history, for whom racial
isolation provided an impetus to discover “universal knowledge.” To be precise,
an outland is not the same thing as what Isoda calls “foreign matter” or something
from without. Foreign matter can certainly evoke feelings about the outland, but
it is not the outland itself.
The homeland is a foundation providing spiritual stability but, by the same
token, a deterrent to contact with anything or anyone beyond its boundaries.
Every individual has inside himself both a homeland and an outland, and the
city continually mirrors the internal world he constructs. Homeland and out-
land are mental landscapes, within which foreign matter exists as objects. Thus
these antithetical concepts are particularly suggestive for architecture and urban
spaces. The homeland is a landscape already inscribed with time. Its spatial extent,

O N T H E C I T Y / N O T E S O N U R B A N S PA C E 119
being clearly limited, is easily described. The outland, however, is a landscape in
which time and space are both obscure. That is because the outland is a world of
the imagination. In the homeland, imagination is directed inwardly and does not
manifest itself in any outward way that threatens the existence of the homeland
itself.3
The homeland is a spatial image carrying the full weight of time. It pos-
sesses a clear visual pattern and a recognized structure of meaning. The outland is
liberated from time, visually amorphous and in a state of suspended meaning. In
the homeland, space is controlled by the powerful will of the group, but in the
outland, the individual’s imagination is permitted to wander.
Toshi no fukeigaku (The Study of Urban Landscape) contains a dialogue be-
tween the critics Saburo Kawamoto and Keizo Hino.4 Discussions of the cityscape
are ordinarily premised on the idea that closely knit communities bound together
by celebrations and observances represent the ideal urban form, but Kawamoto
and Hino sense contemporaneity in cityscapes that are desolate but at the same time
invigorating. They perceive contemporaneity in a world of bright nothingness
covered in concrete, glass, and metal, and point out that such a landscape, hitherto
considered an outland, is now beginning to be considered a homeland by many.
An urban surface composed of plants, trees, bricks, and stone that indicate the
passing of time has gradually been replaced by an entirely different, inorganic sur-
face that does not show age and generates a different set of meanings. People are
at first disoriented by it but eventually forced to accept it. This in itself is merely
a shift to a harder surface made of more durable materials. A more fundamental
change is in fact taking place. The virtual reality created by images and computer
graphics is gradually transforming the hard-­edged, tactile world into a world of a
different dimension. In particular, interest has been focused recently on the way a
perceptually ephemeral world can be created through inorganic materials, organic
but fragile materials such as paper and fabric, and transient surfaces such as neon
signs and projected images.
Ephemerality has long been a theme in the dialogue between nature and
the man-­made world as expressed in poetry, literature, and painting. In Japanese
culture in particular, that perception has overlapped with religious views and the
indigenous attitude toward nature to produce a unique and fully developed sensi-
bility. We have in a sense come full circle. Homeland and outland have represented
throughout time two diametrically opposed goals in the construction of our inner

120
world. The pendulum continues to swing from one to the other—from the need
for certainty to the desire for escape, from the claims of memory to the demands
of the imagination.

C i t y a n d Pub l i c Char acte r

In his last work, A History of Architecture: Settings and Rituals, the American archi-
tectural historian Spiro Kostof argued that Stonehenge, the neolithic monument
located in southern England, was mankind’s first work of public architecture.5
Megalithic pillars were erected in a circle, and a prehistoric people enacted within
it a ceremony consecrated to the sunrise. Stonehenge, made possible by pooling
labor, was a demonstration of community and a place of ceremony. Thus it was
also a monument. Standing in the space at Stonehenge, prehistoric man must have
felt himself to be, however briefly, a larger human being than at ordinary times,
and must have felt pride in belonging to a community. That is what led Kostof to
call Stonehenge a work of public architecture.
What interests me here is the fact that, if Kostof ’s conjecture is correct, Stone-
henge already fulfilled the function subsequently served by religious architecture.
Moreover, the sense that one is a larger human being, if only for a time, is a sign
of spiritual exaltation which cannot be evoked merely by the sight of a monu-
ment. It is an experience that can be gained only by entering a space. Stonehenge
may not have had a roof, but the pillars arranged in a circle and the lintels linking
those pillars created a boundary between inside and outside, and a kind of interior
space. Historically, a space that is large or high or created with a special technol-
ogy or in a special place uplifts the spirit and forges communal bonds. In recent
decades, new religious organizations in Japan have all constructed huge temples
for just those reasons.
Music and space, during the interval in which they are experienced, provide
man with the most primary spiritual joy, and for that reason both have been an
indispensable part of the setting for any religious ceremony since ancient times.
First, architecture, through its construction on a selected site, has the power
to generate what might be called character of place. Second, through the space
it encompasses, architecture can give rise at times to a special spiritual condition.
The acquisition of those two functions gave birth to architecture on the most
existential level.

O N T H E C I T Y / N O T E S O N U R B A N S PA C E 121
 At Stonehenge, therefore, mankind can be said to have discovered ­architecture.
Space has a value that can never be totally consumed, because it is existential
in character. When the Soviet Union disintegrated, statues of Lenin were im-
mediately toppled from their pedestals and discarded. However, it is not difficult
to imagine Red Square in Moscow enduring in some form, whatever political
direction Russia may take in the future. The fact that it is still impossible to totally
consume space takes on added significance in today’s postindustrial society, where
even architecture has become an object of consumption.
In calling Stonehenge a work of public architecture, Kostof no doubt felt
that a certain quality of space justified such a characterization, but historically,
the word “public” has been defined in quite diverse ways. It is not my intention
here, however, to examine the word’s etymological roots. Instead, the issue in
which I am interested is public character in the urban society we live in today. I
believe that ultimately, spatial character ought to determine what is public and
what is not.
In European society, the public domain has always been recognized as the
antithesis of the private domain. In the ancient Greek city, citizens lived in quite
simple shelters, and they were encouraged to spend the day in public spaces,
particularly the agora. In early modern times, the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie
enjoyed public privileges, and with the arrival of the mass society, urban spaces
became open to all. However, this dichotomy in urban organization between
public and private remained a basic principle of urban form. Nolli’s well-­known
drawing of Rome clearly expressed that idea. Architecture, too, was divided into
public architecture and private architecture. Private buildings consisted mostly of
vernacular housing, and only public buildings had a strong symbolic quality.

3.8 Stonehenge in Wiltshire,

England.

122
 On the other hand, cities in Asia, including those in Japan, were from the start
much less dependent on a system of organization based on such a dichotomy. In
urban housing in Thailand, for example, there was little privacy among families,
but the community maintained privacy for the group as a whole. This tendency
was strong in the row houses of the Edo period as well. As I have pointed out in
my 1973 essay “Hiroba to niwa” (Plaza and Garden), there was always a private
aspect to the Japanese concept of what was public.6
The French geographer Augustin Berque, in his book Nihon no fukei, Seio no
keikan ( Japanese Landscape, Western Scenery), has written that it is precisely this
Western concept of cities based on centrality and the dichotomy of public and
private that is being questioned today in contemporary cities—including those in
Europe.7
One reason that this classical system of cities has been undermined is that
public and private spaces are no longer clearly defined. In the past, private spaces
were spaces into which only the family and very close friends were permitted and
which functionally complemented public spaces outside. It was in spaces other
than private spaces that spiritual exaltation, a sense of belonging, and a feeling of
liberation were sought. However, with the development of new means of commu-
nication such as television, fax, and telephones able to accommodate group con-
versations, public media are invading private spaces. The global village anticipated
by Marshall McLuhan first developed in the world of consciousness surrounding
the individual human being and is not developing simply in the public domain.
Some years ago, a symposium on architecture and the city was held in Kyoto
by Japanese and Italian architects. What struck me was the fact that architects of the
younger generation questioned the traditional concept of the “family.” When the

O N T H E C I T Y / N O T E S O N U R B A N S PA C E 123
 nuclear family disintegrates, or when the roles played by the members of the family
change, the house as a space may be preserved but its meaning is altered entirely.
Reversing the relative positions of the living room and the individual bedrooms, so
that the living room, hitherto in the “front” of the house, is located in the rear as
a special gathering place, was proposed by some conference attendees.
Public places we always thought were for groups have turned out to be in
fact places for individuals or places for what might be called virtual family functions
(such as Christmas parties and cooking lessons). Such developments, together with
the advances in communication media mentioned above, suggest that a reversal in the
roles of public and private spaces is indeed taking place. Although public and private
domains still continue to exist, the emergence of other domains should be noted.
Recently a young woman told me: “I like to go to art museums because I feel I
truly have a place of my own when I am quietly surrounded by paintings.” For her,
public places are private places in the most fundamental sense. Needless to say, she is
not one of those visitors who crowd around popular works such as the Mona Lisa.
What is important is that people are discovering in cities such places with dual
meanings, and cities are increasingly being required to provide such spaces.
The Spiral Building, which I designed some years ago for a site on Aoyama
Boulevard in Tokyo, has become a fashionable place for holding events and meetings
or simply relaxing, especially among younger people. The ­first-­floor café, which is
surrounded by an exhibition and performance space, is an extension of the public
space of the sidewalk. What interests me most is the scene, not in the café, but on
the stairway—which I call the “esplanade”—in the front of the building that leads
from the first floor to the ­third-­floor theater. A few armchairs are arranged by
the window, facing the street. Youths invariably occupy these chairs—some idly

3.9 Spiral Building, Tokyo,

1985 (Maki).

3.10 Esplanade stair of the

Spiral Building, facing
Aoyama Boulevard.

124
 gazing at the hustle and bustle on the street, others quietly reading a book. They
never seem to exchange words. The sight reminds me of one of Georges Seurat’s
best-­known works, A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, depicting
a landscape in which bourgeois families are ostensibly enjoying a holiday. In fact,
the people in the painting are looking in different directions and seem lost in
their own thoughts. Seurat had already discovered in the splendid public spaces of
­nineteenth-­century Paris the solitude of modern urbanites.
Here, too, we recognize the emergence of a different schema for public and
private domains.
I stated at the outset that a public place was a place in which people sought
spiritual exaltation. Certainly the piazza of St. Peter’s in Rome by Bernini and
the Place de la Concorde in Paris by Ange-­Jacques Gabriel were intended to sug-
gest the infinite extension of space. The irony today, however, is that people are
discovering in such spaces not just their group identities but extreme solitude as
individuals as well.
Simultaneously, people today are able to maintain communication with the
rest of the world in the privacy of their own rooms. Thus, countless public spaces
are in fact emerging. The dynamic spatial order anticipated by Berque in Nihon no
fukei is gradually coming into being as a result of the loss or weakening of central-
ity and the development of an aesthetic of juxtaposition.
Our task today is to recognize this urban condition and to create, through
new programs, urban spaces that are public in a contemporary sense. Various
building types have evolved and disappeared, depending on the demands of the
times. However, we need to always consider the nature of space on which those
developments are based.

3.11 Georges Seurat, A Sunday Afternoon

on the Island of La Grande Jatte, 1884–­86.
Oil on canvas, 81 3 121 in. Helen Birch
Bartlett Memorial Collection, 1926.224,
Art Institute of Chicago.

O N T H E C I T Y / N O T E S O N U R B A N S PA C E 125
Ho mo g e ne o us Space

Those in power have tried to control space since ancient times. Although they were
ultimately unable to bend time to their will, they have had some success with space.
We may be putting too much emphasis on the aesthetic and functional char-
acter of urban spaces, and not enough on the circumstances that gave those spaces
birth. Since the construction of spaces has been possible only through the exercise
of some form of authority—including, naturally, the authority of democratic
systems—the entire history of the creation, destruction, and transformation of
spaces can be viewed as a narrative revolving around authority.
The spatial principles behind the contemporary city and architecture are,
without a doubt, closely related to the establishment of modern industrial society
in Europe.
In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, man’s concept of space under-
went a decisive change. First, space was stripped of the character of place and
the significance with which it had hitherto been endowed. Old buildings and
places that did not conflict with or contradict those in authority at the time were
preserved, while those deemed unsuitable were given new meaning. However, a
different approach was taken in creating new spaces.
Until the early modern era, the type, location, and symbolism of buildings in
cities were carefully regulated and selected. Those in authority controlled space as
a whole by those means. Naturally, freedom was permitted within a certain frame-
work, and the consequent variety could visually enrich the city. It is thus possible
to find a link between the concepts of style and typology and authority.

126
 The Industrial Revolution, however, came to exert an entirely different ex-
ternal force on that urban order. The massive influx of blue-­collar workers into
cities led to the destruction of the hereditary system by which ownership of
land and the professions were regulated. Like laborers, the bourgeoisie were new
members of an urban population not bound to the land. As a result, land became
property subject to sale and manipulation. The organization of space had to take
into account the interest, welfare, and safety of the public; it thus became more
complex and required diverse manipulations.
The transformation of land into what in legal parlance is called immovables and
the increased manipulation of space required the homogenization of space and
the separation of space from any meaning that had hitherto been attached to it.
Michel Foucault made extremely interesting points on the spatialization of
power.8 According to him, in cities before the advent of the industrial society,
authority was translated into visible form in space. The arrangement of important
facilities at the most visible locations as determined by the laws of perspective was
based on the ancient principle of control exercised by means of lines of vision.
The integration of streetscapes and skylines, now considered desirable from the
viewpoint of urban aesthetics, can also be viewed as a manifestation of the power
or knowledge of the enforcing authority, and a demonstration of submission by
residents to the ruler. Just as the spatial relationship between the observer and the
observed in the Panopticon (the ideal prison proposed in the eighteenth century
by Jeremy Bentham) eventually established a constant psychological relationship of
domination, the exercise of authority through certain spatial principles established
well-­devised systems of submission and observation. In that sense ­eighteenth-­century

3.12 Jeremy Bentham’s

Panopticon design, 1791.

O N T H E C I T Y / N O T E S O N U R B A N S PA C E 127
Japan’s kenban system for citizen registration and the street gates installed in com-
moners’ districts of Edo represented a highly visible structure of control.
A new system called city planning was instituted to control the space in which
large numbers of citizens, unattached to the land, highly mobile, and unknown
to each other, were to live. According to Foucault, undesirable elements (which
always included the weak) and elements that posed danger were segregated in the
name of sanitation and safety. New building types such as quarantine stations and
hospitals were symbolic facilities and spaces created by an invisible power, and the
system of observation and submission embodied in those spaces was gradually
expanded to include the layouts of school classrooms and factories.
First, however, space had to be made homogeneous. That is because homog-
enization facilitates manipulation.9
The most important space to which modern architecture gave birth was ho-
mogeneous space—that is, space with no a priori meanings. Homogeneous space
was created by modern architecture with new technology—not for architecture’s
sake but, rather, in response to the demands of social authority. A new age had
dawned, one in which urban spaces and structures having no a priori meaning
could at times become the generators of meanings unanticipated by their produc-
ers and creators. Roland Barthes cited the Eiffel Tower as a symbolic example:

and just as this great ascensional dream, released from its utilitarian prop, is
finally what remains in the countless Babels represented by the painters, as if
the function of art were to reveal the profound uselessness of objects, just so
the Tower, almost immediately disengaged from the scientific considerations
which had authorized its birth (it matters very little here that the Tower
should be in fact useful), has arisen from a great human dream in which
movable and infinite meanings are mingled: it has reconquered the basic
uselessness which makes it live in men’s imagination.10

If there is irony in the contemporary city, it is in the fact that homogeneous

space, which was invented to be a basic tool in the formation of a new order,
facilitated the creation of diverse building types and urban spaces because of its
manipulability, but also developed into a mechanism communicating new mean-
ing and having unintended effects. Manhattan, which is composed of skyscrapers
conceived as layers of homogeneous spaces situated on a uniform grid of streets,
will continue to generate diverse meanings as long as it is invested with a high
concentration of desire and capital.

128
 If such urban spaces and the homogeneous spaces on which they are based are
our urban reality, how should we judge and deal with them? There is no end to
examples of the failure and inhumanity of urban spaces created by modernism.
However, the homogeneous spaces achieved in the modern era have a history
of only a hundred years. Their manipulability makes them a ­double-­edged sword.
The results can be quite different, depending on who uses them. Within the larger
context of history, the exploration of the city by modernism can be said to be a
journey we have only begun. We cannot predict the future on the basis simply of
the failures and successes of the recent past. Rather, at the outset of our journey
we need to shed light on the essential nature of homogeneous space by examining
the ways in which it can be manipulated.
Our world is not ideal to begin with; it is neither favorably nor unfavorably
disposed toward any individual. Instead, it is up to each person to determine the
nature of his relationship to the world. What is true of the world is also true
of the city. It is entirely up to each one of us to determine how homogeneous
space is to be manipulated. In contemporary society, everyone is empowered to a
certain level and must bear responsibility for the results.

The three themes I have examined here have interested me for several years, and
I have based the foregoing discussion on notes I have been keeping. Thus what I
have written is not unlike a series of sketches made of architectural ideas. Many
things are left unarticulated, and the text is far from finished. However, a sketch,
though incomplete, always contains the germ of an idea. I hope to gradually
nurture these ideas.
I am intuitively certain that these three themes will be crucial to future con-
sideration of urban spaces on my part. Furthermore, the themes are closely re-
lated. For example, any discussion of the theme of homogeneous space raises the
issue of center and periphery. The issue of center and periphery revolves around,
among other things, the question of public character and how that is judged by
individual citizens. That is where I hope notions of mental landscape and the
individual viewpoint I have mentioned in the introductory section, “Homeland
and Outland,” may be helpful.
Homogeneous space is capable of possessing diverse, highly concentrated
meanings precisely because it is homogeneous. Imagination makes the most of
that potential, and imagination of that kind is also what gives us courage as we
contemplate the future.

O N T H E C I T Y / N O T E S O N U R B A N S PA C E 129
S pac e , T e r r i t o ry, a nd Perception

Wr it t e n i n c o l l a b orat ion wit h M ark M u l l igan

The dominant trend of ­twentieth-­century architecture and urbanism could be

described as the evolution of space—as opposed to form or symbol—as the pri-
mary means of political, psychological, and aesthetic expression in the built en-
vironment. It is only when viewed through the lens of spatial evolution that the
continuous thread of this history becomes visible, transcending the last thirty years
of debates on style and the concurrent vilification of technology as a dehuman-
izing force in our cities. An objective analysis of history shows that technology
has always been subservient to societal forces, and that the new kinds of spatial
relationships that modern technology has produced in the built environment were
created for reasons other than that they had merely become technically possible.
I believe that focusing on space and the role of technology in enabling new
spatial relationships—again avoiding questions of style—will put us in an excel-
lent position to understand where architecture and urbanism are heading in the
coming years.
In the twentieth century, there were two major revolutions in our physical
space: one at the level of urban space, the other at the level of architectural space.
In both cases we could say that the revolution was closely related to the emergence
of universally homogeneous, limitless space as a metaphysical concept. For better
or for worse, this new metaphysical view has caused the gradual disappearance
of topos (or a priori meaning assigned to a place) in our cities and the dissolution
of the room in architecture. Amid the decline of traditional spatial boundaries,
however, it is possible to see that society is both constructing new, more subtle
expressions of territory, and becoming more sensitive to nuance and to differences
in what we suppose to be universal space.
 Considering first the issue of topos in our urban surroundings, we can witness
just how far the modern metropolis has evolved away from the historical model of
a city. One of the most striking aspects of historical cities is a strong congruency
between the appearance of built form and the identity of place. The various forms
of the city center—its streets, open spaces, building fabric, and landmarks—rep-
resent an integrated expression of functional order, social values, and hierarchies
that evolved over many generations. The slow pace of change in the historical city
produced a tangible image of stability and specificity of place.
The social and demographic upheavals of the Industrial Revolution in Europe
changed all of this dramatically, beginning with the appearance of new social
classes in the citizenry—an expanding bourgeoisie and a proletariat class, which
might be seen as the predecessors of today’s ­white- and blue-­collar workers, re-
spectively. Unlike the merchants and craftsmen of preindustrial society, these new
classes were not necessarily tied to one place. Industrial methods of production
encouraged the development of progressive capitalism, which gave increasing im-
portance to currency and to the mobility of labor. This in turn further devalued
the singular meaning of particular places, tending to transform urban space into a
commodity with a m ­ arket-­determined, rather than absolute, value attached to it.
Furthermore, by the end of the nineteenth century, many of the world’s
great metropolises were no longer housing populations that shared a common
ethnic or linguistic background. The interaction of these new multicultural so-
cieties tended to erase historical differences between places and to accelerate the
development of the modernist city based on homogeneous space. Yet at least in
Europe, each metropolis still formed different urban structures based on different
patterns of political power. We could compare, for example, the bold geometry
of ­nineteenth-­century Paris’s broad new avenues and grand focal points to the
more fragmented, picturesque street networks of London in the same period. The
former can be seen as a manifestation of the centralized power of the monar-
chy, while the latter represents the more delicate balance of power shared among
London’s large landholders, as the new thoroughfares were required to negotiate
the edges of private estates in a localized, case-­by-­case manner.
Democratic societies in which the central government is weak compared to the
forces of capitalism have produced urban patterns more clearly reflecting the idea of
homogeneous, infinitely extendible space. The grid plan typical of American cities
provides a rational framework for continuous, unlimited horizontal ­expansion

ON T H E CI T Y / S P ACE , TERRITOR Y, AN D P ERCE P TION 131

that easily accommodates common patterns of capital investment. Even when
geography places constraints on horizontal expansion, as in New York’s Manhattan
Island, the invention of the skyscraper has ensured that the unlimited produc-
tion of space is still possible. The ­three-­dimensional production of urban space
continues today in a city like Hong Kong, where geographic limitations leave no
alternative but the hyperdensification of the city core.
Conceiving of space as universal and limitless tends to encourage urban de-
velopment schemes that treat the city as a tabula rasa—or, topologically speaking, a
“zero-­degree operative field”—allowing the investment of capital alone to define
landmarks and focal points in the city. We can see in modern Tokyo a histori-
cal pattern of weak central government and incremental capital investment that
has created a vast horizontal city with fragmentary clusters of density scattered
throughout. Los Angeles follows much the same pattern, where the various city
subcenters dispersed across the landscape have their origins in private investment
rather than communal institutions. At MIT in the late 1960s, Lloyd Rodwin and
Kevin Lynch proposed in The Future Metropolis a multinuclear urban structure as
a model of future cities. In this model, a historical city core becomes merely one
of several nuclei, a relative center rather than an absolute one. In embracing a
theory of spatial relativity, a multinuclear urban structure follows naturally from
the assumption of infinitely extendible space—they are like two sides of the same
coin.
The prophetic nature of Rodwin and Lynch’s insight into the forces control-
ling urban development becomes clear when we compare their model to a plan of
Tokyo a mere three decades later. Contemporary Tokyo represents a multinuclear
city taken to a new extreme, where a postindustrial consumer society’s preference
for “difference for the sake of difference” has encouraged the development of
subtle character differentiation between new subcenter nodes that share nearly
identical functions.
Today we might say that the city is disappearing, if by “city” we mean an
urban structure whose form approximates that of a historical capital with a dense
central core. Yet as historian and critic Koji Taki has written, even a fragmented
metropolis remains a city, in a fundamentally psychological sense, as long as it offers
opportunities for nurturing dreams. Dreams give meaning to our very existence in
the city. The modern metropolis provides two basic kinds of imagery in constant
juxtaposition: the familiar and the strange. Familiar scenery in the city reminds us

132
of a common past; it provides comfort and stability. Unfamiliar scenery, on the
other hand, provokes both fear and excitement, and in the process unleashes our
power of imagination. The city might be characterized as an environment where
inhabitants accept and even thrive on the presence of the strange and unfamiliar
in their everyday lives. In the sense that unfamiliar scenery entices the imagination
and feeds our natural desire for change, the ability of an environment to evoke
dreams for the future seems to apply singularly to urban settings.
Desire, capital, and political power are the three interrelated forces that shape
the modern metropolis. And if the formal structure of our cities has become
more diffuse and harder to read, one of the primary causes might be found in
the gradual retreat of power and wealth from the public eye. The rise of invis­
ible power—or, to use Michel Foucault’s terminology, “the spatialization of
power” 1—is peculiar to the modern age. Throughout past ages, ruling classes have
relied on architecture for explicit formal and symbolic expression of their author-
ity, and municipalities have identified themselves with physical structures such as
city walls, religious edifices, and places of communal gathering. Beginning with
the Enlightenment, however, the importance once attached to formal representa-
tions of power began to be replaced by spatial structures that actually enhanced
the power of those in authority invisibly. As Foucault points out in his analysis
of the ­eighteenth-­century Panopticon, invisible power is no longer the power
to inspire good but, rather, the power to isolate or eliminate the undesirable and
the weak. Sinister as this may sound, this principle of separating out elements of
society based on their degrees of compatibility or desirability is one of the fun-
damental principles of the modernist utopia, whose basic tool of planning serves,
not coincidentally, as the chief agent of invisible power.
The fundamental difference between the utopian visions of ­twentieth-­century
modernists like Le Corbusier and those of Robert Owen and Charles Fourier
from the previous century was the modernists’ conviction that improved social
conditions could be attained directly through planning—that is to say, by spatial
means. For them, the city of the future would follow a machine model, where
the relationship between discrete parts and the whole is rationally structured. An
architectural parallel could be drawn to the compositional methodology of De Stijl
architecture, where formal control of a technological universe produces the ability
to isolate and freely combine ­space-­defining elements. This kind of machine model

ON T H E CI T Y / S P ACE , TERRITOR Y, AN D P ERCE P TION 133

 could be drawn only with certain spatial concepts based on universal and limitless
space, and implicit in this vision is a high expectation of technological progress.
Despite their efforts to arrive at universal principles and methods that would
revolutionize the urban environment, however, the ­techno-­utopia advocated by
modern protagonists has been in the end only partially and incrementally realized
in our cities, due to the realities of capital investment. Just as Owen and Fourier
were able to construct models of their visions of socialist communities on a lim-
ited, subsidized scale, the most complete utopias of the modern age have been
realized under controlled conditions such as university campuses, theme parks,
and shopping malls—urbanistically speaking, within quarantined territory. The
irony of this condition is that in planning, segregation was originally intended
to isolate the undesirable, but at present many cities, particularly in America, use
precisely this technique to secure protected, privileged territory.
It is worth noting that the most important communality of today’s quarantined
utopias is not formal but spatial. At root in the design of theme parks, airport termi-
nals, shopping malls, and cineplexes is the question of how to create commercially
desirable spaces. The “spatialization of power” observed by Foucault is nowhere
more apparent than in the organization of these highly contrived environments,
which are designed to manipulate human movement and consumer desires accord-
ing to certain proven spatial formulas. We can see how the urban shopping and en-
tertainment complexes of the Rouse Corporation, for example, have followed very
recognizable spatial patterns, which can be extended infinitely, both horizontally
and vertically, according to the magnitude of capital available and consumer demand.
Formal solutions, on the other hand, have tended to disguise spatial homogeneity
by responding directly to the demands of a consumer society, again, for difference

3.13 De Stijl composition

by Theo van Doesburg.

3.14 Galleria Vittorio

Emanuele, Milan, 1877,
designed by Giuseppe
Mengoni.

134
 for the sake of difference; a cardinal rule of consumerism is that subjectively added
values are frequently more important than actual functional capabilities.
These new urban (or ­pseudo-­urban) entities cannot really be considered
as types in the traditional sense of sharing similar formal characteristics. But in
terms of spatial system, modern hybrid buildings like the interiorized shopping
mall have significant historical precedent in the glazed arcades, or passages, of
­nineteenth-­century Europe. And because the impact of the ­nineteenth-­century
passage was so far-­reaching, I want to take a moment to consider it and the revo-
lution it would provoke in urban space.
As Walter Benjamin pointed out in his study of the passage,2 the simple act
of adding a glass roof to an exterior street or alleyway turned out to be radical in
its implications: for once carriage traffic was excluded from an essentially exterior
streetscape, a ­weather-­protected haven for pedestrians was created that essentially
freed them to concentrate on consumer activities. As a commercial sanctuary, the
passage attracted a great variety of activities, such as street performers and hawk-
ers—as well as enterprises of a less legitimate nature—to be concentrated in one
multifunctional urban space. I like to think of the passage as history’s first instance
of ambivalent space—a kind of infinitely extendible space with characteristics of
both city and room. As a new and unfamiliar element in the city, the passage came
to evoke the dreams and desires of citizens who collected there.
An important legacy of the passage was the creation of interiorized multipur-
pose spaces within the city. Although it was perhaps not immediately apparent to
contemporary architects, this development would forever diminish the importance
of formal typology in architecture by attacking the idea of formal and functional
congruency in buildings. The traditional distinction between general activities

3.15 United States Pavilion, Expo ’67,

Montreal, by Buckminster Fuller.

ON T H E CI T Y / S P ACE , TERRITOR Y, AN D P ERCE P TION 135

taking place on the street and specific activities relegated to interior spaces began
to be blurred over once both began to be accommodated in an enclosed but still
topologically residual, urban space. Once the idea of a one-­to‑one correspon-
dence between interior function and formal expression began to be questioned,
the next step would be the emergence of multifunctional buildings, such as the
Downtown Athletic Club that Rem Koolhaas describes in Delirious New York.3
Conceptually, the multifunctional building usurps and interiorizes many of the
functions of the city and becomes itself a “city within the city.” Here, traditional
divisions between inside and outside, public and private, main and servant spaces
have become more ambiguous and multivalent. The passage also engendered a
modern legacy in spatial terms: it is not too large a leap from the passages of the
nineteenth century to Mies van der Rohe’s proposal for a universal exhibition
space. Like the glazed roof of the passage, Mies’s roof structure is so distant and
vast that it ceases to engage the scale of human activity below. Our sense of spatial
definition is limited to ­smaller-­scale architectural elements at ground level, which,
once freed from the functional responsibility of weather protection, can be freely
configured to suit the needs of each temporary exhibition.
Mies’s exhibition hall proposal demonstrates one of the purest interpretations
of universal, limitless space posited by the Modern movement; it is singularly
pragmatic and devoid of utopian overtones. The role of technology here serves
not as a protagonist in the creation of a new social order but as a means of en-
abling new kinds of spaces and new spatial relationships to be conceived and
realized. Buckminster Fuller’s exploration of the geodesic dome structure shows
a similar attitude with respect to the neutral role of technology and the attempt
to describe universal concepts of space. The task that Fuller set himself was quite

3.16 Plan of Schinkel’s villa for

Prince Wilhelm in Potsdam, 1833.

136
 different in nature, however; he wished to enclose a space using minimal surface
area—that is, with minimal materials or at minimal cost. His approach can thus
be seen as giving priority to space over form. At the time, his ideas had less impact
than the De Stijl-­inspired principles articulated by Mies, but still I think Fuller’s
approach to conceiving space in terms of boundaries and membranes was one of
the most important developments of our times.
With the end of the twentieth century and the beginning of the ­twenty-
­first, our perception of space has entered a new phase, the inevitable result of
pluralism and globalization. We expect more and different kinds and qualities of
space in our everyday experience, and new techniques for manipulating space are
constantly being elaborated. Innovative structural systems that cover and/or define
a variety of spaces—not only orthogonal but increasingly curved and polyhedral
spaces—represent one of the areas in which building technology has made signifi-
cant contributions to recent architecture.
As spatial systems become bigger and more complex, the demarcation of ter-
ritory becomes less clear psychologically and optically. Perhaps as a result, there
seems to be a renewed interest in perceptual phenomena in space over the last
several years; new applications of glass and other ­light-­transmitting materials are
being explored in architecture to produce subtle, hitherto undiscovered relation-
ships between spaces, and hence between their inhabitants. In his review of the
1995 “Light Construction” exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, Herbert
Muschamp writes: “There are few issues more important in architecture now than
the question of how buildings shape and define our relationship to others.” 4 For
all the timeliness of this statement, it might similarly have been used hundreds of
years ago to describe the communalizing function of a medieval town’s central

3.17 Plan of the Katsura

Detached Palace in Kyoto.

ON T H E CI T Y / S P ACE , TERRITOR Y, AN D P ERCE P TION 137

piazza and fortress walls. But Muschamp’s point is well taken: it is not style or
representation that keeps architecture relevant to the city but, rather, the spatial
relationships it creates in the image of society. The city itself merely accommo-
dates a variety of spaces where each individual makes free and selective association
with others, both familiar and strange; the city is a medium through which the
individual perceives the outside world. If the architecture that excites us today has
to do with investigating qualities of translucency, screening, and the creation of
overlapping spaces and visions, this might indicate a sociological trend more than
a formal one: with the dissolution of traditional ­space-­defining elements, we are
becoming more sensitive in perceiving subtle indications of territorial definition.
At the same time, while we all might agree on the basic assumption that
space itself is universal, I believe we are becoming more aware of how different
cultures maintain different spatial biases. It is not merely a difference of forms and
materials, for example, that separates Schinkel’s informal villas from the Katsura
Palace in Kyoto, though both represent within their respective cultures important
milestones in the evolution of spatial structures based on asymmetry and narrative
sequence. And although many valid comparisons have been made between the
formal strategies of traditional Japanese and De Stijl architecture, it would not
be fair to say that a building such as the Katsura Palace in any way treats space,
as the European modernists did, as homogeneous and neutral. Our histories of
architecture tend to concentrate on issues of form because it is easier to describe
with both words and illustration; space tends to recede into indescribability. But if
one were to research and write a history of space—and I think that this would be
a very challenging and worthwhile task—one might discover a different view of
how cities and societies evolved over the ages. Like many other kinds of histories
(political, literary, etc.), this spatial history would probably be characterized by pe-
riodic oscillations between two theoretical poles: in this case, an architecture based
on closed forms versus an architecture of universal space. If this theory is true,
then the twentieth century would represent only a temporary, though extreme,
swing in the direction of universal space.
The architecture of our current age, which relies increasingly on intuition
and the senses in the experience of the city, may indicate a reaction against the
dominant spatial trend of the twentieth century. It implies a rejection of the ho-
mogeneous space of modernism, a need to create a new sense of topos in the city,
and a return to the subjective worldview it implies.

138
Ref l e c t i o n s o n Ha r va rd’s 1 9 5 6 Urba n Desig n Conference

In 1956, Josep Lluis Sert organized the first Urban Design Conference at Har-
vard’s Graduate School of Design, inviting architects and designers from around
the world to discuss the design of contemporary cities. As a young architect at the
time, the event was a formative event in my career, and I suppose in the careers
of many others as well. Looking back now fifty years to those days of heated
discussion and debate, which issues addressed there continue to be significant
today, and what does their continued significance tell us about our present cir-
cumstances?
Mine is the point of view of someone born, raised, and practicing archi-
tecture in Tokyo. At the same time, neither I nor anyone living in any region
or state today can escape the effects of globalization on politics, economy, and
lifestyle. This flow has led to newly reciprocal relationships. This is an age when
the presence of over a hundred sushi bars in Manhattan or the brisk sales of Span-
ish Colonial Style houses in Tokyo suburbs raise few eyebrows. Therefore, in any
discussion of social and infrastructural conditions in Tokyo, an understanding of
their significance can be arrived at only by comparing and analyzing similar phe-
nomena in metropolises in the United States, Europe, and Asia. We are entering a
time when having at least two points of view—regional and global—is becoming
as indispensable to urban studies as it is to cultural anthropology.
I would like to quote, by way of introduction, from the preface of Incomplete
Cities by Yosuke Hirayama, a Japanese urbanist. Hirayama identifies a condition
common to contemporary cities from an analysis of entirely separate processes of
reconstruction experienced by three cities after complete or partial destruction:
Kobe after the 1995 earthquake, Lower Manhattan residential districts over the past
several decades, and East and West Berlin during their reintegration after 1989:

A destroyed city calls forth a space of competition. The question of what will
be reconstructed by whom, for whom, and for what purpose gives rise to
socially and politically competitive relationships. Land where a now-­vanished
building once stood is not a pristine empty lot. Whose place is it? What is to
be constructed there? What will new construction contribute? This series of
questions drives the dynamics of friction. . . .
In any experience of “destruction/​construction,” the question arises:
how are the myriad views voiced in the “space of competition” to be re-
spected? As long as, and precisely because, the city is incomplete, emphasis
on any particular direction calls forth dissent and challenges; that in turn
opens up new possibilities. If the presence of large numbers of human beings
is a necessary condition of the city, all persons ought to have the right to be
heard in the “space of competition.” Tolerance of myriad views is indeed the
distinguishing characteristic of the city.1

Half a century after CIAM drew an ideal image of the city in its Athens
Charter, we find a more complex and conflicted urban image emerging.

T h e L e g a c y o f the 1 9 5 6 Ur b an De si g n Con f eren c e

In 1952, I left Japan, a country still bearing the scars of World War II, to study in
the United States. Four years later, while in a postgraduate program at Harvard, I
attended the First Urban Design Conference. I was able to participate in several of
the subsequent annual conferences, but the 1956 conference left the deepest im-
pression on me. One reason was that a heady atmosphere was created by the gath-
ering of leading figures in architecture and urban design such as Richard Neutra.
Another was an awareness shared by all that in attending the first conference of its
kind in the United States, we were most likely participating in a pivotal event. I
was especially impressed by Jane Jacobs’s passionate plea on behalf of endangered
neighborhood districts in New York, and the energy exuded by Edmund Bacon
as he explained the redevelopment plan for Philadelphia.

ON T H E CIT Y / H A R V A R D ’ S 1 9 5 6 U R B A N D E S I G N C O N F E R E N C E 141
 The 1956 conference had special historical significance:

1. The phrase “urban design” was used extensively for the first time. Urban de-
sign began to be recognized and defined as an important interdisciplinary field
­focusing on the formation of ­three-­dimensional urban spaces. Urban design was
shortly thereafter included in the postgraduate programs of many educational
institutions.
2. The conference was a perfect opportunity for Josep Lluis Sert, its host, to transfer
to the United States the intellectual and practical foundations of CIAM, which
he had chaired and which then was threatened by division and disbandment. The
Urban Design Conferences subsequently created opportunities for exchanges of
ideas between Team X, representing the generation after CIAM, and American
academics. New urban design university programs accepted many students from
not only Europe but also Asia, South America, and the Middle East. On returning
to their countries, those students began to create centers of study. The develop-
ment of permanent relationships among such universities through shared confer-
ences has been noteworthy. Moreover, through the use of the city of the host
institution as the theme of workshops, such relationships have offered students
fresh perspectives on urban design.2
3. In the 1950s, active ­cross-­fertilization was occurring in the United States between
academics and architects, city planners, administrators, and developers of cities.
Setbacks to the public housing policy actively pursued since the New Deal, the
arrival of the Baby Boomers and extensive suburbanization, and the influx of
immigrants to the ­inner-­city areas were forcing a comprehensive reappraisal of
urban problems.

Of the issues highlighted by the conference fifty years ago, two that might be
profitably discussed today are the meaning of the central district and of com-
munity. I have not said “the revival of central districts” and “the development
of communities.” Not only the possibility but also the wisdom of downtown
revival and ­community-­building are in question today. Problems such as increasing
inequality among urban residents and the effect of automobiles on urbanization,
already pointed out in the 1956 conference, are behind such doubts.

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T h e M ay R e v o luti o n and the Fall o f th e Berlin Wall

These two swift events, one in the late 1960s and the other in the late 1980s,
brought with them important transitions in the ideas and practices of urban de-
sign. Largely in response to the war in Vietnam, the student unrest throughout the
world and the May Revolution in Paris forced many people to reexamine existing
social systems and ideas. It was just around that time—1965, to be precise—that
I withdrew from a ­university-­centered life in the United States and began design
activities in Tokyo. Two years later, when I returned to the GSD as a visiting fac-
ulty member, I encountered entirely different student ways of thinking. Students
rejected the program we had prepared, and insisted that work begin with the
development of a joint proposal for the architecture Master’s program itself. Even
though they were paying high tuition fees, they took the position that extensive
discussions on certain contemporary urban design issues were far more important
than acquiring urban design skills. Let us recollect Hirayama’s remark: “All persons
ought to have the right to be heard in the ‘space of competition.’ Tolerance of
myriad views is indeed the distinguishing characteristic of the city.” University
studios in the 1960s were indeed what he would call “spaces of competition.”
Since 9/11, the process of rebuilding New York’s downtown has shown us quite
vividly what a project about which myriad views are held and expressed is actually
like.
The participation of large numbers of people of different opinions helped
bring about a major change in our perception of the city in the 1960s. That coin-
cided, especially in metropolises, with the gradual fading of the urban image—the
collective memory and meaning of each city. The fading of meaning accelerated
the experiential transformation of the city into an abstraction. Today, everyone
in a metropolis constructs and possesses his or her own image of it—first of their
immediate environment and of places familiar to them. The vague and abstract
overall image of the metropolis, acquired through the media, merely floats above
that construct like a cloud.
The appearance in 1960 of Kevin Lynch’s The Image of the City was in tune
with the increasing abstraction of the city. I was among those who welcomed the
publication of that study as the emergence of a new way of perceiving the city,
but it also heralded the transformation of the city into mere signs. Today, the tem-
poral and geographical environment of everyday activities has, for most people, an

ON T H E CIT Y / H A R V A R D ’ S 1 9 5 6 U R B A N D E S I G N C O N F E R E N C E 143
unprecedented shallowness: the city seems comprised only of the here and now;
historical depth is absent.
The multicentered net, which Lynch and Lloyd Rodwin, his colleague at
MIT, jointly proposed as a model for the city of the near future is today becoming
the actual pattern of many metropolises.3 These centers, which cater to specific
sociopolitical or ethnic tendencies, are not central districts. They are nothing more
than options from which citizens, leading varied lives, may choose; their forms,
too, are diversifying.
And what of the urban community—does it still exist? The community model
we unconsciously shared fifty years ago—a stable, synchronic group of spaces
centered on housing and neighborhood facilities—has been vanishing. The main
factors contributing to this development are the geographical mobility of urban
residents, the growing inequality among citizens that is promoting this mobility,
and the increasing treatment of land as a mere commodity. The fall of the Berlin
Wall at the end of the 1980s accelerated those trends, particularly the worldwide
transformation of cities into marketable commodities. The tearing down of the
Berlin Wall gave people in surrounding regions new freedoms, but the elimination
of the safety net of state socialism also promoted the sudden expansion beyond
national borders of capital, information, and desire. And the breakup of the Soviet
Union, until then the greatest hypothetical enemy of the West among Communist
states, spurred the liberalization of the Chinese economy and led to a precipitous
change in the balance of the world market.
Historically, the city has been an organic entity composed of people of dif-
ferent economic, social, and ethnic or religious backgrounds. However, people of
relatively similar background have naturally tended to create distinct communities,
and through these communities contribute to the maintenance of the city as a
whole. This phenomenon of people of similar background clustering together
might be called “territorialization.” The city remains stable as long as balance is
maintained among the different territories and friction at boundaries is minimal.
The dynamics of friction can destabilize urban territories and the communi-
ties that come into contact with them. The area around the central district of
Philadelphia, of which Bacon had spoken so passionately at the 1956 conference,
is, in a painful irony, among the most decayed areas in America today. The same
destabilization may be seen in Detroit and Los Angeles. At the same time, pro-
tected gated communities are spreading in cities throughout the country.

144
 The physical formation and maintenance of community were core skills of
urban designers. Such skills, however, are applicable only when urban residents
share certain commonalities. This is increasingly rare in contemporary society,
where everyone’s circumstances are immensely varied. A skill applicable in one
instance is inapplicable in another. That is also true in Japanese cities, which I will
discuss in greater detail. In my view, the only successful examples of communities
today are Singapore in Asia, and perhaps Copenhagen and Barcelona among Eu-
ropean cities. Given the expansion of the EU, increased movement of the popula-
tion between cities and regions, growing disparity in the level of education among
inhabitants, and global mobility of employees, however, maintaining sustainable
communities will be a difficult task even for those European cities considered suc-
cessful. Their polar opposites are the enormous metropolises of an entirely differ-
ent scale in developing regions that are divided into the haves and the have-­nots.
Then there is Shanghai, a city of sixteen million whose massive growth has been
supported by a rural workforce imported to the city—a workforce that is not,
however, afforded the same rights as those given to other residents.
On the other hand, excessive concentration of capital has led to increasingly
skewed developments such as 1,000‑meter-­high skyscrapers in Dubai. These huge
facilities can be considered heteromorphic cells that destroy the city by abnor-
mally concentrating similar market demands (for office, retail, or hotel) in a single
location. The excessive investment of capital in places where meaning has faded
to zero produces hallucinatory visions suggestive of cities in science fiction. If the
pursuit of a balanced spatial alignment between the central district and the com-
munity was indeed the objective of the urban design conference fifty years ago,
then urban phenomena like these make a mockery of that effort.

P o s i t i v e a nd Ne g ati v e Aspe cts o f Ur b a n Design in T okyo

Tokyo’s morphology is probably unique among metropolises: it is like a mosaic.

The individual pieces are extremely small and varied, their connections often hid-
den. There is no other metropolis of its size in the world that manages to maintain
a stable order with this sort of configuration. Tokyo is the polar opposite of the
clearly ordered city promoted by the Athens Charter.
How did this sort of metropolis come into being? Tokyo’s system was cre-
ated through the overlapping of countless partial additions and revisions—made

ON T H E CIT Y / H A R V A R D ’ S 1 9 5 6 U R B A N D E S I G N C O N F E R E N C E 145
during 150 years of modernization as opportunities afforded by external factors
(including disasters) presented themselves—in a complex pattern based principally
on topography.
Japan is one of the few modern states to have succeeded in creating a society
with little disparity between rich and poor, even though it boasts the ­second-
­biggest economy in the world. Racial, religious, and social homogeneity have also
contributed to the development of a singular condition: even as the pieces of the
mosaic continually divided and led to increased boundaries between them, these
did not immediately generate border frictions. In societies with large disparities
between rich and poor, units of territorialization have become ever larger in order
to minimize border frictions. American cities offer good examples of this.
Another unique characteristic of metropolitan Tokyo is that it is the most
conspicuous realization of the urban model proposed by Lynch and Rodwin: the
multicentered city. But its structure might be better described as nebular. The
countless centers in ­inner-­city districts are connected by subway and express train
systems more closely knit than any other comparable systems in the world. This
transportation system is without equal in the world in frequency of operation,
punctuality, cleanliness, safety, and the provision of services. It is this infrastructure
that enables the many focal points of interest in Tokyo to be understood as both
coherent individual units and a cohesive, though diverse, whole.
These constitute the positive aspects of urban design in Tokyo. What are the
negative ones? First, the failure of practically all cities in Japan, including Tokyo,
to develop an urban infrastructure of housing in the course of modernization.
Although there may be many excellent or interesting individual buildings, most
remain points of singularity and fail to contribute to the creation of any larger
social asset. Although the Japanese live longer than any other people in the world,
they are producing fewer children, leading to a decrease in population and a sur-
plus of housing. ­Poorer-­quality or badly located suburban bedroom towns built
for a once-­growing population are increasingly empty.
Second, development projects at various scales in metropolises by different
interests including international financial capital, combined with the absence of
effective city planning, have led to a partial breakdown of balanced territorialized
communities and the generation of increasingly severe conflicts between residents
and developers—who are tending to raise the density of central districts at the

146
expense of views and daylighting. These phenomena are particularly notable in
cities of fewer than 200,000 with inadequate mass transportation systems and a
greater dependence on automobiles. Many older shopping districts in the city
centers have lost business to suburban shopping centers and are becoming ghost
towns. Many central districts are abandoned and deteriorating.
In recent years, large business interests have been undertaking redevelopment
projects in Tokyo, spurred in part by economic recovery. There is, for example,
the 2003 Roppongi Hills, an office, residential, and commercial complex built over
seventeen years in the middle of Tokyo. In contrast to the sense of repose offered
by my design for Hillside Terrace (an urban complex whose gradual development
over a ­quarter-­century I have described earlier in this volume), Roppongi Hills and
similar large aggregate projects generate an instantaneous, new, and vibrant urban
energy. Supported by a favorable location and the support of the aforementioned
infrastructure, Roppongi Hills has been enormously popular, drawing ­twenty-­five
million visitors in its first four months. If we consider that only ­twenty-­five of
the UN’s member nations have a population of ­twenty-­five million, these new
centers are like Disneyland in their ability to draw such huge numbers in such a
short time.

W h at I s U rb an De si g n?

Using Tokyo as an example, I have pointed out the uniqueness of metropolises;

each has special conditions and contexts on the micro scale and relationships
to regional, national, and global phenomena on the macro scale. However, no
matter how complex the given context may be, and even if the various factors
mentioned must be taken into consideration, urban design in reality remains a
skill that demands their interpretation into ­three-­dimensional space within a fixed
time, budget, and program. Sert’s fundamental message at the 1956 Conference
was essentially this: that the central concern of urban design must be humankind;
that we are designing, not for specific individuals, but for the people and with the
people. We must give careful thought to the man in the street who looks at build-
ings and moves around them. We must use our imagination and artistic capacities
in trying to realize desirable places.

ON T H E CIT Y / H A R V A R D ’ S 1 9 5 6 U R B A N D E S I G N C O N F E R E N C E 147
 The recently completed Museum of Modern Art reconstruction in New York
has been much discussed. Its architect is Yoshio Taniguchi. Its refined modernist
exterior succeeds in respecting the exteriors of past stages in MoMA’s history and
the Sculpture Garden, while giving New York a new urban context. Architects,
critics, artists, and nearly all members of the public have been excited by and ex-
tolled the spatial experience of its interior. The architectural elements of MoMA
have been thoroughly neutralized. The visitor revels in scenes of numerous superb
works of art, fragmentary glimpses of the Manhattan townscape, and the move-
ment of fellow visitors in the interior spaces. I would call it one of the best works
of urban design of its period. This building embodies the spirit of urban design
that Sert invoked in 1956: sympathy to neighboring city fabric, delight in moving
from place to place (just as in the street), and encouragement of people being with
other people.
MoMA has become a spiritual sanctuary, a place where visitors can be alone
and enjoy the repose of leisure time, all the while surrounded by the movement
and light of the city. The new MoMA gives magnificent visual and spatial expres-
sion to something that New Yorkers had felt only vaguely until now: the desire
for and possibility of interior urbanity, something not so easily and clearly experi-
enced at the less architecturally neutral Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao.
Perhaps the reason for the ­decades-­long popularity of Hillside Terrace among
the general public lies in the fact that it, too, satisfies a collective desire. When
such a thing occurs, an urban or architectural space can be said to acquire a public
character in the true sense. Vitruvius’s venustas (“delight”) has forever been a uni-
versal emotion, an invaluable part of our genetic makeup. I have spent much of
this essay explaining how urban design has become more complex and difficult in
the last half-­century. However, the fact that the basic human need for delight has
remained largely unchanged gives us architects and urban designers both encour-
agement and a clear objective.
A current project in New York for a high-­r ise apartment building, with four-
­story units, each no doubt served by its own elevator, cantilevered from a single
core like a lily of the valley, was made public and became the subject of much
discussion at about the same time as MoMA. Each unit is said to have a price of
$30 million. This building can be characterized, in Veblenian terms, as an extreme
display of conspicuous consumption. No matter how bold its structure or how

148
wonderful its aesthetic expression, the project seems to me amoral. Yes, morality
is another quality demanded of urban design.
This may not be explicitly stated in the minutes of the conference fifty years
ago, but when Charles Abrams pointed out the inequalities suffered by the urban
poor, and Jane Jacobs argued for the preservation of a street society, they were
indirectly appealing to that higher law on which a city ideally is based. At least,
that’s my interpretation.

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Th e J a pa n e se C i t y a nd Inner Spa ce

Pr e face

To foreign visitors and even to many residents, Tokyo appears to be a paradigm

of urban chaos, spatially confusing and structurally illegible. Nevertheless, every
city with a long history possesses an internal logic in its physical form, however
unclear or inconsistent this logic may appear at first, and Tokyo is no exception.
In the chaos of its urban plan, we can read a rich collage of patterns and figures,
which relate a colorful, contradictory history of several centuries of urban growth.
In preface to a discussion of certain aspects of Japanese space conception and
urban form, a brief history of Tokyo may be helpful to those who are unfamiliar
with the city.
Tokyo, originally known as Edo, began as a settlement around the ­tenth-
­century castle of the feudal lord Ota Dokan. The original development took place
at the mouth of the Sumida River along Edo Bay, on the fertile Kanto Plain. The
city was laid out in accordance with an ideal Chinese model, with Edo Castle
at its center. In this model, each cardinal direction carried symbolic meanings
and a strategic importance that corresponded quite readily to Edo’s geographical
situation. A spiraling system of canals surrounding Edo Castle served to protect it
from attacks but also connected it to the Sumida River to allow easy transport of
goods. The flat land between the castle and the river naturally became a district of
merchants and craftsmen, known as the Shitamachi (“low city”).
In 1605, Tokugawa Ieyasu selected Edo as the seat of his new shogunate. Di-
rect communication between Edo and the rest of the country became critical, and
radial thoroughfares from the castle to outer regions were overlaid on the existing
city plan. Important daimyo (lords) took up residence on land surrounding Edo
Castle, particularly in the hilly Yamanote (“high city”) district to the west. Many
large estates occupied hilltops affording commanding views and covered by lush
greenery. Shrines and temples also developed in the Yamanote hills.
By 1710 Edo’s population had grown to more than one million, making it
at that time the world’s largest city. Land ownership was by no means equitable:
members of the feudal upper classes, though small in number, lived on nearly
­three-­quarters of the land, while the larger population of craftsmen and merchants
occupied a mere fraction of the city. The city plan as a whole was developing
into a fairly complex array of overlapping figures and patterns. The flat, densely
populated Shitamachi was characterized by a fairly regular grid plan, intersected
by canals and radial roads. Lower-­rank samurai also lived in neighborhoods based
on grid patterns, though there the streets were spaced further apart. The spacious
lands of the daimyo were developed more freely and adapted to the irregular to-
pography and natural features of the high city. Edo developed into a spectacular
garden city of great scenic variety.
With the Meiji Restoration in 1867, the emperor came to rule in Edo, which
was renamed Tokyo (“East Capital”). The new government, intent on Japan’s
rapid modernization, brought about many changes to the urban form. Railroads,
bridges, and other civil engineering projects knitted together formerly isolated
parts of the city. Following Japan’s renewed contact with Western nations, city
planners introduced broad avenues and ­European-­style zoning regulations. At first,
powerful landowners were able to resist government efforts to develop their land;
however, the end of feudal privileges and declining fortunes eventually forced
most of them to sell off their property piecemeal. Large estates were divided over
time into smaller lots. Although this process of subdivision often introduced a grid
pattern, there was generally no attempt to coordinate these separate grids. The
resulting city plan was a fragmented patchwork of grids and other patterns.
Destruction wrought by the Second World War created another opportunity
to rebuild the city with a stronger infrastructure; new motorways and rail lines were
overlaid on the old plan. At the same time, the old patterns—spiral and radial lines,
grids, and free forms adapted to topography—remained imprinted on the urban
form. The overlapping of plan systems in Tokyo, the fact that no one system can be
read as dominant, gives the city an elusive, seemingly chaotic character. Neverthe-
less, beyond these conflicting patterns, several identifiable spatial and morphological
principles have developed continuously over many centuries; familiarity with
these principles may enable us to see ­present-­day Tokyo more clearly.

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L aye r s o f Space

In sharp contrast with the high-­city Yamanote section of Tokyo, the low-­city
Nihonbashi district (where my office was originally located) has been a mercantile
center ever since the capital was called Edo. The flat, low-­lying area extending
from Nihonbashi to the ­Ningyo-­cho and ­Akashi-­cho neighborhoods lies on land
that was reclaimed piecemeal from the sea. This part of the city has also been razed
by fire many times. Neighborhoods are now divided by straight roads into square
blocks because of these circumstances. The main streets, lined with ­medium-­r ise
and high-­r ise buildings, are today scarcely to be distinguished from main streets
in high-­city Tokyo. As soon as we leave the main streets, however, we find mostly
two-­story houses clustered on both sides of narrow roads tucked between taller
buildings.
Narrow lanes separate house from house, and in summer the overhanging
­second-­story balconies are often screened with reed or bamboo blinds. Though
nothing of the dim interiors can be seen from the street, the faintest hint of move-
ment within makes us aware of layers of space peculiar to Japan. Thus even in the
low city, which does not have the topographical variety of high-­city areas, we can
discover an amazing diversity of spatial forms even today. The terms omote (front)
and ura (back) have traditionally been used in explaining this typically Japanese
phenomenon.
There has long been a tendency in Japan, evident in such terms as omote-­dori
(main street) and ura-­dori (back street), omote-­mon (front gate) and ura-­mon (back
gate), to establish hierarchical relationships that identify dominant and subordinate
elements in urban space and living patterns, although such a tendency is by no
means limited to this country. However, this distinction seems to me insufficient to
explain the essential character of Japanese space—that is, to account for phenomena
that are deeply rooted in the collective unconscious of most local communities.
The concept of omote and ura cannot fully explain the manifold layers of
Japanese space. The founding of a city or smaller community is always a matter
of collective or individual will. Unlike individual dwellings, a city or community
is shaped by norms developed over a long period of time. Of course such norms
may be abrogated and different standards established in the face of new external
conditions. As the history of cities and communities the world over tends to
show, however, norms peculiar to specific areas are few. In fact, the basic patterns

152
 of community structure are far smaller in number than the types of buildings ar-
ranged in those patterns. Those patterns also change very little in comparison with
such external conditions as transportation, social institutions, and lifestyles, which
undergo constant transformation.
Cities today are undergoing greater changes than ever before. Perplexed by
this kaleidoscopic world, we often try to cope by piecemeal treatment of symptoms
instead of root causes. We must first understand what is unchangeable or resistant to
change in order to reach a true understanding of what we must or can change.
Having traveled to many cities abroad, I am inclined to believe that multilay-
ered spaces are among the few phenomena observable only in Japan. The Japanese
have always postulated the existence of what is called oku (innermost area) at
the core of this high-­density space organized into multiple layers like an onion,
and the concept of oku has enabled them to elaborate and give depth to even a
delimited area.
In the formation of urban space, certain stable concepts that have been sifted
and committed to memory by the collective unconscious of the community work
automatically. Oku, a spatial concept peculiar to Japan, is a good example, and I
believe an understanding of this way of perceiving space is important in formulat-
ing ideas of what future cities should be like.
A centripetal okusei, or inwardness, has always been basic to space formation
in Japan, from village to metropolis. Understanding the concept of a centrifugal
center found in other cultures will make this centripetal inwardness in Japan easier
to comprehend. First, however, a brief discussion of oku, or inner space, as found
in Japanese surroundings is in order.
The word oku, expressing a distinctive Japanese sense of space, has long been
a part of the vocabulary of daily life, as is evident from such literary classics as
the ­eighth-­century anthology of poetry called the Man’yoshu (Collection of Ten
Thousand Leaves), the ­tenth-­century Ise monogatari (Tales of Ise), the ­fourteenth-
­century Tsurezuregusa (Essays in Idleness), and kabuki plays of the Edo Period. It
is interesting to note that the use of the term with respect to space is invariably
premised on the idea of okuyuki, or depth, signifying relative distance or the sense
of distance within a given space.
The Japanese, long accustomed to a fairly high population density, must have
conceived space as something finite and dense and, in consequence, developed
from early in their history a sensitivity finely attuned to relative distance within a

O N T HE C I T Y / T H E J A P A N E S E C I T Y A N D I N N E R S P A C E 153
 delimited area. Only that can satisfactorily explain the concept of okuyuki. The
Japanese distinguish an innermost portion even when a space measures only a
hundred meters—or, for that matter, only ten meters—in extent, and carefully lay
out a route leading to that portion. Only in that context can the idea of multilay-
ered space, and the Japanese attempt to structure space—we might even go so far
as to say the Japanese conception of the cosmos—be understood.
Oku also has a number of abstract connotations, including profundity and
unfathomability, so that the word is used to describe not only physical but psy-
chological depth. It is interesting to note how often the Japanese use the word
in adjectival form. Such usages include oku-­dokoro (inner place), oku-­guchi (inner
entrance), oku-­sha (inner shrine), oku-­yama (mountain recesses), and oku-­zashiki
(inner room), all relevant to the notion of physical space; oku-­gi (secret or hidden
principles) and oku-­den (secret mysteries of an art), referring to things invisible but
present in hidden form; and o‑oku (wife of a shogun) and oku-­no‑in or oku-­gata
(wife of an aristocrat or nobleman), terms suggesting social position.1 Evident in
the use of all these words is a tendency to recognize and esteem what is hidden,
invisible, or secret.
The painter and essayist Eiji Usami’s Meiro no oku (The Inner Labyrinth) is
one of the earliest essays on the sense of inwardness in Japanese space. Usami
notes this inwardness in the mazelike effect produced by the winding corridors
of ­Japanese-­style inns found in tourist resorts and spas, buildings much more
spacious inside than their unpretentious exteriors suggest. Usami speculates that
this complex division of space not only results from the gradual accretion of
extra rooms and extensions, or from architectural considerations necessitated by
topography and landscape, but also conforms to and reflects a Japanese propensity
for labyrinths. He writes:

3.18 Plan of a Kyoto machiya

(townhouse): entering from
the street (to the left), one
passes in a linear fashion from
the most public to the most
private rooms of the house,
which are set deep into the
city block.

154
 What causes the feeling of weariness and isolation—the exaggerated sense
of being far from home—that comes over us when we arrive at an inn and
are shown to our room by a maid? Is it a sort of animal sense—the complete
submission to the natural continuity of time we feel arising in us as we follow
the long corridor, searching with our eyes for landmarks with every twist
and turn—that brings our souls to (putting it somewhat floridly) the état
d’âme of our remote ancestors? Or is it that the changed aspect presented by
every turn and the slight irregularity in the rhythm of our footfalls in going
up and down stairs gradually lures our minds from reality toward illusion?
Does not this sense of distance signify how far we have strayed into a world
of fantasy? 2

I n n e r Spa ce in Dwe lling s

Examining inner space in traditional Japanese dwellings after noting its existence
in the recesses of mountains and woods, in ­Japanese-­style gardens as artificial and
dwarfed transfigurations of nature, and in the narrow backstreets of cities enables
us to perceive that oku has been given a still more clearly defined location and
status in such houses.
Several years back, I had occasion to call on an elderly woman at her modest
machiya (merchant’s townhouse) in ­Akashi-­cho in the Tsukiji district of low-­city
Tokyo. Stepping into the house through a latticed door slightly over a meter in
width, I found not in front of me but to one side a raised doorsill leading to a
small, 4.5‑mat (about ­seven-­square-­meter) room behind shoji panels. In the center
of the room was a kotatsu, a ­quilt-­covered table built over a sunken pit. Light

O N T HE C I T Y / T H E J A P A N E S E C I T Y A N D I N N E R S P A C E 155
entered from the street, which ran parallel to the vestibule through which I had
entered. This section of the house was used for receiving guests. Behind this room
was a second 4.5‑mat room combining the functions of kitchen and bedroom.
I was amazed at the complexity of orientation and density of space manifest in
a total floor space of only 26 square meters or so. The presence of a household
Shinto shrine, a family Buddhist altar, and a tokonoma alcove added to the com-
plexity and reinforced the feeling of inwardness and depth.
I was struck by how the orientation of space peculiar to a ­Japanese-­style inn
as described by Usami, which leads us ever inward (unlike a Western hotel, which
seems to stretch outward from the center) still survives today in modest family
dwellings. Moreover, it not only exists as a spatial concept but permeates more
abstract social structures by way of the collective unconscious, thus universalizing
the concept of inner space.
Why has what might be called a “philosophy of inner space” been cultivated
since ancient times in the Japanese cultural tradition?

The Pr o to type o f I nne r Spac e

The Pacific coast of the Japanese archipelago, especially the area stretching from
the Kanto plain of central Honshu down to Kyushu, which has been settled since
very early times, is favored with a relatively mild climate and abundant water, as
well as variegated scenery and forests of evergreen trees. It is popularly believed
that these natural features nurtured the typically Japanese outlook on nature. This,
of course, refers only to the time since the Yayoi period (c. 200 bc–­c. 250 ad),
when rice cultivation became widespread; before that, our ancestors lived mainly

okumiya

shrine

village

3.19 Diagram of an archetypal

Japanese village, with its “inner space”
otabidokoro hidden deep in the mountain.

156
by hunting and gathering, and would have had little time for appreciating the
beauty of their makeshift mountain abodes.
However, the spread of rice cultivation and the settling of people in the plains
in the Yayoi period gave rise to a noteworthy development. A distinction came
to be made between lowland villages, where people lived, and mountains, which
became special areas, a realm outside ordinary people’s sphere of activity. Thus set
apart, mountains gradually became more exalted and sacred, until eventually they
became taboo areas that were objects of naturalistic worship. This is how Shinto,
an amalgam of animism and shamanism, was born.
As Yuichiro Kojiro has pointed out in his study of the Japanese community,
the prototype of the Japanese rural community is the farming village, comprising
rice paddies and a cluster of houses set against a mountain backdrop.3 This is highly
significant, for it graphically suggests the presence of inner space. The typical village
has an elongated form that follows a highway skirting mountains and overlooking
paddy fields. Perpendicular to this axis is a religious axis, linking the village to a vil-
lage shrine at the foot of a mountain and an inner shrine (oku-­sha) in the recesses of
the mountain. Here, for the first time, inner space has a religious dimension, in that
it suggests the direction in which the seat of a deity (kami) lies. This indeed is the
prototype for a pattern found throughout the country, including Tokyo: a shrine
building, set back slightly from the street, standing in front of a grove of trees.
The inner shrine is located deep in a mountain because it is believed that im-
portant things should remain hidden; a winding mountain trail therefore provides
the only access. This is in sharp contrast to the European pattern in which the
church, the center and symbol of faith, is deliberately built in a conspicuous loca-
tion. If my characterization of this as an example of inner space is correct, then

3.20 Panoramic view of a

typical rural Japanese village.

O N T HE C I T Y / T H E J A P A N E S E C I T Y A N D I N N E R S P A C E 157
the concept of oku has existed in Japan’s local communities from remote times.
Although in this case inner space may have represented a world set apart that was
an object of worship, it was not entirely divorced from everyday life.
In the seventh century, people began to regard mountain recesses (oku-­yama)
as objects of aesthetic appreciation. Many Japanese mountains appear rounded and
gently sloping, especially when viewed from a distance. The idea of incorporating
images of mountains and rivers in gardens may not have suggested itself had Japan
possessed a different kind of scenery. Would it occur to people in India and Spain,
with their rugged, treeless mountains, or Borneo—an island in the monsoon re-
gion like Japan, but one located in the tropical zone—with its 4,100‑meter Mount
Kinabalu, a harsh, blackened peak with a flattened top, to incorporate miniature
domains of such landscapes in their gardens? However, the Japanese idea of oku
is not associated solely with mountains. The word itself is said to be derived from
oki, meaning offshore waters. Shinobu Origuchi, a scholar of Japanese literature,
theorizes that gods were believed to have come from across the sea. If oku does
indeed imply the seat of a deity, then we can logically conclude that both the
mountains and the sea had their respective oku, their own inner depths. Had
religion in Japan been monotheistic, the idea of oku would not have become so
pervasive in Japanese life.
By studying the significance of woods and land in Japan’s ethnological history,
we can get an even better idea of the pervasiveness of the idea of inner space.
Many of the mountains regarded as divine are covered with beautiful woods or
rise in smooth, rounded shapes. Even wooded hills in plains, regardless of size, are
accorded special treatment by local villagers. Ancient burial mounds to be found
even in the vicinity of ­present-­day Tokyo were apparently modeled after natural
mountains. Often a small shrine is hidden in the trees that cover a mound. Such
mounds were probably among Japan’s first man-­made symbols.
Interestingly, these symbols of power, which the philosopher Takeshi Umehara
calls the first monumental structures to be built in Japan, assumed a ­pseudo-­natural
appearance. This was true even for landforms constructed on a more modest scale.
For example, a small shrine was often erected on a hillock in the garden to house
the god of the harvest and other household deities. As this demonstrates, elevated
land was considered the seat of the god of the land; foliage represented a secluded
natural environment appropriate to a god. Such places suggest, by slight changes
in the lay of the land, trees and views, the subtle nuances to be found in nature.

158
 In Bungaku ni okeru genfukei (The Primary Landscape in Japanese Literature),
literary critic Takeo Okuno writes that until the early Showa period, folk beliefs
were still attached to the small shrines, stone Buddhist images, and stone monu-
ments that were found here and there in open fields in Tokyo’s high-­city Yamanote
area where he played as a boy. Okuno writes that, even after folk beliefs such as
the god of the land had been absorbed into the beliefs of the larger community
in guardian and tutelary gods, certain areas of open fields continued to have a
fantastic, magical quality.4 His observation points out the fact that the Japanese
city was (and in all likelihood still is) in certain respects an enormous village, and
has always been inherently rural in character. Okuno concludes that open fields in
the city were taboo areas, not just undeveloped vacant lots. Needless to say, such
areas were latent inner spaces.
Japan’s Pacific coastal areas generally project a cheerful, benign image. By
contrast, Japan’s folk history with respect to the land and soil is dark. The Japanese
interest in the subtlest contours of the land stems from a strong, sometimes ab-
normal attachment to the land. People’s worship of the land, revealed by myriad
stories and legends, has become a part of the collective unconscious. Although
the particulars of that worship have been mostly forgotten, attachment to the
land remains very much alive even in modern socioeconomic institutions. Thus,
any space that functions as a private sanctuary is given ritualized status as an inner
space, or oku. In no other country have people been so attached to land and so
little disposed to regard buildings standing on land as permanent. In Japan, urban
space means land, not structures.

I n n e r Spa ce v e r sus Ce nte r

A visitor to an old European city, especially a small one, will find the most impor-
tant and impressive buildings, such as churches and the municipal hall, concentrated
in the central district. Unlike a Japanese castle, which stands above its castle town,
important buildings in a European city are not isolated but part of the everyday en-
vironment, even though they assert their importance. Many churches have soaring
spires clearly visible from any part of town. Nowadays most people regard a church
spire as nothing more than a landmark, but once it meant much more.
In ancient times the city was a domain of order set apart from chaos. A
church spire was an axis mundi or cosmic pivot that assured communication with

O N T HE C I T Y / T H E J A P A N E S E C I T Y A N D I N N E R S P A C E 159
heaven; it was both the center and the symbol of the city. Before there were cit-
ies, the cosmic pivot had been represented at various times by trees, mountains,
and ladders. In the Islamic tradition, the Kaaba of Mecca represents the supreme
place on earth; its Christian equivalent is the hill of Golgotha, the site of the
Crucifixion. With the introduction of churches and spires, the city itself came to
symbolize the center of the world.
Significantly, a center is premised on the existence of a uniform space around
it. Inner spaces do exist in European cities. The moment the idea of uniformity of
space is introduced, however, the concept of inner space in the Japanese sense is
no longer tenable and gives way to the more universal and easily comprehended
concept of a center. A center, unlike inner space, must be open and visible, like
the hilltop church spire that rises toward heaven. The concept of center is not
limited to the West and its Judeo-­Christian tradition but is also found in China
and South Asia.
The Japanese, too, worshiped mountains and regarded trees as sacred. When
and why did the Japanese part ways with the rest of the world? First, their ances-
tors did not regard mountains as absolutes. They revered deep mountain recesses,
but also accorded respect to nearby mountains and hills. They built towns and
villages in valleys tucked between mountains or in basins ringed by mountains,
perhaps out of a belief that those surrounding mountains were themselves guard-
ian gods.
The Japanese identified as the point of origin not the summit of a mountain
but the depths of mountains. In the West, the idea of a center (that is, a moun-
taintop) was expressed in the form of cities, churches, and spires, whereas in Japan

3.21 Approach to the town of Assisi, Italy.

160
mountains were expressed, in tumuli and gardens, in such a way as to suggest inner
space, not a cosmic pivot.
The argument may be made that the Japanese shunned thickly wooded
mountains as sites for settlements because of the nature of the evergreen forest
zone in which they lived, or that they chose to inhabit valleys because of easy ac-
cess to water. I believe, however, that such utilitarian considerations served merely
to reinforce the Japanese concept of space.
A center locates a vertical, cosmic pivot that directly links heaven and earth. A
culture with towers is premised on that idea. In the West, verticality enhances the
majesty of churches. Standing in front of a Gothic cathedral, we are overwhelmed
by its almost superhuman vertical scale. Stepping into its dim interior through low,
heavy doors, we find ourselves in a soaring space; slanting rays of sunlight filtered
through tall ­stained-­glass windows suggest infinite vertical extension. The drama is
intended to be both physically and spiritually exhilarating. Renaissance churches,
as a result in part of a Hellenistic influence, are more human in scale. Nonetheless,
they too were characterized by centrality and verticality. Dancing angels painted
in fresco under the central dome of a Renaissance church create, in the dimness
of the light, an illusion of spiral upward movement.
Some years ago a friend of mine drove me to the ancient city of Urbino in
central Italy. As we were approaching the road leading to the heart of the city, my
friend suddenly pointed toward a hilltop across the valley. I saw a church directly
lit by the rays of the setting sun; its entrance arch was bathed in gold, creating a
striking contrast with its white walls. For those who designed the church, even
orientation seems to have played a part in its dramatic symbolism.

3.22 Scene of Yabukoji

road beneath Mt. Atago,
from Hiroshige Ando’s
Hundred Views of Edo series.

O N T HE C I T Y / T H E J A P A N E S E C I T Y A N D I N N E R S P A C E 161
 Inner space emphasizes horizontality and gains symbolic power by conceal-
ment. A Shinto shrine is therefore not a space to be entered but an object to be
seen from without. The ridgepole of the shrine symbolizes a sacred tree, the open
veranda circling the shrine, in all likelihood, the fence that once surrounded a
sacred pillar. The shrine stands silently, wrapped in trees. If the location is deep in
the mountains, mist can gather at times and obliterate even the sight of the shrine,
drawing us into a world of ephemerality and flux.
The absence of centrality and verticality in Japanese architecture is especially
evident in the treatment of pagodas. The cultures of the world can be divided
into those with towers and those without towers. Japan probably belongs to the
towerless cultural sphere. Pagodas were introduced into Japan from China in the
mid-­sixth century as symbols of Buddhist civilization.
Umehara mentions a strange tower he saw in Xi’an (the ancient capital of
Ch’ang-­an) on a visit to China some years ago. He comments that the sight
of this red-­brick tower—built by the Buddhist priest and traveler Hsuan-­tsang
(602–­664)—soaring into the blue heavens must have awed people of the time.5
As his account indicates, spaces in Chinese civilization more closely resemble by
their centrality and verticality the spaces of western Asia and Europe than they do
those of Japan, though Japan and China are both in East Asia.
When the pagoda was introduced to Japan, it lost its upward impulsion and
became just one element among many employed to strike a balance in the overall
temple layout. At Horyuji Temple near Nara, for example, the pagoda, main hall,
and covered galleries—as well as the surrounding trees—together make up a har-
monious whole. As Umehara points out, the Horyuji pagoda resembles a standing
human figure. The pagoda is nothing more than a vertical accent in an ensemble
characterized by a Japanese sense of balance.
Inner space is a mental touchstone for those who observe or produce it. In
that sense, inner space can be called an invisible center—or, more precisely, a con-
venient alternative to the center, devised by a culture that denies absolutes such as
centers. People are free to decide for themselves what constitutes such a “center”;
there is no need to make it explicit. The multilayered structuring of space, one of
the compositional patterns distinctive to Japan, gradually developed in this way.
As an ultimate destination, innermost space often lacks a climactic quality. In-
stead, it is the process of reaching this goal that demands drama and ritual. The de-
sign of an approach is a matter of manipulating horizontal depth rather than height.

162
The approaches to many temples and shrines turn and twist, with trees and slight
undulations in the ground now revealing, now concealing the goal. This structur-
ing of spatial experience takes into account the dimension of time. Even the torii
gate at the entrance to a Shinto shrine is an element in this ritual of arrival.
Nowadays most shrines and temples in big cities have sold their lands and lost
every trace of their sando—the road that led to the main temple or shrine build-
ing—and the grove that stood in the back of the compound or precinct; only the
buildings themselves remain, their inner recesses laid bare. Does inner space inevi-
tably become empty when exposed? Is it scattered and made null? Japanese culture
has no historical experience of ruins in the true sense of the word. Any temple
or shrine building could be restored—at times with great ease—if destroyed, and
was therefore not meant to be permanent.
This reminds me of something I saw in the American city of St. Louis many
years ago. The city had developed as a trading post on the west bank of the Missis-
sippi River around the end of the eighteenth century. By the mid-­twentieth cen-
tury, the heart of the city had become a slum inhabited mostly by minorities.When
I was there, an extensive slum clearance project covering dozens of blocks was in
progress as part of an ambitious city redevelopment plan. A project of this kind usu-
ally entails moving the church buildings, as well as the residents, out of the affected
district, though Catholic churches, unlike Protestant churches, tend to opt to stay
on. In that desolation of razed lots a single Catholic church remained standing,
completely isolated but in full possession of a dignity that had nothing to do with
the building’s size or design. I still remember vividly the robustness of that church,
which gave an impression so different from that of a naked Japanese shrine.

E n v e l o p m e nt v e r sus De mar catio n

The difference between inner space and center will be made still clearer by a
comparison of concepts of place and formation of territory. The 1954 film Le
grand jeu, shown in Japan many years ago, depicts life in an oasis set in the bleak,
empty desert beneath a scorching sun. The oasis, with its meager greenery and
scant water, its fleeting freedom and romance, is a contemporary desert paradise
girded by walls and gates of sun-­baked brick and stone.
As I suggested above, sanctification of place, determination of a ­center-­
as‑cosmic-­pivot, and establishment of a cosmos within chaos are the archetypal

O N T HE C I T Y / T H E J A P A N E S E C I T Y A N D I N N E R S P A C E 163
acts by which cities have been formed in much of the world. The deserts in which
nomads wandered and the Aegean Sea where the ancient Greeks sailed were al-
ways filled with uncertainty and danger. To make the city a haven and a paradise,
it was necessary not only to determine its center but also to demarcate clearly its
surrounding territory.
The ancient Greeks, when founding a city, performed a ceremony fixing the
city limits; to them the city walls themselves had a sacred significance. In a civiliza-
tion in which the formation of a city was premised on the existence of a center, the
building of encompassing walls was a necessary act. It is also important to note that
a rational spirit informed the patterns used to subdivide the territory within a city.
We can clearly see the difference in pattern between the grid-­type city of
Miletus, believed to have been built by Hippodamus in the fifth century bc, and
a ­cluster-­type mountain city of medieval Europe. The former reveals itself by its
very form to be a city-­state inhabited by free citizens, whereas the layout of the
latter expresses the hierarchical order of an ecclesiastical, ­class-­oriented society.
Nonetheless, each had a clearly fixed center and boundaries, and was established
as a finite entity in a limitless expanse of space. Furthermore, the demarcated ter-
ritory was well organized from an overall viewpoint. Thus the two types of city,
despite differences in sociopolitical background and physical layout, have basically
corresponding structures.
By contrast, city planning in Japan was based on an entirely different approach.
As I have said, the Japanese, in undertaking the building of a city, invariably rec-
ognized the finite nature of land. Thus many cities were founded in basins ringed
by mountains, despite their geographical disadvantages for defensive purposes; for
the same reason, it was exceedingly rare for a Japanese city to have man-­made

3.23 Typical street and block

divisions in the “downtown”
area of Tokyo.

164
 boundaries like those possessed by so many cities in other parts of the world.
In Japan, instead of a fixed center, territorial integrity was based on something
indeterminate, and enveloping or enfolding this basic “something” (oku) was the
operational principle of territorial formation. In contrast to active demarcation,
enveloping implies passivity as well as flexibility—that is, a capacity to adapt the
envelope to the form of what is to be enveloped.
Several years ago I had the opportunity to see an exhibition of traditional
Japanese containers and wrapping materials held in New York under the auspices
of the Japan Society. I was struck anew by the profusion of traditional wrapping
materials and methods. There were containers of cloth, straw, paper, leaves, and
other materials. I know of no other civilization that has developed a system of
wrapping so beautifully and functionally adapted to the nature and shape of the
objects to be wrapped.
It seems to me that the principle of “inner ­space-­envelopment” in the forma-
tion of territory is a major Japanese concept, corresponding to that of “center-
­demarcation” in other cultures. It is true that a grid pattern was generally used
in laying out flatland portions of cities during the Edo period. But the Japanese
version lacked the internal consistency of a grid like that of Miletus, which main-
tained a single system of coordinates even though the city was divided into two
parts by an arm of the sea. Japanese cities, on the contrary, were highly susceptible
to the influence of topographical changes; as a result, geometrical conformity to
a grid was not easily sustained.
Fujimi-­cho, a district in Edo so named for its fine view of Mount Fuji, is a
case in point. Because the district’s roads, forming a grid, are purposely oriented
in relation to Mount Fuji, they are not aligned with the roads of the adjacent

3.24 Pattern of roads in an

actual “uptown” neighborhood
of Tokyo, shown according to
their chronological development:
heavy lines indicate roads
enveloping the area (originally a
single property); thinner black
lines show main roads leading in
from the boundaries, and dotted
lines minor roads added later.

O N T HE C I T Y / T H E J A P A N E S E C I T Y A N D I N N E R S P A C E 165
districts. In other words, instead of a portion of the theoretically infinite expanse
of the grid being encapsulated, a certain area with a common characteristic—in
this case, a view of Mount Fuji—is identified as a territory by “wrapping it up”
as a separate grid of several blocks.
It goes without saying that in Edo, where street layout changed from place to
place even in the flat downtown districts, the formation of territory by enfolding
or enveloping it was still more pronounced in the high-­city Yamanote districts.
There the roads running along hilltops and through valleys provided the basic
lines of territorial delineation, clearly functioning to envelop the area following its
natural contours. The narrow lanes leading from these outer “border” roads to the
interior of the territory thus enclosed did not intersect. In this way disturbance of
the integrity of the territory as a whole was minimized, and the “inner space” of
such areas has remained intact to date.
The winding roads of medieval European castle towns, though seemingly
analogous, obey an essentially different set of structural imperatives. After all,
whether laid out as grids or as networks, Japanese cities are intrinsically Japanese,
and Western cities, Western. The contrasting concepts of “center-­demarcation”
and “inner ­space-­envelopment” show the basic difference in the way space is
organized in the two types of civilization.
Using the idea of inner space as a clue, we have now finally come to the
essence of the quality of “place” in two types of civilization. As shown by the
stratagems employed in forming territories in space (be it the desert, wilderness,
or ocean)—that is, cosmic pivot, center, enclosure, and demarcation—people be-
longing to ­center-­oriented civilizations believe that only what is made can exist
absolutely, space itself being inherently formless and infinite.
I have already pointed out that Japanese cities are like villages in that they
incorporate rural institutions and landscapes. I believe that Japanese cities have
grown out of the soil rather than being made by carving a measure of abstract
space and architecture out of an infinite expanse of space, as is the case with cities
in ­center-­oriented civilizations.
For the Japanese, land is a living entity; that is the basis of their reverence for
land, a feeling deeply rooted in folk beliefs. Surely inner space is not something
constructed, like a center, but something bestowed by land itself. The Japanese
do not hesitate to demolish houses, perhaps because a house is, after all, no more

166
than a temporary abode in a transient world. But they are averse to the removal
of wells or mounds.
Once the concept of inner space was universalized, inner space (oku) in
houses became nothing more than a specified, relative location within interior
space. Surely this was because the Japanese saw in land the source of existence,
and inner space was only its symbol or proxy. Thus towns and villages generate
countless inner spaces. The city can be seen as an aggregate of innumerable public
and private territories, each enveloping its own inner space. The Japanese city
developed not as a community clustered around an absolute center but as numer-
ous territories, each safeguarding its own inner space—be it public, semipublic, or
private. Japanese cities maintained this form of organization at least until the early
decades of the twentieth century.
Today, Japanese cities are being subjected to unprecedented modernization
and growing population density. The purpose of this essay is not to discuss the past
development or predict the future of inner space in Japan. As the French sociolo-
gist Maurice Halbwachs has remarked, a city is a place of collective memory.6 My
aim here is to point out how indispensable a knowledge of the cultural images
rooted in the collective unconscious of the community is to an understanding of
the nature of the city.
An architect like myself, who plays a role, however limited, in the building
of modern cities, is faced with an inescapable question. Various basic scenarios for
cities—including scenarios for hell—can be easily imagined. The question is how
those scenarios interact with reality. According to one scenario, ever-­increasing
urban population density leads to the further loss of an already stunted nature and
of the sense of place rooted in land, resulting in the dispersion of inner space
(including the “exposed inner space” discussed above). Inner space becomes more
and more compartmentalized, being relegated to one portion of an apartment,
for instance, and thus ceases to participate in the kind of collective inner space
formerly found in both low-­city and high-­city districts of Tokyo.
In another scenario, efforts are made to revive urban inner spaces wherever
possible, utilizing all available spatial concepts and techniques, old and new. What
form such revived inner spaces should take is still uncertain. But I am convinced
that once the goal is defined, we will discover the means to attain it. The history
of Japanese cities teaches us that the qualities desired in space are to be achieved
through not just expansion, but also the creation of depth.

O N T HE C I T Y / T H E J A P A N E S E C I T Y A N D I N N E R S P A C E 167
Th e K a z e - n
­ o - ­Ok a Crem atorium

The Kaze-­no-­Oka Crematorium sits on a hilly site on the outskirts of Nakatsu, a

small city of 70,000 people in southern Japan. The spacious, naturally scenic site
was selected as an appropriately tranquil environment for cremation and funeral
ceremonies in a location removed from the everyday activities of the town. The
larger grounds incorporate an existing Buddhist cemetery, a group of recently
unearthed ­fourth- to ­sixth-­century burial mounds, and a newly landscaped stroll-
ing park given the evocative name “Kaze-­no-­Oka,” which means “Hill of the
Winds.” To respect and enhance the scenic character of this environment, I felt
from the beginning that the design of the crematorium buildings must some-
how blend with this timeless landscape rather than standing apart. I imagined the
building volumes, particularly when viewed from the park to the south, seen as
emerging from the earth in a partially buried state.
The crematorium program called for three buildings: the crematorium proper,
where ceremonies directly connected with the cremation would be conducted;
the waiting area, where mourners would pass time between ceremonies; and the
funeral hall, where vigils and funeral services would be held. My design inten-
tion was to make the spaces used for ceremonial purposes appropriately still and
solemn in character, while allowing the spaces linking those rooms to provide a
natural flow and a sense of repose between consecutive activities. Such concerns
helped to determine the way that natural light is admitted, the proportions of
rooms, and the choice of materials throughout.
A crematorium is not merely a facility for processing the remains of the dead;
it also has a very public function in providing a place for the bereaved to take leave
of their loved ones, to mourn, and to reflect. From the beginning of the design
3.25 Aerial view of Kaze-­no-­Oka
Crematorium and park, with recently
discovered burial mounds (bottom left).

process, we focused on the experience of relatives and friends, asking what sort
of space they would require for this final parting from the deceased, what sort of
memory they might wish to have of this primary experience. In contemplating
answers to these questions, we realized that such a momentous life event is ideally
not something that happens in a moment but, rather, an experience that unfolds
gradually over time. By paying particular attention to the most elemental aspects
of architecture—space, light, scale, proportion, texture—we might manipulate
the sense of time passing according to the experience and feeling of each visitor.
A flowing arrangement of spaces could be designed to make visitors indirectly
aware, at each stage in the sequence, of the place to which they were to move
next—when they were ready—using strategies such as bending paths, screened
views, and unseen sources of natural light.

ON T HE C I T Y / T H E K A Z E - N O - O K A C R E M A T O R I U M 169
 Naturally our building, though gentle in its outward appearance, would take
on a certain psychological dimension as visitors passed through a sequence of
ceremonial spaces prescribed by tradition: entrance hall, oratory, crematorium,
waiting space, and enshrinement room. It seemed to me that the careful arrange-
ment of these spaces could in itself suggest a kind of inner depth of the kind that I
had analyzed several years earlier in “The Japanese City and Inner Space.”
That essay explained, through a number of examples, the Japanese word-
­concept oku (inner depth or inner space), which I consider one of the distin-
guishing characteristics of Japanese urban space. I defined oku as a kind of unseen
center, one that is inaccessible or difficult to perceive, as opposed to an occupiable
center or ­center-­as‑destination. To put it another way, oku is an arrangement of
space to suggest depth; it exists only as an effect of such an arrangement. The
aim is to create a symbolic space perceived as remote. This depth, however, is
not governed by absolute distance in space as it might be, for example, in the
monumental urban designs of Baroque Europe. The idea of oku is, rather, to cre-
ate perceptual remoteness within a limited space; the problem of physical distance
is overcome by the provision of multiple layers of actual or implied thresholds.
Topography, trees, screens, and other framing devices can all be used to endow
urban space with oku, as can the treatment of natural light. In his famous essay In
Praise of Shadows, Jun’ichiro Tanizaki speaks of such depth being expressed in the
suggestive quality of natural light, whether inside or outside.1 If such points are
taken into consideration, then it should be possible to arrange spaces not only in
cities and in landscapes but also in contemporary architecture, within individual
buildings, so that they too possess a kind of inner depth.
The impulse to create a sense of oku at the Kaze-­no-­Oka Crematorium may
have been an instinctive response on my part to the idea that the cremation cer-
emony requires a kind of psychological journey, in which neither the destination
nor the experiences along the way can be made clear from the beginning.
Visitors approach the crematorium along a gently curving road that ascends
the hill. Passing by the cemetery, they arrive at a forecourt, framed by a long
horizontal wall of brick and a covered ­porte-­cochère, which offers mourners a
sheltered space to pause before entering the crematorium building. The metal
screen of the ­porte-­cochère creates a sense of visual depth between it and the
front garden.

170
 3.26 Forecourt.

2 3

7
1 6
4

1 – Forecourt
8 2 – Entry porch
3 – Oratory
4 – Crematory
5 – Waiting space
6 – Enshrinement room
7 – Courtyard
8 – Park 3.27 Floor plan.

ON T HE C I T Y / T H E K A Z E - N O - O K A C R E M A T O R I U M 171
 After traversing the gently ramped walkway along the side of the front gar-
den, visitors arrive at an external porch marking the entrance to the crematorium
building; they pass through an antechamber and enter the oratory, where they
will spend some final ceremonial moments with the body in its coffin. Refracted
light is drawn through a lattice of metal bars, making the coffin appear to float in
a twilit space.
After that ceremony, mourners move on, gathering in a space in front of the
incinerator doors for a final farewell. The space before the incinerators opens onto
an internal courtyard filled with a shallow pool. Natural light reflecting off the
water sparkles across the ceiling, providing a moment of unexpected animation
and beauty. Mourners who have just paid their last respects to the deceased sense
the sky, the movement of clouds, and the play of light, thereby coming back into
contact with the outside world.
The sequence then leads them along a sloping corridor to the waiting area, to
pass time while the body is cremated. In the waiting area, mourners are released
for one or two hours from the solemnity of ceremony. To reflect this break in
mood, we introduced wood and other organic materials to this space, in contrast
to the monochromatic grey palette of concrete, slate, granite, steel, and plaster
used in ceremonial spaces. We also designed this space to have a multifarious
character, with areas both for group conversation and for private reflection. The
waiting area is the only space that looks out to the surrounding landscape, with a
view to distant mountains framed by the topography and trees of Kaze-­no-­Oka.
Once the cremation is completed, mourners are then led to an enshrinement
room where the bones and ashes of the deceased are returned from the incinerator
on a trolley and placed in the center of the room. As in the oratories, refracted
light pours into this space though horizontal louvers. After a ritual purification
ceremony, mourners then depart, using a different door to pass through the en-
trance porch and ascend the gallery walk to the forecourt.
In many cases, the cremation ceremony is followed by a memorial service in
the funeral hall. This sequence involves a second, shorter loop, beginning again
from the forecourt and passing to the opposite side of the brick wall first seen
from the entrance. Mourners traverse a gallery walk open to a view of Kaze-­no-
­Oka until they reach the ­brick-­clad funeral hall, which appears as an octagonal
volume emerging from the earth at a slight tilt. Just inside the entrance, four
circular skylights produce a sense of verticality in contrast with the horizontality

172
3.28 Entry porch.

of the preceding spaces. Passing between rows of chairs, visitors approach the
altar and make an offering of incense to the deceased. To the left, light reflects
off a shallow pool of water, entering the hall through a low horizontal window.
As mourners depart, they return to the open gallery where the ceremony comes
to a close.
Since the crematorium’s completion in 1996, many people even from outside
the city have visited the place, and as I understand, many of them have expressed
a wish to be cremated there if possible. Perhaps this is one of the most unexpected
compliments I have ever received as an architect.

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 3.29 Crematorium.

3.30 Water court.

174
 3.31 Waiting space.

3.32 Lobby for waiting space.

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3.33 Enshrinement room.

176
 3.34 Mourners depart
carrying white urns.

3.35 Funeral hall.

ON T HE C I T Y / T H E K A Z E - N O - O K A C R E M A T O R I U M 177
3.36 Kaze-­no-­Oka park, with crematorium seen
emerging from the grassy hill. The abstract, nearly
windowless volumes of funeral hall, waiting area,
and crematorium are distinguished by their surfacing
in brick, weathering steel, and concrete—materials
selected for their durability when partially buried in
the landscape, metaphorically suggesting the return
of the dead to the earth.

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 O n Ar c h i t ec t s a n d Ar c h i t ec t u r e 4
T h e L e Co r b u si e r Syndrom e: On t he Dev elo pment of Moder n Ar chitectur e in Japan

Le Corbusier passed away in 1965, the very year when I began my own architec-
tural practice; yet over the subsequent decades, I have always been mindful of the
things he created and said. In this, I am not alone—particularly not in Japan. The
sustained interest in Le Corbusier, ever since he emerged as a hero of the archi-
tectural world early in the twentieth century, is evident in the words and deeds of
Japanese architects and critics of many different generations, including my own.
What can explain such a constant fascination for the designs and writings of a
single architect in a country where he built but one late work?
Le Corbusier’s influence in countries other than France and its European
neighbors is for the most part easily explained. His impact on modern Brazilian
architecture and on the architectural culture of post-­Independence India are eas-
ily fathomed; both stem from his intensive involvement in numerous projects and
professional collaborations in those countries. His effect in those countries can be
likened to ripples caused by a stone thrown into a pond: a single strong impact
followed by waves that diminish with time and distance. His influence on Japan,
however, is of a different nature and longer duration—as if many stones had been
thrown, one after another, into a pond. Over time, the different systems of ripples
have interfered with one another, creating a complex pattern. I have chosen to
call this phenomenon, which is unique to Japan, the “Le Corbusier Syndrome.” I
believe that an analysis of this syndrome may help to clarify the nature of the pro-
cess of development of modern architecture in Japan. In undertaking this analysis,
I will introduce things I myself have seen and heard.
The history of this syndrome can be divided into roughly three periods. The
first period lasted from the end of the 1920s through the 1930s, in the era before
World War II. The 1920s in particular were a time when young architects, though
still few in number, began to go to Europe to visit Le Corbusier’s works or to
apprentice themselves to him. In Japan, the magazines in which his works and
writings were published increased interest in his architecture and ideas. This was
a period in which the Japanese architectural world began to discover itself, and
young architects began to discuss the future of modern architecture. Le Corbusier
came to be regarded as a hero and became the focus of attention of many archi-
tects. White, unadorned boxes came into vogue, and the famous Five Points of Le
Corbusier’s Vers une architecture—including pilotis, the roof garden, and the free
plan—entered the Japanese architectural vocabulary.
This image he projected in the first period as a young hero was transformed
in the second period—namely the postwar years of the 1950s and 1960s—into
the image of Le Corbusier as a master of ­twentieth-­century architecture. His style
changed during this time as well. It was during these years that I myself felt his in-
fluence most directly, both from the architect himself and from his close disciples,
and Le Corbusier evolved into a figure enveloped in myth. He had been active in
the field of urbanism as early as the 1930s, but it was not until the second period
that his influence became apparent in this genre in Japan.
The final, third period was initiated by his death in 1965 and continues to
this day. After his death, Le Corbusier became the subject of theoretical analyses,
much like Palladio. His death coincided with major developments in postwar
architecture. The May Revolution in Paris touched off worldwide student unrest
in 1968, and the Vietnam War was already casting a shadow on the United States.
The nature of architecture was increasingly questioned. It was in that shifting
political and philosophical context that new ways of looking at the architecture of
Le Corbusier were sought, and the search still continues.
Before discussing the way Le Corbusier was viewed in these three stages, I
would like to consider briefly the way in which foreign architecture, especially
European architecture, has been introduced into Japan in modern times. Western
architecture took root in Japan in two ways. The primary way was through foreign
architects who came to Japan after the Meiji Restoration and designed buildings
in orthodox Western styles. These styles were regarded in Japan as an integral
part of a technology that needed to be mastered in order to create architecture.
The adoption of styles therefore implied advancement, and Western architecture
came to symbolize progress and authority. By the 1870s, however, a different

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 style of modern architecture had also developed. The so‑called ­pseudo-­Western
style ( giyou‑fu) architecture was a mixture of Western and Japanese elements; ex-
amples included the ­Mitsui-­Gumi Head Office, the Dai-­Ichi National Bank, and
the Tsukiji Hotel, all designed by the master carpenter Kisuke Shimizu. These
works achieved an architectural détente, one in which neither Western nor Japanese
tradition was rejected. The ­pseudo-­Western style is of more than passing inter-
est because something very much like it cropped up years later. There is a close
resemblance between the Dai-­Ichi National Bank and the Government Building
that was constructed in Manchuria to symbolize the authority of the ­Japanese-
­controlled state about sixty years later, in the 1930s, at a time when the first
debates over “tradition” occurred in the Japanese architectural world. The Man-
churian Government Building was in the so‑called Imperial Crown style, which,
simply put, meant capping a boxlike ­Western-­style building with a ­Japanese-­style
pitched roof.
The National Diet Building, which was also completed in the 1930s, is Greek
Revival in style, but the sensibility behind it is ­pseudo-­Western. That such a sen-
sibility would be allowed to shape a building housing the legislative branch of
the Japanese government at a time of heightened nationalism suggests that archi-
tecture had long been drained of any political or ideological content. Since the
Meiji period, style had meant technology, and technology had meant progress.
That was also the attitude taken by Japanese architects toward the styles preceding
the advent of International Style modernism, such as Jugendstil and Secessionist
architecture.
There is another factor that must be mentioned with respect to the architectural
climate in Japan at the time modernism was introduced. In 1835, Karl Friedrich

4.1 The National Diet Building

( Japan’s Parliament), Tokyo, 1936.

182
Schinkel designed a villa for Prince Wilhelm in a suburb of Potsdam. What made
this building revolutionary was the fact that it departed from the Baroque form
of arrangement, in which architecture in the Palladian style dominated place and
nature, and established a one-­to‑one relationship between architecture and the
nature around it. That is, architecture and nature were made interdependent. Such
free spatial forms are one of the reasons Schinkel is seen as an architect who an-
ticipated modernism, but villas with such spatial forms had already been perfected
in Japan in the seventeenth century, as witnessed in the Katsura Detached Palace.
Such similarities of spatial form and a shared interest in transparent membranes,
which in truth were the result of historical accident, facilitated the synthesis of
Japanese culture with modernism, even though by that time Japanese architects
had mastered historicist Western architecture.
In Europe, modernism represented a rejection of historicism and thus had an
underlying political character, but when it was introduced into Japan, modernism
was almost entirely neutral in its political content. There was no Japanese equiva-
lent of the conflict in France between academicism, represented by the École
des Beaux-­Arts, and modernism. Even the Imperial Crown style, developed to
symbolize the state, had clearly detectable traces of Western architecture. During
this time in Germany, the Nazis sought to eliminate any trace of modernism,
which they saw as symbolic of political radicalism, but such an attitude did not
exist in Japan.
What is interesting is that in this first period, many excellent works of mod-
ernist architecture were created in Japan that stand comparison with those in
Europe. They include Antonin Raymond’s own house, houses by Sutemi Hori-
guchi such as Shienso and the later Wakasa Residence, and the Ube Civic Center

4.2 Japan Pavilion for the 1937

Paris International Exposition, by
Junzo Sakakura.

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by Togo Murano. In assimilating Western culture, young Japanese architects had
gradually begun to acquire the ability to express themselves freely and individually,
and that probably accounts for the diversity and excellence of works such as those
by Horiguchi and Murano. The Japan Pavilion for the 1937 Paris Exposition,
designed by Junzo Sakakura, who had served as an apprentice at the atelier of Le
Corbusier from 1930 onward, must be seen in that context. There is a fascinating
similarity of spirit in Sakakura’s design for the Japan Pavilion and in several later
works by Le Corbusier, particularly the Carpenter Center at Harvard. In both
cases, a rampway forcefully penetrates a gridded plan. According to Sakakura,
Le Corbusier let him use the Paris atelier to design the Japan Pavilion. It is quite
probable that during that time, he received advice or was otherwise influenced by
Le Corbusier. Over the years, from the Villa Savoye through the Japan Pavilion
to the Carpenter Center, master and disciple may have communicated, on both a
conscious and a subconscious level, on many occasions. Sakakura spent five years
as an apprentice, and toward the end Le Corbusier thought so much of him that
he entrusted Sakakura with a project all to himself. Sakakura absorbed Le Cor-
busier’s teachings until they became, one might say, a part of his physical regimen
and the motivating force for his own design. Kunio Maekawa, whom I will discuss
later, was of the same generation; he preceded Sakakura at Le Corbusier’s atelier,
having left Japan for Paris immediately after graduating from Tokyo University in
1928. That Sakakura, Maekawa, and many others of the 1920s generation (includ-
ing their classmate Yoshiro Taniguchi) regarded Le Corbusier as their leader was
of enormous importance in setting the direction for the subsequent development
of modern architecture in Japan. It was very much like the situation in Brazil in
1930, when Lucio Costa—28 at the time—invited Le Corbusier to the country
and, together with Oscar Niemeyer, laid the foundation for modern architecture
and urbanism in that country. It all testifies to Le Corbusier’s status as a young hero
among architects of that generation throughout the world.
My introduction to modern architecture took place in Tokyo shortly after
the above events, when as a child I had the opportunity to visit the house Kameki
Tsuchiura designed for himself and the Sasaki House designed by Yoshiro Tani-
guchi. I have a clear recollection of their spaces even today. Shigeo Sasaki was
a relative, and my mother visited his new house on the opening day. The fact
that the name plate of the architect, Taniguchi, was attached to the wall beside
the entrance made a strong impression on her. It is highly unusual even today

184
to find such a display on a residence, and this detail suggests the assertive spirit of
young architects at the time. That, too, may have been a sign of Le Corbusier’s
influence.
I will now consider briefly the relationship between Le Corbusier and the
Japanese architectural world from the end of World War II to the 1960s. I was
then starting out as an architect, and many of the architects and city planners with
whom I became acquainted, both in Japan and abroad, were on familiar terms
with Le Corbusier. Consequently, the views expressed here tend to be more per-
sonal in nature. There are two noteworthy aspects to the relationship between Le
Corbusier and Japan in this period. First, a debate over “tradition” broke out in
the Japanese architectural world once more after the war; at issue was the essential
nature of Japanese tradition. Was Japanese tradition based on prehistoric Yayoi
culture or on ancient Jomon culture? The tradition debate arose out of the need
to assert a Japanese identity in the face of the ­large-­scale assimilation of foreign
culture—indeed, the Japanese throughout their history have never simply adopted
foreign things, but have adapted them in distinctively Japanese ways. This tradi-
tion debate differed from the 1930s debate in that it did not lead directly to the
development of a style such as the Imperial Crown style; instead, it inspired ar-
chitects to go their own individual ways, and that may still be one of the defining
characteristics of contemporary architecture in Japan. Kenzo Tange was one of the
architects actively engaged in the tradition debate, but so were architects such as
Maekawa and Takamasa Yoshizaka, who had long been interested in Le Corbusier.
Le Corbusier himself showed plastic, primitivist tendencies at this time, and the
three Japanese architects mentioned above developed their own concrete forms.
Few architects have understood and loved European culture as much as Kunio
Maekawa. If Sakakura tried to absorb the master’s teachings through physical
mastery of them, then Maekawa attempted to understand them through his own
spirit. It was empathy for Le Corbusier that led Maekawa to question the nature of
the architectural profession and the nature of technology, and to develop his own
sense of architectural morality. Inevitably, that questioning spirit led at times to
mixed feelings on his part about European culture and Le Corbusier’s architecture.
I became acquainted with Maekawa in the late 1950s, and two episodes from that
period are indicative of his state of mind.
Le Corbusier had designed the chapel at Ronchamp around 1952. Several
years later, I was with Maekawa when he suddenly said, in exasperation, “I don’t

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understand the architecture of Ronchamp. I would like to ask him once what the
idea is behind the design.” Shortly thereafter, Maekawa participated in the 1962
limited competition for Tokyo Cathedral, and his early sketches show numerous
­Ronchamp-­like features on the roof and the walls. Though he could not under-
stand the chapel and rebelled against it, he was still drawn to its forms. Such para-
doxes no doubt occur all the time in other genres of art. Artistic influence is like
the shadow of a cloud: a cloud can overtake one unawares, until one is directly
under it, and then in the next moment it moves on. Artistic influence, like the
shadow of a cloud, is elusive and difficult for someone under it to discern.
The other episode concerns Maekawa’s last meeting with Le Corbusier,
which took place in the 1960s. “There was one thing I could not understand,”
Maekawa told me on his return to Japan. “He never had a child, but for many
years he had a dog that he loved. The dog had died not long before I visited him,
and perhaps to remember it by, he had the dog’s hide laid on the floor. I could
never do something like that.” Maekawa himself was childless and loved a pet dog,
which I understand was buried in a grave when it died. As these two episodes
show, Maekawa tried to love and to understand Europe and Le Corbusier. That
effort at times was unsuccessful, and in his perplexity he began to question both
himself and Japan. He reminds me of the philosopher Arimasa Mori, who studied
Descartes’s philosophy throughout his life until his death in Paris. Perhaps it is in
the nature of great masters to cast a spell on those who follow them.
It is easy to point out the formal influence of Le Corbusier on Japanese
architecture at the time—for example, in the parallels between the museum in
Ahmedabad and Tange’s first Sogetsu Center, or between the Assembly Building at
Chandigarh and Maekawa’s Tokyo Metropolitan Festival Hall—but it is also nec-
essary to examine emotions such as those to which Maekawa was subject if we are
to understand the wider influence of Le Corbusier’s personality and architecture.
My own exposure to the Swiss master, his works, and his ideas dates from his
late years. Josep Lluis Sert, who was the Dean of the Graduate School of Design
when I was studying at Harvard in the 1950s, was a direct disciple of Le Corbusier,
and other Europeans with whom I became acquainted through the university had
known Le Corbusier since the early days of CIAM. When I received a Graham
Foundation Fellowship in 1958 and traveled for two years in Asia and Europe, one
of the aims of my travels was to see the works of Le Corbusier, and so naturally I
made a point of visiting Ahmedabad and Chandigarh. Le Corbusier happened to

186
be in Chandigarh at the time of my visit, and I had an opportunity to meet him in
his atelier there. Inside the high-­ceilinged but dimly lit atelier, he was absorbed in
designing a relief for a dam to be constructed north of Chandigarh. After convers-
ing with him, I took the liberty of showing him a drawing of Toyoda Auditorium
at Nagoya University, a project which I was then designing and which was to be
my first built work. He kindly offered criticism of the design, and then, referring
to a shear wall that joined column to column—an antiseismic feature widely used
at the time in Japan—he said, “This is not good—you should free the columns.”
Whatever the aptness of his remark, the experience was unforgettable for a young
architect.
Le Corbusier exerted influence on Japan not only through his architectural
work but also, from the 1950s onward, through his urbanism; his utopian ideas for
cities made a particular impact in Japan. The image of the future he developed
through a series of projects beginning with the City for Three Million People set
in Paris and culminating in the City Plan for Algiers was neither a socialist utopia
of the kind Robert Owen or Charles Fourier envisioned nor a Garden City of the
type imagined by Ebenezer Howard. Simply stated, it was a ­techno-­utopia—an
urban image based on a space of unlimited extension suggested by modernist ideas.
In the late 1950s, this ­techno-­utopia provided a springboard for Japanese architects
working in an environment unhampered by ideology or academicism, and seeking
a new vision. Kenzo Tange’s Tokyo Plan 1960—an extension of his earlier Boston
Harbor project at MIT—can also be seen as a postwar version of Le Corbusier’s
Algiers project. Corbusier’s ­techno-­utopia also had a strong influence on the 1960
Metabolist movement. It is seen, for example, in the theory of replacement de-
veloped by Kiyonori Kikutake. However, there was a sharp distinction between
Le Corbusier’s formal ideas and the ideas of the Metabolists, who envisioned a
city that was dynamic rather than static. The idea of group form that I proposed
together with Masato Otaka, the capsules of Kisho Kurokawa, and the man-­made
deck of Otaka were all very different in character from Le Corbusier’s concepts.
Kurokawa’s Agrarian City proposal had a framework reminiscent of fortified Japa-
nese villages of the medieval period, and Kikutake’s Ocean City is a particularly
Asian vision of the world. Transplanted to Japan, Le Corbusier’s ­techno-­utopia
thus took a very different form; many of these ideas, however, came to an end
with the Osaka Exposition of 1970, as architecture entered a period of intellectual
change throughout the world.

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 When I try to summarize Le Corbusier’s influence on Japan in the 1960s,
the house of a certain architect comes to mind. It is the Tower House, which
Takamitsu Azuma designed for himself in 1967. This ­exposed-­concrete detached
house, constructed on a tiny triangular plot near the center of Tokyo, is a realiza-
tion of nearly all the principles of modern architecture espoused by Le Corbusier.
It sits raised above the ground on pilotis; it features a continuous six-­story space
without a single intervening door and terminates in a roof garden; and the coarse
texture of the concrete shows an unmistakable Corbusian sensibility. The small
house is an encapsulation of thirty years of work by Le Corbusier. It is significant
not simply for its physical qualities. As Charles Jencks has pointed out, one senses
in Le Corbusier, as in the towering Renaissance genius Leonardo da Vinci, the ter-
rible isolation of a human being who has no recourse to religion. Egoism enables
the great artist to bear this deep isolation; he is subject to both self-­flagellation and
self-­aggrandizement. Apollo and Medusa both come to be a part of his character,
and his heroism is ultimately tinged with pathos.1 The Tower House, which stands
on twenty square meters of land, is the most direct expression of Azuma’s view of
the city, which considers that places to live in must be wrested from the megacity
called Tokyo. I also see in this view something of the ­pathos-­tinged heroism of Le
Corbusier. It is perhaps not a coincidence that Azuma, as a young man, worked in
the atelier of Junzo Sakakura.
The world’s view of Le Corbusier began to change in the years after his
death in 1965. The respect, love, jealousy, resistance, prejudice, and myth that sur-
rounded him as hero and master gradually subsided, and increasingly attempts were
made to reconsider the modernism he represented through an objective analysis
and interpretation of his works. In Japan, many young architects and researchers

4.3 Tower House, Tokyo, 1967,

by Takamitsu Azuma.

188
undertook studies of his works, and the findings of such studies were reflected in
their own. Around this time, diverse treatises concerning Le Corbusier were also
being published in the United States, primarily through the Institute of Archi-
tecture and Urban Studies headed by Peter Eisenman. It should not be forgotten,
however, that a number of pioneers—such as Colin Rowe, the Cornell Univer-
sity architectural historian who wrote “The Mathematics of the Ideal Villa,” and
the architect Robert Venturi, who developed a formal analysis of the Villa Savoye
in his Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture—had laid the groundwork for
widespread critical reconsideration.2
Before discussing Japanese activities concerning Le Corbusier in what I call
the third period, I would like to touch on the work of another architect, Kazuo
Shinohara. We generally regard Shinohara as a modernist. He has expressed ad-
miration for the early modernism of the 1920s, but his faith in abstract figures was
not thought to be related directly to the spirit of Le Corbusier. In his text on the
House on a Crooked Road in Uehara, however, Shinohara took note of Deleuze’s
idea of a literary machine—that is, a machine producing meaning—and, join-
ing that to the concept of the machine at the start of the twentieth century, he
declared the existence of houses that are machines for producing meaning. Le
Corbusier had once stated that houses are “machines for living,” but Shinohara
redefined houses as “machines that produce diverse meanings surrounding the act
of dwelling.” How, then, are such meanings produced? According to Shinohara,
the direct attachment of heterogeneous objects is similar in effect to a story with-
out a plot, and when people freely traverse a spatial device created from such a
union, meanings that the architect had not anticipated appear. The Tokyo Institute
of Technology’s Centennial Hall epitomizes that idea; when one looks at this

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building, the chapel at Ronchamp somehow comes to mind. Earlier I described
artistic influence as a relationship akin to the shadow cast by a cloud upon an un-
suspecting person below. As an architect, I am more interested in such ambiguous
relationships than in the perfectly explained theories of Le Corbusier.
In the 1970s, members of Japan’s younger generation showed new interest in
Le Corbusier, focused on the abundance of rhetorical meanings in his spatial and
formal vocabulary. As Yuzuru Tominaga points out, each architect played his own
game, using the vocabulary provided by Le Corbusier: pilotis, inclined floors,
concavity and convexity, centrifugality and centripetality, reality and fiction, trans-
parency and translucency. Tominaga, who has himself published an excellent book
on Le Corbusier’s architecture, offers an interesting case study via his own work,
the House in Ueda. There, he first tries to establish the autonomy of architecture,
independent of function or building type. As Le Corbusier had advocated in his
proposed basic principles of modern architecture, Tominaga first creates a neutral
frame and a pure rectangular box-­shaped outer shell, then separates the frame from
the outer membrane. He permits aspects of the program that are reflected on the
membrane to deviate from the preestablished frame and surface. His attitude is
quite different from that of architects of the previous generation, who regarded
modernism as engaged in a struggle with old traditions. He tolerates urban real-
ity as a given—a second form of nature. Toyo Ito, who belongs to the same
generation, sees today’s urban reality as a positive thing and calls it the “electronic
city.” The stance of this generation of architects toward Le Corbusier makes it
clear that they regard him not as an admirable hero or master of the past but as
someone worth studying in order to solve real problems they confront today. To
put it another way: they want to know what contemporary significance they can

4.4 Keio University Graduate Research

Center, ­Shonan-­Fujisawa campus, 1994.

190
elicit from a formal analysis of Le Corbusier’s early works (especially the generic
Domino House), and to apply that to the reality they themselves face.
Ken’ichi Echigoshima is another ­architect-­critic who has actively studied Le
Corbusier. He has selected from among the many works that have been built in
Japan in recent years a number of buildings that he sees as analyzable by means
of Le Corbusier’s architectural theory. One of them happens to be the Graduate
School on the Fujisawa campus of Keio University that I designed several years
ago. That building is egg-­shaped in plan and shielded by louvers of perforated
aluminum on the second and third floors. Echigoshima calls it “an original work,
much as if the early Le Corbusier had looked ahead to the later Carpenter Cen-
ter.”3 I can honestly say that I was not at all consciously thinking of Le Corbusier
when I designed the school, but now that it has been pointed out to me, his
architecture must have been on my mind on a subconscious level, like the shadow
of a cloud.
Why has Le Corbusier influenced us on so many levels in this way? I would
like to close this essay with a brief consideration of this question, from the point
of view of both the man who has exerted the influence and those who have
been under that influence. First, no architect did as much as Le Corbusier to cre-
ate the new spatial rhetoric that the times demanded and to reveal a new, fertile
direction for architecture. That is, Le Corbusier provided a menu so variegated
that anyone who is interested can develop his or her own game from it. Why
did Le Corbusier exert a much greater and more enduring influence than other
pioneering architects? One answer is that the twentieth century happened to be
an era for developing new forms of space. Cities and architecture are nothing but
forms that endow space with order. Modern architectural movements, beginning

4.5 Charles-­Édouard Jeanneret, “Abbé Grégoire”—

Étude pour la nature morte du Pavillon de l’Esprit
Nouveau, 1925. Crayon on paper, 94 3 112 cm.
Dessin FLC 2364, Fondation Le Corbusier.
© 2008 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/
ADAGP, Paris.

O N A RCHITECTS A ND A RCHITECTURE / T H E L E C O R B U S I E R S Y N D R O M E 191

with De Stijl, destroyed the old concepts of rooms in architecture and of topos
in cities, then constructed them anew. Naturally, the twentieth century’s new
structural systems, new construction methods, and new materials made possible
large ­column-­free or complex spaces; but more importantly, intangibles such as
human perceptions, ambitions, and emotions that have existed continuously since
ancient times, lying concealed in architectural space, were unleashed and given
renewed expression by means of diverse architectural forms. Naturally, the artistic
movements at the beginning of the century contributed to this achievement, but
Le Corbusier more than anyone else taught us the existence of rich, polysemous,
and attractive spaces, and the secret of creating such spaces.
Echigoshima describes Le Corbusier’s objective in the early period as the
creation of “a layered, transparent volume.”4 In his later years, Le Corbusier was
interested in exploring a space that he himself described as difficult to express:
l’espace indicible (ineffable space). If, by that, he meant an archetypal space that
has existed since ancient times, the course of his lifelong adventure can be said
to have had historic scope. That is what made his work so rich. Why, then, did
the Japanese architectural world continue to respond to this architect to an almost
excessive degree? I have explained what I believe is the answer, and will not repeat
myself here except to state that a combination of various historical and accidental
factors made Japan eminently receptive. In assimilating a new culture from over-
seas, the Japanese have always transformed it into something distinctively their
own, as witnessed in the ­pseudo-­Western style of the Meiji period. The same
attitude was taken, at times on a subconscious level, with respect to modernism,
particularly that of Le Corbusier. The architects who have been mentioned here
encountered Le Corbusier at different times and with different sensibilities, and
each diverged from the path Le Corbusier himself had taken for a different reason.
That panorama, it seems to me, is indicative of the process of development of
modern architecture in Japan since the 1920s.

192
Mak i n g A r c h i t e c ture in J a pa n

The Tokyo of my childhood in the 1930s was still a city of abundant greenery and
detached, mostly wooden, houses. At times, new construction would begin in the
neighborhood. In those days, workmen did not mind the intrusion of curious
children. We watched as carpenters sawed and planed wood. Using hammer and
chisel, they shaped mortises. The sounds of men at work echoed pleasantly in the
otherwise quiet residential district. The air was filled with the fragrance of fresh
wood shavings. The carpenters wielded their tools with steady hands, and from
time to time examined their own handiwork intently. I remember these things
quite vividly even now.
My first encounter with craftsmen thus took place at a time when I had
as yet no idea that I would become an architect. More than seventy years have
passed since then. I still live in the same district, but the houses today are mostly
prefabricated or built of reinforced concrete. Few are built by carpenters. These
days the construction company seals off a site with a temporary enclosure once
work is to begin, and the occasional noise of construction provides those outside
with little hint of what is transpiring within. Eventually, the enclosure is removed,
and the roughly completed building is unveiled. In the past, we were able to
observe not only the work of carpenters but performances put on by craftsmen
such as glassworkers and textile dyers. Today we have few such opportunities.
Nevertheless, human beings must still confront materials or other human beings
at certain points in the production process, even though wood and shoji have been
replaced by metal and glass, and individual activity has given way to group activ-
ity. Those confrontations are where architectural culture, in the sense that Dana
Buntrock describes in her book Japanese Architecture as a Collaborative Process—that
is, as an expression of building construction—is made manifest.1 That culture
lives on. If, for example, the installation of a complex element on a building site
proves difficult, people of different trades will meet to discuss the problem with
the architect. The tradesmen on such occasions have the same intent faces as the
carpenters of my childhood. If a small metal piece needs to be affixed just so to
the structure, the work is done with hands as steady as those of the craftsmen I
watched long ago.
Today, less and less use is made of individual craftsmanship in the building
production process. In what ways, then, does the spirit of craftsmanship live on
in contemporary construction? I believe it lives on in the pride people take in the
work they do and the things they create, no matter how small. Today, more than a
decade after the bursting of Japan’s economic “bubble,” unit construction cost has
fallen from two-­thirds to one-­half of what it was at its peak, as a result of fierce
price competition among construction companies. Yet the quality of building has
not fallen to the same extent. Indeed, there is little perceptible change in quality.
Construction companies have managed to do this in part by trimming profits,
which were indeed extremely high in the bubble era, but they would seem to
have only so much leeway. Western societies that have markedly more transparent
price structures find it difficult to understand this phenomenon. Quality control is
being maintained in Japan in many cases through the sacrifices of subcontractors
and sub-­subcontractors. The situation may be bleak, but people are refusing to use
that as an excuse for lower quality. It is inspiring to me to see these people con-
tinue to work with such dedication. People in Japan still take pride in their work,
whatever the pay. That is, they feel a need not only to achieve explicitly stated
objectives but to meet unspoken expectations. After receiving my undergraduate
degree in 1952, I was briefly a member of Kenzo Tange’s research group at Tokyo
University. Tange, then a professor, never gave explicit orders. We did our best,
acting as often as not on what we understood to be his unspoken messages to us.
This mentality has been characteristic not only of the ­master-­disciple rela-
tionship but of relationships in the fields of construction and design in keiretsu2
organizations. Takenaka Corporation, one of the biggest construction companies
in Japan, has a proud tradition of high quality. Until recently, Takenaka had a
special system of inspection for buildings of particular importance. The inspec-
tion, which took place just before the completion of construction, was carried
out by a number of people nearing retirement with long experience at Takenaka
in managing site offices. If the quality of the inspected building was not up to
their expectations, the inspectors themselves then undertook improvements on

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 their own initiative. For the Takenaka personnel working at the site, the inspec-
tion was a major event which could impact on their future careers. This was a
system based on pride that could have been possible only in institutions practicing
lifetime employment.
I believe the culture of building construction has always had two aspects—
aesthetics and engineering. Devising appropriate ways to express the beauty and
richness of materials has been a major aesthetic concern in Japanese architecture
throughout history. It is a major concern in the work of Yoshio Taniguchi, for
example. The beauty that is sought is more a matter of sensibility than of intel-
lectually understood concepts such as symmetry and the golden section. Many
contemporary Japanese architects are extraordinarily insistent that builders achieve
certain surface effects in concrete. A sensibility honed by a long history of love for
and preoccupation with the texture of wood probably accounts for that insistence.
Demand that building elements be thinner and more transparent is yet another
way in which a special sensitivity to materials is expressed. It is also an impetus
to devise the means to achieve that condition. Japanese architecture has always
been characterized by the confluence and simultaneous expression of beauty and
technology.
The modernization of Japan that began around 1850 was in fact a process of
Westernization. However, Japan was never subjugated by a colonial power. Japan
thus differed from other Asian countries in that it could be highly selective in its
process of Westernization. It looked to France for art and cuisine, Germany for
medicine and technology, and England for shipbuilding and shipping. In fields
such as law and literature, where choosing from alternative models was difficult,
Japan adopted separate, parallel fields of specialization—for example, English lit-
erature and French literature or English law and German law.
Architectural education in Japan was first established in an institution that
later became Tokyo University. The Department of Architecture then closely re-
sembled that of a German technical university and belonged to the Faculty of
Engineering. Josiah Conder, the first professor on the faculty, was English. It
is interesting to note that Kingo Tatsuno, one of the first four students Conder
taught and the first student sent overseas for further education, went on Conder’s
recommendation not only to an architectural firm but also to Thomas Cubitt, a
leading builder in England at the time.
Even today, only a minority of those who graduate from ­engineering-
­oriented departments of architecture go to work for so‑called atelier architects

196
(architects whose offices more closely resemble artists’ ateliers than the offices of
conventional professionals). In the early 1950s, when I received my undergraduate
degree, the overwhelming majority of graduates found employment with large
construction companies. The rest became administrative officials in government,
or remained in graduate school to do research. After several years, practically all
graduates, now as in the past, take an examination in order to earn qualification as
licensed architects. Those who pass are eligible to become members of the prefec-
tural Architects and Building Engineers Association. These associations collectively
represent the largest professional organization in the field. The Japan Institute of
Architects, made up of individuals belonging to architectural design offices, has
4,800 members, but the Architects and Building Engineers Associations have a
total membership nearly twice as large. On the other hand, the Architectural Insti-
tute of Japan, which was established to promote research studies and the exchange
of information in various fields of architecture, including engineering and history,
has 37,000 members, not all of whom are licensed architects. AIJ members, who
include architects, scholars, engineers, and persons in different niches in various
corporations, actively communicate with one another through sectional meetings
and at the annual general meeting. The AIJ Prizes, which are awarded each year at
the general meeting, are considered the most prestigious of the many architectural
prizes in Japan. As these two institutional examples make clear, ­cross-­fertilization
between different fields has played a large part in promoting both the pursuit of
technology and the pursuit of beauty in the architecture of modern Japan.
The artistic autonomy of architecture became a much-­debated subject upon
the arrival of postmodernism in the Japanese architectural world around 1970. Yet
even Arata Isozaki, the leading advocate of the idea of the autonomy of architec-
ture, has pursued technological themes in many works during his career.
Japan has a relatively weak tradition of locally based professional practice,
no doubt accounted for by the fact that two-­thirds of all architectural offices are
concentrated in Tokyo. Architects of different generations and backgrounds are
engaged instead in attempts to create thematic works of architecture. Participating
in various competitions and proposals, and using the few opportunities for actual
work available to them to develop fresh ideas, young architects in particular must
try to draw the interest of the media. This is true not only in Japan but in most
large European cities. The pursuit of experimental ideas has been the architect’s
raison d’être. That experimental approach has had an effect on the building in-
dustry. For example, manufacturers of glass have expanded their line to include

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doors and window frames, roofs, and even the main supporting structure. They
have begun to take part in all stages of a project, from initial design to construc-
tion. Such developments are leading to the emergence of new trades that cross
the boundaries of established trades. People in these new trades are as yet few in
number, but architects on the cutting edge are finding that collaborating with
them can yield innovative designs.
Various systems of cooperation have thus been available to architects, engi-
neers, fabricators, and construction companies in Japan in the last several decades.
Here I would like to describe in greater detail different ways in which architects
and construction companies have collaborated, using as examples three masters
of ­twentieth-­century Japanese architecture: Togo Murano (1891–­1984), Kunio
Maekawa (1905–­1986), and Kenzo Tange (1913–­2005).
Murano, who was active to the end of his life, visited a construction site the
day before he died at the age of ­ninety-­three. After graduating from university,
Murano apprenticed with an Osaka office and subsequently opened his own of-
fice in the same city. His work, which was mostly for the private sector, was not
orthodox modernist in style, having instead an expressionist aspect. The architect,
who was also accomplished in the sukiya style, remained creative even in old age.
He designed not only architecture but furniture, lighting fixtures, and ornament.
Especially remarkable is the fact that Murano completed half of his life’s work
after the age of seventy. Close ties tend to develop between architect, builder,
and client in the Osaka area. The local culture has traditionally been conducive
to their working together on a building project. Murano had at his disposal a full
complement of collaborators for both design and construction work. The large
construction company that was involved in many of Murano’s works set aside
for him a team of seasoned designers and a site manager. His professional office,
Murano and Mori Associated Architects, did not produce many design drawings
prior to construction. The site manager familiar with Murano’s work and a vet-
eran estimator would calculate what the total cost of the building would be on
the basis of past experience. Once construction work began, an architect from
Murano’s office and Murano’s team of designers from the construction company
would collaborate in producing detailed drawings. Numerous full-­scale construc-
tion drawings and mock‑ups of building elements would be prepared. Murano
continued to make changes until he was satisfied, and was not overly concerned
about the various increases in cost the changes entailed. The construction company,

198
having already factored Murano’s way of working into their calculations, voiced
few objections. For the company, the important thing was to carry out the work
in an atmosphere of cooperation. In a small country such as Japan, an architect
and a construction company find themselves working together on many different
projects. For a construction company, establishing trust is often a greater prior-
ity than making a little immediate profit. Murano continued into his nineties to
channel much of his creative energy as an architect into on-­site design. Naturally,
on a large project, some parts of the design task interested him more than others.
Murano took a rationalist approach and left the design of those parts with which
he was less concerned to the construction company. He was an architect who
adopted in the latter half of the twentieth century the role of a medieval Baumeis-
ter. Yet his favorite reading matter on the commuter train he took to his office in
Osaka is said to have been Das Kapital.
Kenzo Tange was Murano’s junior by more than twenty years, but their careers
overlapped from the 1950s to the late 1970s. Tange, a figure in the mainstream of
the Japanese architectural world, was on the faculty of Tokyo University when
he designed his best-­known works, but he also had a design office called Urtec
outside the university. During those years, Tange designed each work around a
different theme—for example, the use of a new structural system to create a large
space—as did his contemporaries Eero Saarinen and Paul Rudolph in the United
States. Many of Tange’s works demanded such a high standard of construction
and involved the application of such new structural systems that new construction
methods had to be developed for them. Unlike works by Murano, Tange’s works
required the participation of construction companies to solve technological prob-
lems. To improve coordination on the site, a construction company would typi-
cally send several talented members of its design department to Urtec at an early
stage in the design process to form a collaborative team with Tange’s architects.
That team would eventually move to the site office once construction began. The
architect’s word was law in Tange’s case, as it was in the case of Murano. There
were no qualms about making many changes during construction work.
Kunio Maekawa graduated from Tokyo University ten years before Tange, in
1928, which happens to have been the year of my birth. Maekawa departed for
Europe on the night of the day he graduated. Once in the Soviet Union, he took
the Siberian Railway. Eventually he made his way to the atelier of Le Corbusier,
where he stayed for approximately two years. In later years, Maekawa worked

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earnestly to improve the social standing of architects and to establish standards of
professionalism. He served as the first president of the Japan Institute of Architects.
Maekawa probably had the deepest understanding of European history and cul-
ture, including music and literature, of any Japanese architect of his generation.
Tange and Murano saw aesthetic performance as their ultimate objective in archi-
tecture. Although he was naturally interested in aesthetic performance, Maekawa
was equally concerned with building performance. Ideally, of course, architectural
design is a synthesis of both, but that is difficult to achieve because aesthetic
performance and building performance are by no means universally compatible.
Building performance is a matter of the functionality and, above all, the durability
of a building. Maekawa was an architect who dealt seriously with not only aes-
thetic problems but also pragmatic problems that contemporary architecture con-
fronts, such as weathering and deterioration. In the case of any important building
he designed, Maekawa is said to have assembled every year on the anniversary of
the building’s completion the builder, the engineers, and the architect from his
office who had been in charge of the project. Together they would inspect the
building and afterward discuss technical problems that they had discovered.
In the 1950s and early 1960s, Maekawa tended to use exposed concrete as
a building finish, as did his teacher Le Corbusier. However, he soon began to
recognize that air pollution caused by increased industrialization and urbanization
was damaging the surface of exposed concrete. The preset brick tiles that he later
developed in collaboration with a manufacturer were among the most durable
exterior finish materials developed in postwar Japan. Maekawa stopped using ex-
posed concrete as an all-­purpose material.
Maekawa wrote:

The great French author Zola once said that the fictional construct called the
novel would not hold up even for a moment without “truth in the details.”
Ruskin pointed out that the white cloud in the sky that reminds us of a lamb
is in fact nothing more than a cluster of water drops floating in the air. Truth
in architecture seems to me to be something like the drops of water that
create the illusion of a white lamb . . . . Architecture too is a grand work of
fiction based on “truth in the details.”3

I think of Maekawa as an architect who continued to bear the cross of modernism

throughout his life.

200
 My generation was influenced by these outstanding architects. We listened
to them speaking about their design methods and philosophies, and we saw what
they created. Today, each architect continues to search for an ideal way of co-
ordinating design and construction. What, then, are the problems that Japanese
architects confront today, and what are the prospects for the resolution of those
problems?
First, the Japanese architectural world has been weakened by the recession that
has gripped the country since the bursting of the bubble. This is especially true of
all fields of the building industry. Even the large construction companies are no
longer in a position to be as generous as they once were. The period of harmony
and goodwill between architects and builders that our predecessors enjoyed is
ending under the relentless pressure of rationalization. In particular, the fierce
competition in ­private-­sector construction that is driving down prices has all the
marks of a war of attrition between construction companies. The restructuring
these companies are carrying out in the name of rationalization is mostly in de-
partments that are not directly involved in construction work. Design and research
departments are beginning to feel the effects of restructuring in diminished size
and capability. This will eventually leave even fewer companies in possession of
the skills necessary to take on technologically demanding projects. The situation
can only become more oligopolistic.
The unit cost of building in projects in the public sector, as opposed to the
private sector, has been maintained at a certain level. In the prevailing political
climate in Japan, construction projects, particularly local construction projects,
are apt to be parceled out to a number of small and ­medium-­size builders. A
development with quite serious repercussions for the architectural profession is a
new policy adopted by the national government to curtail the traditional power
of the architect to supervise construction. The government is increasingly award-
ing seventy percent of the supervision fee to offices specializing in construction
supervision (although in reality, most of the work these offices do is paperwork
required by public agencies). This development is likely to upset the present sys-
tem which enables the architect to collaborate with the builder, fabricators, and
manufacturers in conceiving, testing, and ultimately implementing design ideas
during the construction process.
Has the collaboration between architects and the construction industry in
Japan since World War II yielded anything that is exportable to other regions in
this era of economic internationalization? The answer is no. Japan may export

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automobiles and home appliances, but it has nothing exportable in the way of
buildings or even peripheral products. For excellent furniture and hardware, for
example, we quite often turn to Scandinavian and German products. They tend to
be far superior in beauty, durability, and price, even when transport costs and pat-
ent fees are included. Although I will not go into the details here, many compa-
nies in those countries adopt a long-­term strategy and view that emphasize steady
improvements in products rather than constant model changes. This suggests that
we Japanese need to reexamine our own cultural attitude toward manufacturing,
especially the manufacturing of durable consumer goods.
I have had the opportunity to visit two recently completed works: the Media-
theque in Sendai by Toyo Ito and the Art Hall in Kirishima Kogen, Kagoshima
Prefecture, by Kunihiko Hayakawa. Both embody the concept that Dana Bun-
trock calls “leading architects as lead users.”4 In particular, the Mediatheque, in
achieving a new integration of architecture, structure, and environmental systems,
is the most innovative high-­tech building since the Hong Kong and Shanghai
Bank by Norman Foster. Hayakawa’s Art Hall, on the other hand, is a work in
which ­already-­developed elements have been carefully and splendidly assembled.
The architect’s idea for the cylindrical air-­conditioning duct of transparent acrylic
that cuts through the exhibition space, for example, was realized only through
the joint efforts of people of different trades, engineers, manufacturers, and the
builder. The object is beautiful not simply because it appeals to the eye but be-
cause it represents the product of human collaboration.
Both works are public buildings, and their designs are based on winning
entries in open competitions. The chairman of the jury for the Mediatheque
competition was Arata Isozaki; I served in the same capacity for the Art Hall
competition. The public agency administering the facility to be designed is often
the biggest obstacle to the realization of innovative architectural ideas, but that was
not the case in these two works. Overcoming differences and arriving at splendid
solutions, the architects and the clients have done an admirable job.
I am frankly not optimistic about the future of the Japanese architectural
world. Works such as these, however, though few in number, succeed in express-
ing the spirit of the age and will serve to transmit to future generations our
cultural memory. That, I believe, is the ultimate role of architecture. We architects
must never allow the flame of architecture to be extinguished.

202
To g o M u r a n o

Togo Murano, architect, born 1891, died 1984.

That single line is to me deeply affecting in its starkness. Until he died at the
venerable age of ­ninety-­three, Murano remained an active architect whose every
work was noted with interest. The entire process of modernization of Japanese
architecture—and, indeed, a considerable part of the process of modernization
of Japanese society—took place within his lifetime. As successive waves of mod-
ernization swept over Japan, Murano showed a rare tenacity as he created one
impressive work after another.
The first great wave of modernization in Japan occurred during the Meiji
Restoration, ­twenty-­three years before Murano’s birth. For many architects and
artists, the new ideas and movements to which they are exposed in their formative
years set the course for their subsequent creative activities. For Murano, the years
between 1910 and 1930, when he was young and most impressionable, were his
formative period. Japan had already been undergoing modernization for more
than half a century. Society was maturing, and architects in Japan were no longer
concerned exclusively with modernization or Westernization. A greater diversity
of views, including the view that old traditions needed to be reconsidered, was
developing. At the same time, modernization had given birth to a new profession
in Japan, that of the architect. It had also awakened in every field a consciousness
of individual identity. The image of the architect as someone who expresses his
personal view of architecture through not only designs but words in debate with
others was beginning to emerge in Murano’s formative period.
In Japan, modernization was once tantamount to Westernization. Western
countries had approximately a hundred years’ start on Japan in terms of moderni­
zation, and at the beginning of the twentieth century, Western culture was still
an overwhelming reality for the Japanese. Moreover, Europe itself was undergo-
ing an upheaval at the time. Neoclassical and historicist architecture was being
overthrown. There was only a slight time lag between the appearance of Art
Nouveau, Secessionism, and modern design in Europe and their introduction in
Japan. Although the pace of change was rapid, Japanese society and architecture
by then had the capacity to absorb such change.
As Japan modernized, Western architecture was constructed as symbols of au-
thority in the guise of government offices and other public buildings, and as sym-
bols of capitalism in the guise of banks, corporate headquarters, and department
stores. To these were added the residences of the upper class. Western architecture
was thus introduced into Japan within a certain political framework. However,
the vigorous popular culture that had developed in the Edo period (1615–­1868)
survived, particularly in Tokyo and Osaka. Attempts were made by some master
carpenters to Japanize Western architecture as early as the beginning of the Meiji
period in the late 1860s. A well-­known example was the Tsukiji Hotel, an eclectic
blend of East and West designed by the carpenter Kisuke Shimizu and constructed
in the foreign settlement of the Tsukiji district in Tokyo. Such works may at first
glance seem to be instances of an imported, colonialist architecture, but they can
also be regarded as signs that the Japanese, in their characteristic way, were again
assimilating and Japanizing foreign cultural influences. Moreover, the traditional
architectural styles of Japan to be found in wooden buildings continued to survive,
even as the country underwent modernization in its urban areas.
By the 1920s, modernism had emerged in Europe. It championed mass cul-
ture and possessed an ideological aspect. Culture, which up to then had been
closely associated with authority, was liberated for the first time and allowed to
become a part of the broader, mass society. Gradually culture became a political
issue and politics a cultural issue. In the period of Taisho democracy (1912–­1926),
the burgeoning of democratic ideals and movements after World War I, Japan also
saw a widespread acceptance of the notion of the self. But the worldwide rise of
dictatorship and nationalism in the 1930s found in Japan a country with only a
short history of such a modern, liberal notion. Architectural expression became
skewed as the conflict with ideology began to manifest itself, resulting in an eclec-
tic tendency with strong nationalistic overtones. Some architects who espoused
liberalism adopted the Japanese sukiya style as a way of sublimating the conflict
between tradition and modernization.

ON AR C H I T E C T S AN D AR C H I T E C T UR E / T O G O M U R A N O 205
 Murano was one of those architects. Sukiya is imbued with a spirit that is
critical of the established forms of the mainstream and assertive of individuality. It
is therefore consistent with a belief in the self rather than the group. Moreover, it
has a long history and is by no means un-­Japanese. At the same time, it is charac-
terized by open-­endedness and freedom of architectural form, just as early mod-
ernist architecture was. Unlike vernacular architecture, it always seeks refinement
as well as simplicity. It is, in short, a world of artistry. Murano sought a new archi-
tectural direction in sukiya because it agreed with his own personal predilections,
not simply because of political circumstances in the 1930s. The Hanshin district
around Osaka and Kobe where he lived provided a superb cultural environment
that enabled him to deepen his understanding of sukiya. During World War II,
Murano, like other Japanese architects, had no work and was free to pursue his
interests. The understanding he gained during this period no doubt enabled him
to create his subsequent masterpieces in sukiya architecture. Inevitably, Murano
in his youth was concerned with issues such as freedom of architectural expres-
sion, the relationship between freedom and style, the link between freedom and
modern thought, the conflict with political authority (which at its highest level
is represented by the state), and the place of art in history. He often discussed
such matters in later lectures and in writings that refer to this formative period in
his life.
During Murano’s formative years, diverse waves swept over Japan, and archi-
tects became identified with one wave or another. Murano was one of the few
architects who refused to commit himself to any single style or movement. He
was above all himself, not a member of any architectural clique. That may explain
in part the expressive diversity and range of his architecture during the subsequent

4.6 Foyer of the Ube Public Hall,

1937, by Togo Murano.

206
fifty years of his career. Murano was undeniably influenced in this respect by the
Taisho democracy. Of all the architects of his generation, why did he alone take
such a position? It should be emphasized that he prided himself on being an artist.
During the Taisho period Murano also learned the down-­to‑earth, practical as-
pects of architecture as an apprentice (1918–­1929) in the office of Setsu Watanabe.
Watanabe was one of the few architects at that time with an active practice in the
Kansai region. Although he designed in an American Beaux-­Arts style, he was a
leading proponent of an economic and rational approach to building design, and
was particularly influential in introducing into Japan the service core, a feature
borrowed from American skyscrapers. Murano underwent a thorough training
in the nuts and bolts of an architectural practice. That laid the groundwork for
his subsequent efforts in the design of ­large-­scale commercial buildings, and he
showed far greater prowess in such work than others of his generation, despite his
strong artistic bent.
Murano started his own office in the early 1930s, and among his many initial
designs the works that stand out are the Morigo Building (1931) and the Ube
Public Hall (1937). To these one should add the World Peace Memorial Cathedral
(1953) in Hiroshima, although that structure dates from after World War II. After
leaving Watanabe’s office, Murano went on an extended journey to the West via
Siberia. During that journey, he was particularly impressed by the Stockholm
City Hall (1923) by Ragnar Östberg. He wrote in his journal of the sublime
character of architecture, using the city hall as an example. Certainly the Morigo
Building and the Ube Public Hall reveal a strong affinity to the late expression-
ist architecture found in northern Europe. The silhouette of the World Peace
Memorial Cathedral and the architectural images of H. P. Berlage and Auguste

4.7 World Peace Memorial

Cathedral, Hiroshima, 1953,
Murano.

ON AR C H I T E C T S AN D AR C H I T E C T UR E / T O G O M U R A N O 207
Perret have much in common. It may also be interesting to compare the cornice
of the Morigo Building with that of Louis Sullivan’s Guaranty Building (1896) in
Buffalo. These three works by Murano are by no means parochial; they can bear
comparison with buildings outside Japan. Indeed, although modern architecture
in Japan did not then have a long history, there were a number of buildings being
designed in the 1930s—such as the houses of Sutemi Horiguchi and Antonin
Raymond, and the Japan Pavilion by Junzo Sakakura for the 1937 Paris World
Exposition—that were as good as works being built in Europe. It is remarkable
that excellent works like these were being produced in what was still regarded as
a remote corner of the world.
Murano used to talk about honke-­dori—literally, the usurpation of the status
of the main line. He was pointing out the fact that an offshoot from the main line
of cultural development can often overtake its original model. A close examina-
tion of these three works shows that beneath the guise of modernism there is
already the clear imprint of a unique personality. Ube Public Hall was renovated
in the early 1990s, and I had the opportunity to look closely at the building. The
superb gift for ornament Murano was to display in his later years was already much
in evidence in details such as the attractive, ­mushroom-­shaped lobby columns clad
in massive, colorful marble, the checkered pattern of the floor, and the lighting
fixtures with that fascinating decorative quality so characteristic of Murano’s work.
On the exterior of the World Peace Memorial Cathedral, he used glossy slag brick
as infill between the concrete frame. In the early 1950s, when the cathedral was
completed, Hiroshima was still in the process of rebuilding itself, and there were
not the means to build lavishly. Murano composed a moving requiem through the
contrast of glossy brick and textured concrete. Some years ago, on a drizzly day, I
revisited the cathedral for the first time in many years. Even as many other postwar
buildings have gradually become dilapidated or been demolished, this cathedral
demonstrates magnificently by its exquisite ensemble of materials that a concrete
building can mature as well as any masonry or wooden structure. Murano was one
of the few architects who were able to endow modernist architecture, which was
beginning to show doctrinaire tendencies, with the warmth of the human touch.
He did this by using many materials and colors in a very free way.
After World War II, there was, in addition to the modernist and expressionist
tendencies notable in prewar works, a new free-­spirited quality. When one con-
siders that Murano was ­sixty-­two when he designed the World Peace Memorial

208
Cathedral, the volume of work he produced and the tenacity and vitality he
displayed as an architect for the next thirty years are nothing short of astonishing.
There are few parallels either in Japan or in the rest of the world. Yet at the same
time, the quality of work during the twenty years following the end of the war
was uneven due to the sheer volume of production, and it was during this period
that Murano came to be labeled by some as a commercial architect.
It is often asked why Murano received so little attention abroad. His style
during this period may provide an answer. For one thing, he had practically no
interest in the integration of technology, space, and expression—a theme that
engaged many architects throughout the world in the postwar era. In most cases
Murano adopted a structural system using an ­equal-­span frame; the building could
be a university facility, an office building, or a city hall. When the budget was
limited, as in a university building, the frame was directly expressed. With a de-
partment store or an office building, where the client’s purse strings were not as
tight, Murano was always interested in creating a visual pattern on the surface
covering the structure. In this way he took the undogmatic, practical approach
he had learned as an apprentice in the office of Setsu Watanabe, and never con-
fronted the theoretical issues that so concerned later modernists. Murano’s interest
was in further enriching the vision of architecture he already possessed. Indeed,
mainstream opinion in the Japanese architectural world at the time was that the
direction shown by his work was contrary to the progressive spirit of architecture.
Yet there were architects and critics, albeit in the minority, who argued against
the establishment of simplistic architectural criteria, and among them Murano’s
architecture continued to have an appeal. Even a small country like Japan has
had its share of dichotomies such as academicism versus populism, center versus
periphery (in Japan’s case, Tokyo versus Kansai), and orthodoxy versus heterodoxy.
In the 1960s, however, these dichotomies began to be reconsidered, and a new
schema emerged in Japan and the rest of the world.
Statements of belief by certain architects during this time made a particularly
strong impression on me. One was Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture by
Robert Venturi.1 I was also stirred by the espousal of an “inclusive” architecture
by architects such as Charles Moore and Robert Stern. They denied the existence
of absolute criteria and forms, cast doubt on the inevitability of progress, and saw
compositional principles as subject to external forces but ultimately based on archi-
tecture’s own rules. Eventually such beliefs led to assertions about the applicability

ON AR C H I T E C T S AN D AR C H I T E C T UR E / T O G O M U R A N O 209
of principles found in buildings of the past to today’s architecture and the useful-
ness of ornament.
It is not very difficult to discover expressions of this new spirit, albeit in frag-
mentary form, in Murano’s best works during this period. I say fragmentary, because
Murano himself was intuitive in his approach and by no means thoroughly logi-
cal in developing his architecture. In my opinion this period is best represented
by the Nihon Seimei Hibiya Building and Nissei Theater (1963). Confronted by
the Nihon Seimei Building, even his sympathizers, who were in the minority,
were shocked. Most people were too bewildered to make any sort of judgment.
This work must be seen in the context of a society undergoing major changes.
The National Olympic Stadiums, perhaps Kenzo Tange’s best-­known work, were
completed a year later. At the time, Japan had embarked on a period of intensive
economic growth, and a phrase much in vogue announced that the postwar era
was over. Economic development had reached such a stage that an enterprise like
Nihon Seimei ( Japan’s largest insurance company) could not only invest some of
its accumulated capital in its own headquarters but also act as a patron of the arts;
for inside, a theater, still a rare cultural facility in Japan, was provided. In many
respects, the program for the building was unprecedented. The work can be said
to have been one of the first multiuse buildings in the country. In addition, it was
one of the first projects to enjoy the luxury of a granite exterior finish. In that
sense it heralded the end of the postwar era.
This building was thus quite exceptional in its program, materials, and loca-
tion (adjacent to Wright’s old Imperial Hotel and facing Hibiya Park, an open
space in front of the Imperial Palace). Here, Murano chose a very eclectic form
of architectural expression: the cornice emphasized the horizontal; the exterior

4.8 Nihon Seimei Building/​Nissei

Theater, Tokyo, 1963, Murano.

210
finish was granite; an ornamental stone framework was arranged around each
window; and the wall surface, which stepped back, and the thick pilotis were
highly plastic. These features hinted at late expressionist influences and suggested
traces of historicist motifs. Nevertheless, they were characteristic of Murano’s
designs and ultimately unlike anything done before. Inside, the marble and metal
elements in the lobby had Art Nouveau overtones. The interior of the theater
had a cavernous, plastic quality. The wall surface featured a glass mosaic that Mu-
rano was to frequently use in subsequent works, and the ceiling was finished in
­mother-­of‑pearl embedded in plaster. Murano rejected the notion that the inte-
rior had to be integrated with the exterior; he emphasized the independence and
autonomy of the individual parts of the building and made allusions to historical
precedent from feudal to modern times. Furthermore, he adopted a form of ex-
pression on the outside that made no direct statement about function, yet demon-
strated a desire that the building be a part of the streetscape. The building can be
said to anticipate the much later advent of postmodernism. When Tange designed
the National Olympic Stadiums, he was ­fifty-­one and at his peak as an architect.
Murano, on the other hand, was already ­seventy-­three. These two works are inter-
esting for the dramatic way they reveal how modern architecture had undergone
a schism even in this corner of Asia. The irony of history is that the outside world
was to impinge for a moment on Murano’s private world of the self.
Murano’s creative energy showed no sign of flagging after that work. Around
1965, when I ended my extended stay in the United States and began practicing
in Japan, I gradually became more acquainted with Murano—at first through his
works and reports of his activities, and then through personal contact with him.
In his seventies, he became even more catholic in his design outlook. Such an

4.9 Interior of Nissei

Theater: the ceiling is inlaid
with thousands of iridescent
­mother-­of‑pearl disks.

ON AR C H I T E C T S AN D AR C H I T E C T UR E / T O G O M U R A N O 211
advanced stage in life is more apt to narrow an architect’s scope of vision; as a
consequence, many architects are liable to become wrapped up in thought and
remembrance. Murano certainly discovered his own inner vision early in life and
did not idly pursue trends in the outside world. However, he was always quite
eager to expand his personal world and continued in his own way to seek new
things. I first met him at some gathering when he was in his early eighties. He
said that he enjoyed the trip overseas he made each year with his wife to see new
buildings. No doubt he was always trying to recapture the excitement he felt
on his first, youthful journey to the West. At this stage, his boldness and almost
childlike spirit with regard to design were expressed best not in the massing of
­large-­scale buildings, but in guest houses, small museums, and teahouses. In them
were crystallized those qualities distinctive to Murano’s work. The things he had
encountered since his youth were filtered through his view of the world and
his view of art. They were internalized and reborn in developed and refined
form. The process of creation was for him not linear but cumulative; he did not
integrate so much as arrange. At times, a design would break down because the
arrangement was not logical, but he was familiar with the risks involved and was
not afraid to take them. His attitude was indeed that of a young man. He had the
same childlike approach to design that Picasso displayed in his late ceramics and
sketches. However, Murano also had that heightened sensitivity to both criticism
and praise characteristic of artists. As with Frank Lloyd Wright and Philip John-
son, the source of his creative energy was an insatiable hunger for life.
Murano found complete expression in a number of small projects designed in
his later years. Although they have very different themes, the Yatsugatake Art Mu-
seum and Shojuso Guest House, both completed in 1979, stand out among these
works. Murano preferred to design buildings in which the skin, rather than the
structural frame, figured prominently. I have already mentioned that he employed
glass mosaic and ­mother-­of‑pearl on an ­unheard-­of scale as interior finishes in
the Nissei Theater, but he was thoroughly familiar with the qualities of a wide
range of materials, including fabric and paper. In his buildings, these materials
frequently appeared in a new guise. The exhibit area inside the Yatsugatake Art
Museum features curtains of white lace that are in marked contrast to the simple
materials on the exterior: the precast concrete of the hemispherical domes and
cement blocks. Light entering the building is reflected on these curtains and cre-
ates a tactile world that is totally unexpected. The plan, suggestive of caves found

212
in Turkey, provides a variegated space. This is one of the rare works by Murano
in which form and space are integrated, even though the exterior finish and the
interior finish are in total opposition. At the age of ­eighty-­eight, Murano showed
us once more a world, possible only in architecture, in which the rational and the
irrational could coexist.
The Shojuso Guest House is a work that has a personal association for me.
After its completion, I had a chance to dine there with Murano and the archi-
tectural historian Takashi Hasegawa and to discuss impressions of the building.
That occasion was also the last time I had any direct contact with Togo Murano.
Shojuso was built as the personal guest house of Sasuke Idemitsu, who had made
a fortune in oil. It is said that Idemitsu, in commissioning Murano, told the ar-
chitect to spend as much time and money as was needed; in fact, the design and
construction took so long that the client died before the building was finished.
The guest house consists of both ­Western- and ­Japanese-­style reception areas and
private rooms. Murano had already developed his mature sukiya style at an early
stage in his career. Unlike modernist architecture, the spirit of sukiya is expressed
in a more condensed space. For that reason, there are few signs of dissonance
even though he designed in his characteristically free way. Several architects of
Murano’s generation worked in the sukiya style, but I feel most at rest in his sukiya
buildings. There is nothing forced or stiff about his work as there is in the works
of others. Sukiya is a world that involves not just vision but all the senses. Perhaps
Murano’s work is reassuring because he was more skilled at creating a fully tactile
space. It is interesting to note that in the ­Western-­style portion of Shojuso, the
deviation from the norm that is characteristic of sukiya creates some dissonances
in the design precisely because the subject is ­Western-­style space. However, the
dissonances are enjoyable because there is lightness. Was Murano aware that dis-
sonance, accompanied by heaviness, can become disagreeable?
Lightness is a quality that early modernism shares with sukiya. The camber
of the roof over the ­Western-­style reception room suggests the plenitude of the
space within. At the same time, the carefully detailed roof edge creates an impres-
sion of lightness like that of a silk cushion. Murano often designed furniture. The
rounded frame of the chair arranged in a corner of the room reserved for special
guests is characteristic of his work. Lightness here is not just a visual quality; it is
a matter of touch, color, and the feeling of space. It is the product of relation-
ships between various elements that have been established according to a clearly

ON AR C H I T E C T S AN D AR C H I T E C T UR E / T O G O M U R A N O 213
defined worldview. That there are outstanding works to be discovered among the
smaller buildings designed in his later years is probably because of the presence
of lightness generated by such relationships. However, his work also demonstrates
that this approach, used on too large a scale, can result in a design that is inert and
lacking in tension.
The first half of modern architectural history in Japan, from 1860 to 1920,
was primarily directed at assimilating Western eclecticism. However, a Japanization
also took place during that process of adoption. As the second half of modern
architectural history began in the 1920s and 1930s, modernist thinking reached
Japan. Terunobu Fujimori, in his Modern Architecture in Japan, writes that in ac-
quiring modernism architects responded in the same, characteristically Japanese
way that an earlier generation of architects had in adopting eclecticism.2 Though
few in number, there are examples of modern architecture produced in Japan,
particularly in the 1930s—among them the Ube Public Hall by Murano—that
are comparable to European works of the period. Bruno Taut spent approximately
three years in Japan during this period, and in his journal he observed that the
social status and awareness of architects were far lower in Japan than in Europe.
What is notable is that despite these obstacles, outstanding works were produced
in Japan at that time.
The efforts of architects in the 1930s laid the foundation for the gradual
postwar transformation of Japan from a recipient of modern architecture to a
producer. Murano is one of the few architects whose life and career spanned both
periods. By the 1930s he had established himself as an architect and possessed a
firm view of the world and of architecture that differed from those of others of
his generation. Murano believed in the existence of art that transcends ideologies
and styles, and touches the human spirit—and throughout his life he was not
afraid to practice what he believed in. In addition to an artist’s eye for beauty, he
also had a marvelous intuition about what ordinary people regarded as contem-
porary. At times these qualities made him unpopular in the architectural world.
This tendency to dismiss him was particularly strong in the 1950s and 1960s, when
architects were expected to address an international audience. But as architec-
ture gradually came to be recognized once more as a cultural phenomenon with
many different layers of significance, his works began to be understood anew and
reevaluated. Perhaps this was inevitable, for despite the criticism, Murano was
confident in his own architecture.

214
S ti l l n e ss a n d P l enit ude: The Archit ect ure of Yoshio Taniguchi

In 1974, Yoshio Taniguchi published his first project after opening his own office.
A small house in a Tokyo suburb, it was completed a year later. The House at Yuki-
gaya is a court house with a two-­story-­high wall that encloses a variety of spaces.
I remember it quite well, partly because I contributed a short piece to an archi-
tectural journal in which I described my impressions of the building. Entering the
vestibule by way of a courtyard set in a corner of a square box, one encountered
a series of spaces that gradually ascended in a spiral toward the living room in the
depths of the house on the second floor. The walls and floor of the courtyard were
completely covered with white tiles approximately fifteen centimeters square, and
this generated a floating quality. The eye was drawn from the courtyard to the
blue sky framed by the courtyard, and it was almost as if one were being lifted
heavenward. I recall this spatial experience as if it were yesterday. Although subse-
quent buildings have varied in scale and function, Taniguchi’s goal has consistently
been to provide visitors with a fresh, variegated experience by means of carefully
devised spatial stratagems within a framework created from simple elements.
Many years have passed since Taniguchi first received training as an archi-
tect. Over those decades, architecture throughout the world, including Japan, has
changed in diverse ways, and radical changes have also occurred in the environment
in which architecture is practiced. That Taniguchi has been able to pursue and fulfill
his own set objectives, and to elaborate his own chosen themes to the point where
no one today can dispute the excellence of his work, is a tremendous achievement
precisely because of the rapidly changing nature of the times. His achievement
testifies to his strength of spirit. On one recent occasion, he wrote about the moral-
ity of design. The phrase has a somewhat old-­fashioned ring, but at a time when
the production and consumption of many works of architecture displays a blithe
disregard for the moral implications of design, his words have weight.
Taniguchi has rarely discussed in print the philosophy and method behind
his design, preferring instead to offer terse, quite sachlich explanations concerning
just-­completed works. One exception was his essay “Concerning Design,” pub-
lished in Shinkenchiku upon the completion of the 1978 Shiseido Art Museum, in
which he discussed a series of past works:

When drawings of the main buildings I have designed in the last five years
are juxtaposed, the fact that they all involve the pursuit of certain configu-
rations is obvious to anyone. They are the result of combining simple but
contradictory figures, namely centripetal and centrifugal forms, and space
and mass.1

Some years later, he made the following statement in explaining the Shiseido Art
Museum:

The most basic issue architecture confronts is finding the best response to the
specific site conditions and pragmatic requirements that are presented. And
the most basic elements in designing a space are materials, light, color and
­proportion.2

Although in subsequent works the space created by the figures increases in com-
plexity, those two statements taken together summarize the basic stratagem of
Taniguchi’s design approach. I would like to examine in more detail the question
of how he came to develop such a stratagem, and to locate his design approach in
the broader context of architectural thought.
In the early 1980s, Richard Padovan contributed to a British magazine an in-
teresting essay entitled “The Pavilion and the Court.”3 Padovan discussed how the
architectural movement known as De Stijl, which was founded in 1917, influenced
not only Van Doesburg, one of its founders, but other architects such as Le Cor-
busier, Mies van der Rohe, and Rietveld, and how they subsequently interpreted
its theory—especially how they attempted in the design of houses to use a De
Stijl-­type approach to effect a dialectical development from the two basic residen-
tial forms that had evolved in the course of Europe’s long history, the pavilion and

ON ARCHITECT S AND ARCHITECTURE / Y O S H I O T A N I G U C H I 217

 the court house. He takes note of the fact that in the Barcelona Pavilion and the
Villa Savoye—which, coincidentally, were both built in 1929—the architects, fol-
lowing different design processes, developed in the case of Mies a centripetal space
in a centrifugal arrangement of walls, and in the case of Le Corbusier a centrifugal
spatial movement in a centripetal enclosure.4
In the De Stijl manifesto, Van Doesburg, of course, advocated the indepen-
dence of the basic architectural elements—walls, floors, and ceilings—and their
free movement and organization, including their mutual intervention. The at-
tempt to endow space with a centrifugal quality was an effort to do away with the
hitherto accepted notion of architecture as a closed box.
According to Padovan, the pavilion is generally situated in the countryside,
and integrated with its surrounding landscape by virtue of the centrifugal char-
acter of its space. The court house is typically situated in the city, and integrated
with the mesocosmos created by the city by virtue of its centripetal nature. As Tani-
guchi himself acknowledges in the passage quoted above, the use of centrifugal
and centripetal qualities, separately or in tandem, is basic to the spatial dynamic of
practically all his works, and the figures to which they give rise form the frame-
work of his architecture. The Shiseido Art Museum is the result of the skillful
integration in plan of the two concepts of the pavilion and the court.
It may be worthwhile, with the help of Padovan’s text, to continue a bit
further with a discussion of Mies, with whom Taniguchi appears to have much
affinity, and the path that led Mies to the Barcelona Pavilion. The proposal for
a Brick Country House, published by Mies in 1923, can be said to be the first
modernist work in Europe. The freely extended walls and slab endow space with
fluidity: yet at the same time, the neoplasticist tendency that Mies revealed also

4.10 House at Yukigaya,

Tokyo, 1974, by Yoshio
Taniguchi.

218
exerted a strong influence on the composition. Karl Friedrich Schinkel, who
had considerable influence on Mies, designed in the House in Charlottenhof a
complex composed of several pavilions arranged asymmetrically and freely linked
by terraces and pergolas. Padovan points out that its influence appeared before the
Brick Country House in the Kröller House and concludes that the same influ-
ence led, six years after the Brick Country House, to the Barcelona Pavilion. I am
probably not alone in sensing a strong affinity between the two houses by Mies
and Taniguchi’s Ken Domon Museum of Photography (1983) and his later Toyota
Municipal Museum of Art (1995). In particular, the Kröller House, with its pool
of water in front of the building and asymmetrical masses arranged between trees
and linked by pergolas, has the same organizational principle as that of the two
works by Taniguchi.
I have not alluded to these works in order to suggest that Taniguchi used them
as a model. The design process is inherently complex, and the architect himself
has difficulty explaining a great deal about it. There is nothing more annoying
for an architect than to have someone suddenly point out a similar work and to
declare that to have been his original inspiration. The wellspring of an architect’s
ideas lies in the depths of his consciousness, where the diverse experiences he
has accumulated, sometimes unconsciously, as well as factors of environment and
genes, are at work; personal history is the text in which these are woven together.
Architecture is not just something that the architect happens to hit upon on a
given occasion. It is the consequence of all these factors connecting and relating
to one another—at times naturally, at other times accidentally. This is true of
all architects and all works of architecture. Whether or not the work that is the
product of that process can stand up to careful analysis and appraisal is another

4.11 Ken Domon Museum,

Sakata, 1983, Taniguchi.

4.12 Toyota Municipal

Museum of Art, 1995,
Taniguchi.

ON ARCHITECT S AND ARCHITECTURE / Y O S H I O T A N I G U C H I 219

matter entirely. Here, I would like to examine what this similarity in the works of
Taniguchi and Mies signifies.
Taniguchi was one of the first architects of the postwar generation to re-
ceive his architectural education outside Japan. Naturally, being the son of a well-
­known architect, Yoshiro Taniguchi (1904–­1979), he was exposed from an early
age to architecture, both traditional and modern.
Yet he majored in mechanical engineering at Keio University, one of the
oldest academic institutions in Japan, and it was only in the three and a half years
he then spent in the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University that he
received a true architectural education. As he himself remarks, modernism was at a
dead end at the beginning of the 1960s. A feeling of being in a dead-­end situation
prevailed, not just in the United States but in Europe as well, and it was to lead, in
the years after Taniguchi’s graduation, to worldwide student unrest. He says that in
the oppressive atmosphere that is characteristic of periods of transition, he came
to believe that only through forging creative relationships to the city could archi-
tecture develop new possibilities, and that he developed a strong interest in urban
design. The early 1960s were a time when Josep Lluis Sert, having taken over from
Gropius at the beginning of the 1950s, was in the process of consolidating a new
regime in GSD at Harvard. At the time, Harvard and Penn were the universities
with the strongest urban design programs. Sert had the benefit of an international
network that had developed around CIAM in Europe. He himself had studied as
a youth in Le Corbusier’s atelier and, being a Catalan, possessed a Mediterranean
sensibility. It is a fact that such tendencies were frequently reflected in his educa-
tional policies. It would be a mistake, however, to think that everyone who studied
at GSD at the time shared his thinking. No single architect can change overnight
the architectural department of a great educational institution like Harvard, what-
ever may be the case at other universities. Around that time, many of the great
postwar scholars of Europe were gathered in the humanities departments, which
formed the core of Harvard; and in the Department of Art History and the Fogg
Museum, which were closely tied to architecture, the focus, in keeping with tradi-
tion, was clearly on European art. With respect to architectural history, both Sig-
fried Giedion and Eduard Sekler belonged to the tradition of the German school
of history. This diversity of thought and opinion made Harvard what it was.
I do not know what sort of influence this essentially European education
exerted on Taniguchi during the nearly four years he spent at Harvard. The way in

220
which his works have subsequently evolved and the rigorous nature of his details,
however, make it clear that his thinking and the products of his practice are by
no means Mediterranean but, rather, Germanic in character. It would be only
natural if his knowledge and interest in the engineering aspect of architecture
played a part in this formal rigor and clarity, and it may also be imagined that
the interest shown by his father in his youth in early European modernism might
have planted a seed that has borne fruit in the son. His works reveal the use of
primary elements such as wall, slab, and podium, which I will discuss below, to
develop diverse masses and voids. The deployment of these spaces is characterized
by rhythm, flow, repose, and the upward and downward movement and bending
of the line of vision. Behind the skillful dramatization of experience that is appeal-
ing to the senses—for example, the way in which the next space is anticipated and
signaled—are quite traditional Japanese protocols. This Japanese aspect, however,
is apparent only in the way a response is made to the context, in the sense of the
given or reconstructed topography and program. It is also the product of many
years of experience.
In Taniguchi’s case the wall is quite abstract at an early, conceptual stage of de-
sign. A wall for Tadao Ando, by contrast, is a priori a concrete wall, and the design
process must accommodate the characteristics that are unique to a concrete wall.
Taniguchi, on the other hand, chooses what the wall ought to be like from the
given conditions of the context. The qualities of the surface are determined from
the required function, of course, but also from the available technology. Hence
the porcelain tile of the House at Yukigaya and the Akita Municipal Library, the
luster tile of the Shiseido Art Museum, the ribbed aluminum of the Higashiyama
Kaii Gallery in Nagano, the glass of the Tokyo Kasai Rinkai Visitors’ Center, and
the combination of translucent glass and slate of the Toyota Municipal Museum
of Art. Only a highly abstract concept of the wall makes possible the variegated
nature of their designs. Just as Mies exchanged the brick walls of the Brick Coun-
try House for marble in the Barcelona Pavilion, Taniguchi changes materials and
structural systems. In the Visitors’ Center at Kasai Rinkai Park, the question was
how to express a homogeneity of surface. From that question came the structural
system, which determined the proportion of the members and the method of
construction. I believe the question of whether or not the resulting arrangement
of the window framing is “Japanese” or reminiscent of his father’s work is not
very important. What is far more important is the fact that he gives priority to

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such a concept—that is, that he sets for himself a design problem, in this case the
creation between the framing and the glass of a balanced, homogeneous quality.
In situating a building on a given site, Taniguchi first determines to what
extent that site can be converted into the new place he seeks to form, then takes
steps accordingly. Next, through a dialogue between that newly born place and
architecture, and using centrifugal and centripetal qualities as a vector, he creates
individual spaces. As I have said, there is a constant shifting of the viewpoint in
space. By means of this endless shifting of the center, architecture is made the ag-
gregate of spatial—that is, visual—experiences. Such a method of design has long
characterized the generation of traditional Japanese spaces. Taniguchi’s attempt to
establish a new place might be called an attempt to establish za. Za is a traditional
Japanese word-­concept indicating a seat or place for a thing, a personage, or an
activity, and historically used in site planning; it was created to relate, in actual
fact or on a symbolic plane, diverse heterogeneous elements existing within and
without a certain domain. Various independent elements are enclosed, connected,
supported, or subordinated by za.5
What most distinguishes Taniguchi’s architecture is the concept of za and the
richness of the tour-­style spatial experience developed within that concept.
Today, Japanese cities, both central districts and the suburbs, seem terribly
impoverished by comparison to, say, European cities. Under these circumstances,
the bold establishment of za, when it is successful, can be an effective stratagem.
Za can also be said to be a means of actualizing the latent energy of a site that
is at first glance impoverished and unattractive. Taniguchi has demonstrated that
admirably in the Ken Domon Museum of Photography and the Toyota Municipal
Museum of Art.

4.13 Kasai Rinkai Park

Visitors’ Center, Tokyo, 1995,
Taniguchi.

222
 At Tokyo Sea Life Park, the za he created is a water basin, which borrows
the scenery of Tokyo Bay. There is both a centripetal force drawing the visitor
toward the hexagonal glass tower and a centrifugal force extending from the water
basin out toward the sea. From the brightly lit glass tower, the visitor descends
into a dark space and, after diverse experiences, is presented in the restaurant with
a place that is engaged in a dialogue with the shore. That is the story line that
unfolds in this aquarium.
The plinth (a word that is translated into Japanese as “raised za”) can be traced
back to the Barcelona Pavilion, where Mies employed it in order to synthesize the
design’s centrifugal and centripetal tendencies. In Barcelona, it was only by layer-
ing these elements—the plinth, the walls freely installed on top of the plinth, the
columns that are independent of the walls, and the roof—while maintaining their
separate identities, that Mies succeeded in creating this pavilion and giving expres-
sion to centrifugal and centripetal qualities. Here, the architecture transcends past
historical patterns and has been assembled through a highly intellectualized pro-
cess. Yet in other regional societies, similar architectural forms may already exist as
part of historical tradition.
Take, for example, the staggered floor plan that the Japanese liken to the for-
mation of a flock of wild geese. It is a feature of the Japanese shoin-­style residence
(of which the Katsura Detached Palace is a famous example) and is a means of
giving the route leading from the vestibule to the inner chamber a strong diagonal
axiality and depth.
In Europe, such a staggered floor plan is found for the first time in the villa
Schinkel designed for Prince Wilhelm, begun in 1835 in a suburb of Potsdam.
This may be the first modernist work of European architecture as far as the floor

4.14 Tokyo Sea Life Park,

1989, Taniguchi.

ON ARCHITECT S AND ARCHITECTURE / Y O S H I O T A N I G U C H I 223

plan is concerned. The plan represents a rejection of symmetry and hierarchy of
spatial units and an acceptance of the independence of elements. Equally impor-
tant, however, was the architect’s intent to provide better views and lighting for
more rooms. As Lewis Mumford pointed out in The Culture of Cities, the pursuit
of pleasure by the privileged classes gave birth to the planning approach on which
modernism is based.6
Here is a form that was employed in a world that valued sensibility, and in
that world, the meaning that the form once possessed eventually disappeared. In
a culture that, by contrast, sprang from reason and was hostile to sensibility, the
rationale for that form was continually questioned.
In examining these diverse historical phenomena, something fundamental about
Taniguchi’s architecture gradually emerges. It takes as its starting point the abstract,
figurative ideas embraced by Schinkel and Mies, but in the process of actualizing
them in spatial compositions, he demonstrates a traditional Japanese sensibility.
A strong interest in materials and materiality must also be taken into ac-
count in understanding Taniguchi’s architecture. Since beginning his practice in
the mid-­1970s, he has shown the same concern and curiosity toward tile, metals,
stone, and glass. He has revealed how materials can create a world that is at times
stoic and at other times hedonistic. By “hedonistic” I am not, of course, refer-
ring to that excessive, hodgepodge quality associated with postmodernism. To
understand Taniguch’s interest in materials, it may be helpful to return once more
to Mies’s Barcelona Pavilion.
I happened to visit the reconstructed Barcelona Pavilion late in the fall of 1994.
It was early afternoon on a clear day, and the strong sunlight endowed the elegant
structure with a particularly crisp, ­sharp-­edged quality. From the east, the pavilion

4.15 Karl Friedrich Schinkel’s design

for a villa for Crown Prince Wilhelm
in Potsdam, 1833.

224
was more extended longitudinally—perhaps I ought to say more imposing—than
I had imagined. What was most impressive, however, was the materiality of the
travertine that covered the plinth and the external walls. As the document con-
cerning the reconstruction explains in detail, the matter over which Mies took the
greatest pains in designing this building was the selection of the three varieties of
marble, including the travertine, and the technical problems of their construction.
It goes without saying that those who were in charge of the reconstruction were
fully aware of the care Mies had taken, and took ample time and care in searching
for and assembling marble that was close to the original. As a result, the structure,
though a reconstruction, provides the same rich visual and tactile experience as
the original pavilion. On closer examination, it becomes apparent that the impres-
sion of richness is not simply the effect of the color or texture of the travertine. For
example, travertine is lavishly used in Lincoln Center in New York, but the stone
there has none of the sensuous quality of the stone in the Barcelona Pavilion. In
Barcelona, the large units of marble, each measuring 2.2 meters wide and 1.1 me-
ters high, and the geometrical rigor with which the units were treated, revealed to
the world of the time an entirely new modernity. More than half a century later,
even in a reconstructed state, the pavilion still creates in us a powerful impression.
The report describes how, in the construction of the original pavilion, endless
adjustments were made, such as shifting the dimensions of the floor marble by a
few millimeters so as to match the joints created by the 2.2‑by-­1.1‑meter marble
units on the walls. Such accounts show that Mies considered the large travertine
panels to be the thing that was to breathe life into the pavilion.7
From time to time, Taniguchi and I discuss the design aspects of architec-
ture. I recall how on one occasion he declared that when a project had an ample

4.16 Barcelona Pavilion interior.

ON ARCHITECT S AND ARCHITECTURE / Y O S H I O T A N I G U C H I 225

budget, he was interested in using bigger units of materials. Like Mies, he is no
doubt aware that in a large, thoroughly minimalist building—for example, the
Toyota Museum—the richness of form is heavily dependent on the materiality of
the outer skin. Such an interest is apparent in his treatment of the Vermont slate
used throughout this museum and of translucent glass, which has been used be-
fore, in his museum for Marugame. This slate is employed in the United States and
Canada in small units as roofing material. To assemble units of the size, volume,
and uniform quality found in the Toyota Museum, Taniguchi began with extensive
research on currently available slate throughout the world, and it required much
labor and expense to select, gather, work, finish, and construct. Yet he showed a
craftsmanly passion for all such processes, and spared no effort.
A material acquires materiality only through the cumulative effect of labor,
passion, detail, and method of construction. The simpler the effect sought, the
more complex the process can become. If one examines the psychological factors
at work, one comes to realize that stoicism and hedonism are in fact opposite sides
of the same coin.
As I said above, Taniguchi’s interest in the Tokyo Kasai Rinkai Visitors’ Center
lay in the structural sash that forms the cage. Flat-­rolled steel is used. As Toshihiko
Kimura, the structural engineer for the project, explains, the excess welding mate-
rial that protruded where the flat bars are joined was removed with a grinder. A
staggering number of joints were each finished by hand. Such scrupulously per-
formed tasks in the end account for the power of Taniguchi’s architecture. There
is certainly little about his work that is formally spectacular in the ways that were
in fashion in the 1990s. Yet at the Toyota Museum, with its translucent glass, dark
green Vermont slate, and pale silver canopy of honeycombed aluminum, the com-
bination of different materials, colors, and textures creates an indelible impression
on all who experience it.
What, then, of the social value of Taniguchi’s architecture? In the essay “Con-
cerning Design” from which I quoted above, Taniguchi recalls the time he spent
in Kenzo Tange’s office Urtec after his experience at Harvard. There, he had op-
portunities not only to work on redevelopment projects for Skopje and San Fran-
cisco but also to come into contact with the old, traditional cities of Europe and
the history behind their cityscapes. He discusses the radical changes Japanese cities
were undergoing in the early 1970s, when he opened his own office, and how he
gradually came to the conclusion that the optimistic view he had developed at

226
the university—that is, the belief in the solidarity of architecture and the city—
was not applicable, at least to Japan, as long as the urban environment was being
constructed for the sake of consumption. According to him, he had no choice but
to create a microcosm or to express his own ideal urban image by his work amid
the confused environment. This helps to explain the process by which he arrived
at the abovementioned concept of the pavilion and the court, and the method
he adopted that makes use of the concept of za and tour-­style space. In his case,
skepticism about the city led to the creation of self-­sufficient worlds. How to
construct the boundary between the outside and his own world then becomes
an important issue. If one looks at his projects, the works that are situated in the
countryside or in an extensive natural environment are notable for the superb
ways in which this boundary is established. The problem occurs when the given
environment is in the middle of a city, or where there is insufficient space for
creating a boundary. To put it another way: a problem is apt to occur when the
boundary coincides with the surface of the building.
Let us look at his work in Marugame—a small city of 70,000 in Shikoku
that does not offer a substantive historical context. Here Taniguchi was com-
missioned to design an art museum housing a permanent exhibit of works by
the late Gen’ichiro Inokuma, a well-­known Japanese artist born in Marugame.
The museum site faces to the south an open space in front of a railway station.
Taniguchi first created a large overhang and composed an elevation featuring a
tile mural by the artist. Then, next to a low-­key entrance at ground level, he
introduced a public “mall” that gradually steps up along the length of the site’s
southern edge. The interior spaces of the art museum proper, and all the separate
spaces of the library, café, and auditorium, are skillfully brought together into a
visual and physical relationship by means of the mall. This is probably one of the
masterpieces of his œuvre. Yet at the same time, this large mass seems to maintain
an aloof silence even though it is situated in front of the railway station, arguably
the most important place in the small city of Marugame. This is particularly true
of the north and west sides of the building, where there are no entrances and the
building envelope is completely inanimate.
The building surface is again inanimate, albeit in a different way, in the Ju-
nior and Senior High School on the Keio ­Shonan-­Fujisawa Campus he and I
did together. I do not think that his stratagem—to create within the limited site
given to him on the campus a self-­sufficient domain based on an ­inward-­looking

ON ARCHITECT S AND ARCHITECTURE / Y O S H I O T A N I G U C H I 227

court—was wrong. However, I often have occasion to visit the campus, and
very little of what transpires inside—the activities of several hundred students—is
communicated by the outer surface of the buildings or the gate that is the sole
point of contact with the outside world. Harvard Yard, which he and I know
quite well, is a closed domain surrounded by a wall, yet through the several gates
in the wall, one can always get a sense of what is going on in the Yard. In the case
of Keio, perhaps one reason that so little is transmitted outside is that people can
come and go in those buildings through interior passages, without passing through
the court onto which the gate opens. Like the museum in Marugame, the high
school for Keio has superb interior spaces that have a warm, humane quality, and
one understands that Taniguchi limits the openings made in the exterior building
envelope in order to heighten the effects of views from the inside. Yet this, too,
seems a consequence of the distrust he has come to feel for the city.
In the Kasai Rinkai Visitors’ Center Taniguchi suggests, by means of a trans-
parent cage that offers the sharpest possible contrast to such a closed schema, a
relationship between the inside and the outside, and between the self and others.
In this building, one can see the movement of people through a curtain wall that is
as delicate as a reed blind. The sight of people gathering, dispersing, and generally
moving about is itself an expressive aspect of the architecture. If his intention is to
provide contrast to the aquarium several hundred meters away, where the sight of
fish moving about is the attraction, by here showcasing human movement, one
must say it is a very witty idea. In the evening, the movement of people behind the
transparent glass takes on the air of fantasy, like a scene out of a film by Fellini.
The themes I have discussed are tied to the issue of public character in con-
temporary architecture. In old historic cities, there were established norms, and all
the architect had to do was to abide by those norms. Such standards do not exist
in the contemporary city or countryside, and I believe the architect himself must
create and express them on his own initiative. That, too, is a theme that tests the
architect’s imagination.
Over the years, Taniguchi has designed important buildings such as art muse-
ums, libraries, and an aquarium, yet his output has been by no means large. With a
small office that has always had a staff of around ten, he has created his works with
a consistency of idea and approach, not only planning, designing, and supervising
the construction, but at times designing the landscaping and the graphics. As the
locations of the works suggest, many projects were by no means convenient for

228
an office based in Tokyo. Nevertheless, he has always believed in working on the
spot every step of the way. That is, he has committed himself to the completion
of every stage of the process, down to the design of the smallest detail. In this,
Shinsuke Takamiya, who was his partner during the early atelier days, and who
has continued to be his ­r ight-­hand man, has consistently contributed to the high
quality of the design produced by the office.
Taniguchi’s craftsmanly attitude is something that comes naturally to him.
For him, design is a labor of love. To that extent he has always tried to minimize
interference and demands made on him by the media, cutting down as much as
possible on activities such as lecturing, participating in symposia, writing, exhibit-
ing, and serving on juries. His attitude has always been that his designs say all there
is for him to say. Certainly such activities contribute to the formation of a broader
architectural culture, one that meets the demands of today’s society, but seeing the
excessive demands made on architects and the way their words are simply con-
sumed daily by the media, one cannot help but respect Taniguchi’s attitude. The
landscape designer Peter Walker, who has collaborated with him on several proj-
ects including the Toyota Museum, has this to say about Taniguchi: “Taniguchi is
one of the few architects practicing what Luis Barragán preached, namely the idea
that the greatest quality architecture can possess is stillness.” Stillness does indeed
characterize not only the spaces he creates, but his daily actions and speech.
I recall recently hearing some young European architects saying that there was
nothing in the ideas and designs of Le Corbusier or Mies to interest them. Cer-
tainly, to be ­avant-­garde is to reject the past. Yet architectural culture as a whole
should not be thought of as some kind of rocket aimed toward the future with
the ­avant-­garde serving as the warhead. Instead the culture of architecture can be
likened to the movement of waves on a great sea. The different waves collide and
interfere with one another, with some disappearing and others merging to form
a bigger wave. Every day we, too, experience and participate in the several waves
that began in the early years of the twentieth century. I believe that the architec-
ture of Yoshio Taniguchi can be seen as an attempt to reconsider, from a Japanese
standpoint, one of the most fundamental of those waves, and to create from that
the best possible work.

ON ARCHITECT S AND ARCHITECTURE / Y O S H I O T A N I G U C H I 229

O n t h e I n d u st r i a l Verna cula r

The end of modernism was pronounced by an increasing number of observ-

ers from the 1970s on. In truth, modern architecture in the 1960s had taken on
a doctrinaire character, as architectural expression became more neutral, space
more uniform, building forms more monotonous, and contemporary cities more
disorderly and confused than cities of the past. However, the seemingly disorderly
cities of today—especially townscapes such as Tokyo’s that have been created from
scratch since World War II almost solely by modern architectural methods—are
gradually nurturing a new urban sensibility.
In his essay “The Reality of the City,” Yuzuru Tominaga defines the enor-
mous assemblage of man-­made objects and the kaleidoscopic phenomenon of the
city as “second nature”:

Even if Venturi is entirely justified in criticizing the norms of modern ar-

chitecture, we must not lose sight of the fact that they are supportive as well
as restrictive. They shape the places we live in and provide a yardstick for our
very perceptions. That is key. Diversifying those norms, expanding the range
of architectural expression—that is, transforming those norms into some-
thing more in line with the reality of contemporary urban life—is the way
to make architectural expression more responsive to society. The works of
architecture of the early part of this century are still attractive to us because
we can retrace our steps through them and get a sense of the actual human
perceptions and dreams, fragmentary to be sure but also vital and pure, that
gave them birth.1
The existence of such an urban consciousness has been actively discussed not
only by architects but also by critics in Japan. The fact that the various icons of
modernist architecture—first encountered or experienced in the early part of
the twentieth century—still seem fresh today is not unrelated to the condition in
which cities are found today.
Yet the relationship between industrialized society and modernism is today in
an entirely different phase compared to the nineteenth or early twentieth century,
when modernism was just emerging. For one thing, not only is our contemporary
city overwhelmingly composed of industrialized man-­made objects, but some
of those objects have already acquired a historical character and are beginning
to transmit new meaning. That is to say, the products of modernism in the early
twentieth century always communicated newness and a sense of the future, but
the same objects today also evoke, at times, nostalgia and a sense of the past.
Secondly, it is no longer possible to make blanket statements about industrialized
society, so differentiated and diversified has it become in the world. The European
type of industrialized society is only one manifestation; around the world today,
there are many different modes of industrialized society, depending on the stage
of industrialization and the existence and strength of a traditional regional culture.
The International Style, one of the styles to which modernism gave birth, was
introduced in the 1920s and 1930s, when industrialization was as yet undifferenti-
ated, and that was why people in different parts of the world saw in it a common
drama and appeal. The International Style was about a common sensibility that
transcended borders, but because it was a phenomenon, it soon lost its freshness.
The fact that industrialized society or modernism cannot give rise to any
single common phenomenon means that every thesis must be posed with respect
to a specific region: for example, the United States or Japan. Japan has developed
into an industrialized society extremely rapidly, but it also has a vital and distinc-
tive culture. Its traditional architecture, however, does not have a physical presence
powerful enough to form and to regulate the cores of cities as its counterparts do
in Europe and the United States. A region such as this is bound to have a unique
industrialized urban image of its own.
If an architectural vernacular is the product of various external conditions,
one that does not conform to any single form in the manner of classicism, then
a sensibility already exists in the industrialized societies of certain countries for
creating what can be called an industrial vernacular. Yet whereas the vernacular of

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the past exists as a set of stable forms, steadfastly transmitting historical memory,
the images of an industrial vernacular are far more unstable and transitory, and in
them the past and the future intersect. Nevertheless, that presence is what Tomi-
naga calls “the reality of the city.”
In Tokyo, when one travels by car from Haneda in the direction of Chiba
and Narita by way of the waterfront expressway, one sees to the left factories and
high-­r ise apartments on vast tracts of reclaimed land. The silhouettes of these
examples of industrial vernacular seem to express in their ­matter-­of‑factness a
certain lightness. The concrete, metals, and slate that are the principal elements
of the industrial vernacular in Japanese cities are seen through the greenery that
is always found scattered around them, and have an impure, adulterated quality.
Billboards, vending machines, and various works of urban infrastructure all form
a part of the surface of the Japanese city. The new industrial vernacular of glass,
plastic, concrete, and metal communicates to us in our everyday urban life through
unique tactile qualities. In a city such as Tokyo that is filled mostly with buildings
constructed since World War II, one seeks not the order of classical forms but a
new aesthetic order of fluctuation, glimmer, flow, and lightness.
In 1985, I had an opportunity to visit the skyscraper district on the west side of
Shinjuku for the first time in quite a while. Dusk was falling, and as I was walking
along a tree-­lined promenade and looking up at the lights beginning to go on in
the tall buildings that stood against the dark blue autumnal sky, it struck me that this
was a new kind of city, unlike New York, Houston, or even Tokyo’s older business
district, the Marunouchi area. Shinjuku’s skyscrapers were as strange a collection of
structures as the gates to daimyo estates that once surrounded Edo Castle must have
been. Whatever the quality of their individual designs, these buildings were virtually

232
all straightforward products of modernism. The superblocks into which the district
was divided were very strange, and I was among the many who had originally
criticized them. By the standard of older cities, in which a recognizable relationship
between figure and ground establishes a clear order, the district was incomprehen-
sible. Yet a “town” of sorts was undeniably developing in West Shinjuku, and a new
process of urban formation distinctive to modern Japan could be detected.
In old European cities, the center and the periphery formed a silhouette
similar to Mount Fuji’s; a concentric core structure had been the model of order
for both cities and architecture. Public buildings were always representational, but
private buildings were not—instead, they were products of the vernacular.
The urbanized areas in Tokyo formed since the war, including Shinjuku, are a
challenge to that order. Although it exists only in fragments, a new order is already
perceptible. Here each part of the city is like an autonomous robot that creates its
own internal order and self-­propagates within a domain under its control. Within
this domain, planners, architects, and investors merely introduce variations within
a strictly limited scope of possibility, while the system itself works to quietly
and steadily create the new city. The ­machine-­age, utopian order envisioned by
architects and planners of the early twentieth century has disintegrated, and the
megastructuralization of the city envisioned at midcentury is also in rapid de-
cline. Under these circumstances, the emergence of autonomous, self-­propagating
urban districts may mean that they will assume the main role in creating a new
form of urban order.
Such a hypothesis is by no means fantastic, given the history of Edo/​Tokyo. As
can be seen in ukiyo‑e prints, the urban order of premodern Edo was established
through the development, one after another, of a number of ­island-­like domains.

4.17 Shinjuku’s skyscrapers seen

beyond the trees of Yoyogi Park.

O N ARCH I TECTS AND ARCH I TECTURE / O N T H E I N D U S T R I A L V E R N A C U L A R 233

Ambiguity of boundaries was permitted. An order that objectified center and
boundary was denied, and the organization of urban surfaces into either the rep-
resentational or the vernacular was also rejected. Today, when European ideas
of urban formation are unable to supply the new system of order demanded by
industrialized urban society, creating islands or filling in and manipulating what is
left over may be a stratagem that can respond more dynamically to the situation.
An urban society such as Japan—where exterior spaces are necessarily limited in
area and irregular in shape, and techniques of spatial perception such as ma and
oku have traditionally existed—is perhaps better prepared to adapt flexibly to new
demands through the formation of such a ­collage-­like urban order. 2 Modernism
accorded greater importance to volume over mass and was more concerned with
balance and flow than axiality and symmetry; ironically, its principles are being
enforced more than ever through such urban formations as I have described above.
Certainly, in today’s industrialized cities, there is no need to reject the existence of
older buildings and building fabrics that evoke nostalgia; however, they are simply
a part of the modern city and exist to provide contrast. They are tolerated as a part
of a larger framework of order.
Perhaps, as the architect Hidetoshi Ono suggests, we need to recognize that
in urban societies that are oriented not toward the center but toward the periph-
ery, this tradition has been effective in constructing countless places of different
character.3
New horizons are opening up for architecture as well. First, there is a view
that architecture will participate in the arrangement of the city as a single structure
or as a group of buildings in a delimited area. It cannot be denied that mod-
ernism developed essentially as a form of positivism. That is why, of the many

234
“isms” that grew out of modernism’s evolution, the International Style became
the mainstream, pushing aside expressionist, empiricist, and decorative architec-
ture. However, despite the fact that the International Style represented a liberation
from past norms with an aesthetic founded on freedom, the movement began to
demonstrate excessive faith in ­technology-­based notions of progress and, attach-
ing moral values to this faith, to claim sole legitimacy as an approach to design. It
was then that mainstream modernism began to disintegrate from within. As Alan
Colquhoun has pointed out, despite the fact that architecture must possess both
functionality and expressive character, the two aspects were frequently confused,
with some believing that the expressive function was the essence of architec-
ture—indeed, that architectural expression bore responsibility for solving actual
functional problems.4 This confusion promoted the neutralization of surfaces and
the increasing uniformity of space; that is why the representational character of
space has again become an issue for architects.
The autonomy of works of architecture as mechanisms for transmitting
meaning does not apply simply to the messages conveyed by the surfaces of build-
ings. In urban arrangements, architecture eventually contains within itself its own
city. In the new urban condition that can no longer be called a city in the classical
sense—a condition in which the prevailing sensibility is that of the industrial
vernacular—that sense of a quiet, ­inner-­directed order that once existed in the
city is today formed inside individual buildings and building complexes. Buildings
with public character today possess two different vectors: one directed outward
in their capacity as transmission mechanisms, the other directed inward to form
an internal order, and it does not matter whether a building is a commercial or
public facility.

4.18 Yamato International

Building, Tokyo, 1987, by
Hiroshi Hara.

4.19 Tower of the Winds,

Yokohama, 1986, by Toyo Ito.

O N ARCH I TECTS AND ARCH I TECTURE / O N T H E I N D U S T R I A L V E R N A C U L A R 235

 Galleries, passages, atriums, labyrinths, and scenically treated interior spaces
are clearly expressions of a desire today for a private, inner city. Cities must not
simply expose everything to view; they must satisfy the shared dream that some-
where within, an unexplored domain exists. That is what creates the next level of
order in the contemporary city. Diverse worlds will undoubtedly unfold that re-
spond to the ambivalent wishes of urbanites awakened to a new cosmic conscious-
ness on the one hand and yearning to return to the womb on the other—torn
between anxiety and joy.
In the early 1970s, a special issue of Architectural Design was dedicated to an
examination of the relationship between the “whole” and the “parts” from an
interdisciplinary perspective that included the natural and social sciences as well
as architecture. The discussion described a system of order in which there was a
clear relationship between the parts and the whole (in the sense of the collection
of those parts) metaphorically as a “clock,” while one in which the whole was
maintained through the balance of unstable parts was described as a “cloud.” The
contemporary significance for various fields of the two concepts of “clock” and
“cloud” was then discussed. In explanations of works of architecture as products
of their times, the sensibility or rhetoric of the times ultimately wears away or is
rendered abstract over time, leaving only compositional principle as an intellectual
product. As long as that belief exists somewhere, the compositional theme of “the
whole and the parts” will continue to be explored.
Today’s industrialized urban society is beginning to suggest the presence of an
order different from that represented by the contrast of the countryside and the
city in the past. The order suggested by images of the contemporary city is clearly
that of a cloud, not of a clock. On the other hand, as a necessary background to
leading an ordered, meaningful existence, people today still seek some clear order
in the more readily comprehensible details of their urban environment. Might
some method for governing the relationship in forms of architectural expression
between sharply defined parts and a fluctuating, cloudlike whole still be found?
Attempts by Hiroshi Hara to construct a “multilayered structure” in his archi-
tecture might be understood in such a context; Toyo Ito’s Silver Hut and Itsuko
Hasegawa’s Bizan Hall are also products of such a sensibility. A schema in which
­clear-­cut, clocklike parts exist in a cloudlike whole is not a rejection of modern-
ism but an indication of its further potential.

236
Th e R o o f at F u j i sawa

It is a well-­known fact that Japan began to modernize rapidly after the Meiji
Restoration. In the one hundred and twenty years that have passed since that res-
toration, Japan has developed into what is arguably the most industrialized nation
in the world. In metropolises such as Tokyo and Osaka, traditional buildings that
have survived natural disasters, fires, the war, and the effects of rapid moderniza-
tion are very limited in number and scale. Old, preindustrial streetscapes that
remain fully intact are virtually nonexistent. This trend toward industrialization
will undoubtedly accelerate in the future, as the densities of these cities increase
and, concomitantly, new construction continues to occur at a more rapid rate.
Moreover, such rapid growth will be combined with increasingly stringent build-
ing codes intended to mitigate the destructive effects of natural disasters by way
of particularly lightweight and sophisticated systems of construction. This is the
situation in which the contemporary practitioner of architecture in Japan finds
himself.
In this sense, the evolution of the industrialized city and the emergence of
modern architecture—from which contemporary architecture developed—must
be seen as interrelated phenomena. The theoretical foundations of modernism—
including references to mass production, trabeate construction, investigations in
new and lightweight materials, free planning and functionalism—all suggest obvi-
ous comparisons to the world of industrialization.
We have witnessed this expanding industrialization with some concern. The
most extreme position insists that such industrialization will undermine our culture,
fracture our relationship to history, and bring about the formation of a forbidding
urban landscape without reference to place. The Western world has given voice
 4.20

O N A R C HI T E C T S A N D A R C HI T E C T U R E / T H E R O O F A T F U J I S A W A 239
to similar concerns. For an architect in such a predicament, a pressing question
reveals itself: what is the role of history and place in this industrial city, and how
does one contribute works of authenticity and resonance to such a landscape?

Going south in Manhattan along the East River, one encounters a series of huge
concrete and steel bridges. Their stone foundations have been exposed to the elements over
many years and are coated with moss. They remind one of the ruins of Roman aqueducts
and the world of Piranesi. The factories and the tall, expressionless apartment buildings
standing nearby are also weathering products of an early industrialized society and appear
before us as strangely reticent monuments of modern history. Cityscapes of this nature greet
one in London and Manchester as well. In contrast to these examples of Western industrial
vernacular that testify to the glories of a weighty past, the industrial vernacular of Japan has
an entirely different aspect. The factories, high-­rise apartment buildings, and gas tanks that
stand crowded together in the vast area reclaimed from Tokyo Bay that is visible from the
expressway describe a world of abstract form. One can discern here a kind of lightness, a frail
optimism that approaches lyricism. The past does not weigh down this cityscape as it does
the cityscapes of the West, because here it is not allowed to accumulate. The human traces
in this transitional landscape can be dated back only a few decades at the most. Features
distinctive to Japan—everything from signs, vending machines, and plastic products to entire
urban infrastructures—participate on an equal basis with cheaply constructed buildings in
the formation of the surface of the city. If one looks closely enough, one can see in this surface
composed of concrete, metals, glass, and plastic the layered, tactile quality that is distinctive
to Japan. The aesthetic that this cityscape speaks of is one of fluctuation and fluidity. It is
possible to recognize the existence of a unique perceptual order here.

The phenomenon of the modern city cannot be understood as a manifes-

tation of the industrial imperative alone. Notwithstanding the expectations of
­early-­twentieth-­century theoreticians—who foretold the development of our
cities along models provided by this industrial revolution—it remains possible
to identify significant distinctions between one modern city and another. The
proportion of new construction to old, the persistence of local preferences, and
the particular characteristics of a regional culture all contribute to this diversity.
While it is true that modern frame construction must conform to laws of tecton-
ics independent of the specifics of place, that particular quality of place still finds
expression in our buildings.

240
 4.21

The Japanese variation derives primarily from a historical phenomenon. Japan

has many strong traditions of craft, custom, dress, and family structure. We do not,
however, possess an accumulated stock of traditional architecture around which
our cities could be formed. In this sense, our traditions persist in the form of
intangible as opposed to tangible structures. The imprint of Japanese culture on
the industrialized city is felt not in the juxtaposition of old and new artifacts—as
in Europe—but in the overlay of an entirely new architectural landscape on a very
old culture. The integration of the two results in a very distinctive experience of
the Japanese city.
It is this experience, this persistent expression of culture, that must form the
basis of a true modern vernacular. The design and construction of individual
buildings capable of speaking to both the traditional past and industrial future
of Japan depends on a sensitivity to this historical fact. The challenge facing the
architect today is to understand and contribute to this integration of intangible
traditions with tangible artifacts—to link together the historical character of our
culture with the development of a built urban landscape which cannot literally
re‑create its own history. Such a challenge involves the investigation of industrial
artifacts with an eye for their more evocative natures, searching among them for a
specific character related to regional tradition.

O N A R C HI T E C T S A N D A R C HI T E C T U R E / T H E R O O F A T F U J I S A W A 241
 This search for a meaningful integration of the past with the future has domi-
nated my thinking in recent years. Much of my work has been undertaken in pur-
suit of this integration. For an architect committed to building, this investigation
is deeply involved in formal and technical matters of construction, such that the
entire issue becomes manifest in their resolution. As can be seen in the battered
and monolithic stone constructions of England’s industrial past, or the lightweight
and luminous assemblies scattered along the edge of Tokyo Bay, these issues related
to place and character may be deciphered in essentially physical terms. For this
reason, I believe it to be critical to the design process that one constantly refer-
ence the material nature of one’s proposals to both their historical and geographic
context. The study of primary architectonic elements—the foundation, walls,
columns, and, perhaps of most importance here, the roof—related to any par-
ticular construction must be undertaken with a sensitivity to the material history
of that element, to ensure that this architecture may speak to more than its own
occurrence.
The capacity of a single architectural element to possess this dialectic was
made clear to me in the conception of the roof for the Fujisawa Sports Complex.
In fact, the stainless steel roof to be seen here has a complex history of its own,
intimately tied up with the specifics of its coming into being—its technical and
formal inception along with its actual production in the field. It is necessary to
discuss this technical history at some length in order to communicate the inten-
tion of the roof as a cultural artifact, as a constructed artifact that stands in a com-
plex relationship to history. In this way I believe it is possible to see the roof itself
as a metaphor for the coming together of two traditions.
Fujisawa is a city located very close to the seashore, about thirty kilometers
from Tokyo. The landscape of this area is, in fact, quite bleak. The particular site
chosen for the new sports complex lacked any distinguishing characteristics of its
own and remains surrounded for the most part by smaller structures arranged in
a loosely defined configuration. The introduction of a very large structure of the
scale required by the program assured that the new building would assume a strong
presence in the city. We recognized early on that the successful accommodation
of this program would necessitate the construction of two very large rooms, each
of which would have a definition and a nature of its own. Given our experience
with this particular building type, we understood the critical issues of scale that
such constructions inevitably present. We also knew that the roof itself would

242
 4.22 Aerial view of Fujisawa
Gymnasium.

4.23

O N A R C HI T E C T S A N D A R C HI T E C T U R E / T H E R O O F A T F U J I S A W A 243
most profoundly influence this eventual reading of scale. The manner in which
this roof was conceived and developed would be crucial to the final character of
the building.
Several considerations led us to choose stainless steel as the primary mate-
rial for this roof. Many of these considerations had to do with specific physical
characteristics of the steel itself: its great resistance to the degenerative effects of
salt air, its considerable luminosity, its capacity to be shaped and bent into fairly
complex segments, and certain inherent qualities of scale suggested by its extreme
thinness and fragility. We regarded each of these characteristics as advantageous
to the formal and technical ordering of the roof. Their cumulative effect was to
provide a point of departure of considerable rigor, a set of limitations demand-
ing precise calculation, and considerable investigation of relevant construction
procedures.
We determined through our investigation that each steel sheet would be lim-
ited to 40 centimeters in width and only 0.4 millimeters in thickness, a thickness
of such fragility and susceptibility to creasing and wrinkling that extraordinary
measures would be required in its manipulation. Such thin sheet steel would not
be capable of maintaining an even surface in the life of the building—nor, for
that matter, during construction, when particularly extreme concentrated stresses
would be exerted on each sheet in its transportation and manipulation. When seen
against the sunlight, these inevitable imperfections would become particularly ap-
parent. Working with the manufacturer, we were able to devise a method for
producing systematic wrinkles in each sheet in such a way that these deformations
would appear uniform and intentional, providing a certain texture to the roof and
allowing another scale reading to be manifest in the surface itself. This texture
might then speak of the nature of steel in the same way that grain speaks of wood,
or the visible composition of minerals speaks of stone.
The manner in which these steel sheets might be fabricated and joined was
studied carefully so as to avoid a repetitive or mechanistic assembly or, conversely,
a homogeneous, ­membrane-­like appearance that might belie the building’s truly
assembled nature. To this extent, we wanted very much to avoid the “inflated”
quality that such large structures commonly suffer. Through many attempts in
model, we were able to determine a configuration of individually fabricated seg-
ments that collectively achieved the desired whole, while maintaining the integ-
rity of the part. Each of these steel sheets was in itself quite unique. Rather than

244
 4.24

4.25

O N A R C HI T E C T S A N D A R C HI T E C T U R E / T H E R O O F A T F U J I S A W A 245
accept a repetitive subdivision of the roof by way of highly complex, curved
segmentation—which, we learned, would be quite difficult to manufacture—
we made liberal use of trapezoidal segments, requiring certain adjustments to
be made at critical points in each sheet. Many of these adjustments had to be
modified—even conceived—at the construction site itself.
Several members of the design team were present at the site throughout con-
struction to supervise this ongoing process of study and correction. In fact, it was
necessary to set up a small office at the site where the design team could work,
maintaining day-­to‑day contact with the builders—even assisting in the construc-
tion itself—to ensure that each connection and each detail was executed correctly.
In an effort to make apparent the hovering quality of the roof—to disassoci-
ate it from the more massive base of its support—we developed a series of pin
connections where the meeting of these two elements could be poignantly ac-
complished. Such a meeting further reinforced the apparent lightness of the roof,
allowing it to maintain an identity of its own that speaks of an almost ethereal
presence. Through the development of these pin connections we were able, as
well, to underline the assembled nature of the ­steel-­clad roof structure, reinforcing
once again our ambition not to fall victim to that inflated appearance so contrary
to the proper definition of scale.
The reality or the spirit of the steel itself seemed to us to be very much tied
up with its sharpness, its precision, its capacity to define an unequivocal edge.
This was always on our minds as we studied each corner and intersection, and
particularly as we explored the termination of the roof near its base. But such
luminous metal has another evocation as well: I have observed that at certain times
of day—in a very particular light—this luminous steel virtually disappears into
the sky, suggesting an aura not unlike that of the sun during an eclipse. Its reflec-
tion of such bright light is so complete as to wholly absorb the material itself in
the act of reflection. This is its paradox and its mystery.
These facts are important insofar as they document the coming together of a
traditional procedure of construction with the development of a new and highly
sophisticated building material. In a strict sense, the manner in which the Fuji-
sawa Sports Complex was built cannot be considered innovative. Many of the
procedures we evolved here might even be considered medieval. The building was
constructed with the active participation of an attendant workforce; a supervisory
team responsible for both the conception and execution of detail was present at

246
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O N A R C HI T E C T S A N D A R C HI T E C T U R E / T H E R O O F A T F U J I S A W A 247
the site at all times; and the work being performed was of a singular and unique
nature. This was not a building composed of repetitive elements, mechanically
produced in great quantities for use in buildings other than Fujisawa itself. Ac-
cordingly, the complex speaks of a fundamentally traditional reality. Its character
is determined by the piecing together of carefully crafted, individual components
in a complex assembly not unlike its Japanese predecessors. It is here that the in-
tangible traditions of craft and method referred to earlier exert themselves on the
production of otherwise entirely modern artifacts.
Such a reading, however, is inevitably challenged by our sense of its defini-
tively unique character, as well as by its relationship to modern industrial con-
struction. We see in the formal language of the building—in its scale and in the
precise fabrication of elements that compose it—a type of construction that is not
familiar to us through the traditional world of handcrafted production. Despite its
connection to that past, it cannot be wholly explained by or absorbed in it.
A similar and intended ambiguity exists in the associative qualities of the
sheathing itself. What does this metal roof mean? Of course, we cannot speak of
this with any precision. Stainless steel has many associations with both an indus-
trial and a traditional reality. It is a material of hardness, precision, strength, and
great reflectivity, thereby making reference to a future populated by the artifacts of
an advanced science. But it also recalls the tools and equipment of an earlier time,
a world of medieval helmets and weaponry, of artifacts from an iron age marked
by a great fascination with such metals. This luminous steel thereby shares a past
with a future—a complex relationship to time and place alongside an insistent
industrial character—intended to assure it a vital history.

Tokyo has undergone many changes in physical appearance over the last century. The
city, so decimated by World War II, has had to rebuild from ashes. In its rebuilding it has
become—perhaps it has returned to being—a city without heaviness. It was once a city of
wood and paper; it has now become a city of concrete, steel, and glass. The feeling of light-
ness, however, remains.

We might now return to the notion of specificity of place that introduced

this essay. The sports complex at Fujisawa represents an attempt to address this
problem by way of a set of material and constructive considerations guided, in
turn, by an image of place and a sense of history, such that the eventual building

248
 4.27

demonstrates an unequivocal geographic inevitability. Paradoxically, it has been

necessary to allow the building an ambiguous relationship to history—to both the
past and the future—in an effort to define this specific connection to place. The
temporal associations possible in any interpretation of this building, therefore, are
manifold and complex, while it remains our intention that its geographic relation-
ship be without ambiguity. In this way, Fujisawa might speak to a specific regional
history—to the lightness and architectonic precision of its constructive legacy—as
it is intrinsically tied to that region. In short, we wish the building to be free in
time so as to be fixed in place.
The suggestion of a modern or industrial vernacular of rigorous architectural
character might be found in this process. This has certainly been our struggle. If
the metal roof at Fujisawa finds an evocative place among the industrial artifacts of
its milieu, making explicit the ambitions of a culture in search of a more resonant
architecture, we will have successfully catalyzed an investigation critical to the
Japanese future.

O N A R C HI T E C T S A N D A R C HI T E C T U R E / T H E R O O F A T F U J I S A W A 249
O n U n i v e r sa l i t y

We tend to downplay our direct, natural response to architecture. To understand

an architectural form or space, we normally examine it in the context of its time,
place, and culture. Moreover, diverse programmatic demands are made on archi-
tecture today, and the fulfillment of such requirements is apt to be the first thing
we consider in evaluating a work. We therefore neglect the emotions stirred by an
encounter with a building or its spaces.
Human beings evolved several hundred million years ago, but basic instinctive
responses that animals have to stimuli such as spaces are still built into our genetic
makeup. We have all had the childhood experience of being caught up in an ex-
citing game of hide-­and-­seek. The geographer Jay Appleton has written that wild
animals instinctively have recourse to what he calls “prospect and refuge,” which
allow them to see others without being seen themselves.1 He demonstrates that
space plays an important role in defensive and aggressive behavior among animals.
Hide-­and-­seek is thrilling to children precisely because it arouses a similar instinct.
Watch young children and dogs at play on a field, and it becomes obvious that
children at an early stage of growth, unaffected as yet by social and cultural con-
ventions, are not very different from animals in their behavior. The joys and fears
all children share are universal and transcend cultural differences, and the percep-
tions and sensibilities we consider universal turn out to have primordial roots.
Psychologists have identified numerous types of phobia. It is interesting that
many of these irrational fears, known since ancient times, have to do with space—
for example, fear of heights, fear of small enclosed spaces, and fear of the dark.
As human beings formed communities, myths and religions developed to
promote the survival and the influence of particular groups or peoples. Human
beings began to create or select spaces and forms. Stonehenge in the south of
England was a symbolic place of sun worship and also a setting for confirming
communal solidarity among the members of the group; the architectural historian
Spiro Kostof has gone so far as to describe it as one of the oldest public spaces of
mankind.2
The shapes and figures first used by mankind were taken from forms common
in the natural world. The Thai architect Sumet Jumsai has written in his book
Naga: Cultural Origins in Siam and the West Pacific that the countless islands and land
masses into which that part of Asia was torn by repeated ice ages several million
years ago have made water an integral part of everyday life and survival for people
of the region.3 No other region in the world has so many symbols associated
with water in its religions, legends, and works of art, architecture, literature, and
dance. For example, symbols of waves are found in countless architectural orna-
ments and New Year dragon dances. Of course, the proliferation of such symbols
is accounted for in part by cultural influences, but the images are nevertheless
reflections of basic, subconscious concerns and desires among the people of Asia
since ancient times.
Forms and spaces that have long been dormant in the subconscious still have
the capacity to evoke our emotions today. In the natural world, there are dynamic
forms such as waves and whirlpools and quite abstract forms such as spheres,
circles, and horizons. Perhaps certain forms move us because they reawaken an-
cient memories locked in our DNA.
From around 1940, Le Corbusier gradually abandoned the world of abstrac-
tion and entered a world of what he called l’espace indicible (ineffable space). His
subsequent projects were characterized by an almost archaic sensibility. The uni-
versality possessed by a great work may in fact be evidence of a sensibility attuned
to the cosmos.
Universality in architecture is apt to be confused with uniformity. The con-
fusion began when the term “International Style” was used to lump together
buildings that were made superficially similar in form by the abstract approach of
modernism. A work is universal if it transcends regional or stylistic differences and
is able to evoke an emotional response. At times a building can seem specific to a
region or an era but still shed light on something more universal. I have recently
encountered two such works.

O N AR C H ITE C TS AN D AR C H ITE C T U RE / O N U N I V E R S A L I T Y 251

 One is the cavelike exhibition space called the ­Husain-­Doshi Gufa in Ahmed-
abad, India, designed by the architect Balkrishna Doshi. On the outside, it suggests
a strange beast with the head of a cobra and the shell of a tortoise. The structure
is in fact composed of spheres and spherical fragments of different diameters. In-
side, a veritable forest of columns supports the undulating roof, and the skylights
suggest fragments of the sky glimpsed between treetops. The Gufa evokes diverse
images and metaphors. The more diverse the imagery evoked by a form, the
greater is the form’s universality.
The other work is a community center called SESC-­Pompéia Factory in
São Paulo, designed by Lina Bo Bardi (1914–­1992) toward the end of her career.
This is a remodeling of an old factory, to which a new five-­story sports facility
has been added. The appeal of the building is difficult to explain, but the work
evokes powerful images. The architect stated that she wanted to create a building
that was as ugly as possible. I feel, however, that the work transcends the specifics
of place and achieves a certain universality. The two towering masses linked by
scissorlike corridors resemble trees whose outstretched branches commingle. The
form is strange, but it moves us, perhaps by offering us a glimpse of something in
our subconscious. As I peered down at the city of São Paulo through a window
which was roughly in the shape of a flower petal in the concrete wall, I suddenly
recalled Appleton’s phrase “prospect and refuge.” The architect intended these
openings—used for ventilation—to be holes gouged in the concrete, and in a way
they are like the mouths of caves.
In 1995 my office designed a floating theater for the city planning bureau of
Groningen, a city of canals in the north of the Netherlands that once belonged
to the Hanseatic League. The theater is used for musical performances and poetry

4.28 Interior of the

­ usain-­Doshi Gufa art
H
gallery, Ahmedabad, India,
1993, by Balkrishna Doshi.

252
readings, and is moved from place to place on the canals during the local sum-
mer festival. It can also be steered next to a plaza, in which case the entire boat is
made into a stage for plays or events. In accepting the commission to design this
pavilion, built on top of a concrete barge six meters wide and ­twenty-­five meters
long, we promised to create something that our clients had never seen before.
What we meant by this was that we thought the pavilion, which travels between
districts and among countless boats, ought to have its own identity and be neither
a building nor a boat. The form—or space—we arrived at after long study is a
sail-­like pavilion organized around two different spirals.
The steel frame was assembled in a shipbuilding yard in Groningen, and the
curious form attracted public attention even during construction. The pavilion,
nicknamed “A Star Is Born,” made its appearance on the opening day of the
festival and was used throughout the summer by the citizens.
This floating theater evokes diverse images, and unexpected encounters can pro-
duce surrealistic effects. The cloudlike pavilion moving through a misty countryside
might suddenly find itself among sheep and swans. Against the background of a deep
forest, the pavilion itself can take on the semblance of a swan. At other times it can
suggest an alien being or a snail. Unlike a fixed building, this pavilion changes loca-
tion and, in so doing, evokes different images and transforms the image of a place.
These three works have several things in common. The forms evoke diverse
images, and those images, though at times strange and mysterious, can take on
the friendly, benign appearance of certain animals. These images are apparent to
children as well as adults and do not require expert knowledge to be recognized.
Moreover, the forms do not by any means restrict or express the function of the
enveloped spaces.

4.29 Lina Bo Bardi’s 1977 design

transformed the SESC-­Pompéia
factory in São Paulo, Brazil, into a
popular community and recreation
center.

4.30 Framed view of São Paulo

from Bo Bardi’s recreation center.

O N AR C H ITE C TS AN D AR C H ITE C T U RE / O N U N I V E R S A L I T Y 253

 The three works are completely different in region, scale, form, and mate-
rial; yet they all have the quality of universality. Moreover, their universality does
not prevent them from being regional as well. It is possible for a work to be both
universal and regional. The towers of SESC might conceivably be moved to India,
or the Gufa to a farming village in Japan, without seeming anomalous.
This seems to argue the existence in ancient times of primary spaces or forms,
which were only later modified in ways specific to regions and cultures. Today,
architecture exhibits great diversity, but we ought not to forget the primordial
foundation on which that diversity rests. I believe it is an appropriate time, as the
new century emerges, to engage in a more active debate on the important issue
of universality in architecture.

4.31 Floating Pavilion in

Groningen, Holland, 1995.

4.32 Floating Pavilion

passing through the Dutch
landscape.

254
Arc h i t e c t u r a l M odernit y and t he Consciousness Called the Pr esent

I have in front of me a secondhand book entitled The New Architecture. Like

Le Corbusier’s Œeuvre complète, this book, first published in 1940, was a much-
­thumbed bible for those of us who were architecture students in the postwar era.
It contains twenty works by architects active in the 1930s, beginning with works
by Le Corbusier and Alvar Aalto and including Junzo Sakakura’s Japan Pavilion
for the 1937 Paris Exhibition. Recently I had a sudden urge to look through this
book once more and immediately ordered it from Amazon. The book arrived a
week later. Not including shipping charges, the cost was only ¥ 1,500 (around
$12). In all likelihood it would have been difficult to come by had I scoured all the
secondhand bookstores in Europe.
The author, Alfred Roth, was a well-­known Swiss architect who had worked
at Le Corbusier’s atelier in Paris during the same period as Kunio Maekawa. In
the introduction, he characterized modernism in a way that struck me as strongly
today as it had a half-­century ago:

Apart from the enormous innovations in technics and the change in social
conditions, the awakening of the consciousness of one’s own times stands in
the foreground. The New Architecture in its present form is the immediate
and clear expression of the meantime expanded consciousness of the times
we live in.1

The Mexican poet Octavio Paz once described modernity as an expression

by each individual of how he intends to live his own “present.”2 If that is so, then
there are a thousand modernisms for every thousand persons, and in this century
modernism will no doubt continue to be the mode by which we express the pres-
ent in which we live.
My own consciousness of the present over the past ­fifty-­plus years might be
divided into several periods. The first period—from the end of the war into the
era of intensive economic growth—was the period of my youth, when I was full
of confidence that tomorrow would always be better than today. However, the
student protests that began with the May Revolution in Paris in 1968 and the oil
crisis of the early 1970s undermined that optimism, and gave rise to a conscious-
ness of anxiety that would thereafter remain a part of my present.
Franz Kafka once said that anxiety lies at the core of existence.3 Despite its
generally negative connotations, anxiety can also motivate change and provide
opportunities for growth. Throughout the world, in both urban and rural settings,
the social and physical foundations on which works of architecture had been
conceived throughout history has been lost. Place can no longer dictate the way
architecture ought to be. The environment in that sense no longer exists a priori,
but that also means that the architect can now construct a new landscape through
his imagination. As I began my practice, I already felt an infinite love for the city,
the generator and foundation of architecture. I felt that if I were allowed to design
a building, it did not matter if it were in a beautiful townscape or at the back of
some abandoned switchyard. Whether the place was old or new, beautiful or ugly,
was frankly beside the point. My dream was—and still is—to enter into a dialogue
with that corner of the city that would be the scene of my operations, the subject
of my thoughts, and the place where I must actually build something. Young
architects today no doubt think the same way. Anxiety awakens a desire to create
something certain in architecture. It encourages us to attempt to create something
lasting that cannot be entirely consumed, even in a mass consumer society like
ours, using materials and technologies available to us today.
The third period of my present might have begun around 1990, brought
about by the tearing down of the Berlin Wall, which was synonymous with tearing
down restrictions on the flow of capital, information, and desire on a worldwide
scale. The disappearance of the Soviet Union made inevitable the transformation
of China into a capitalist state. That this period coincided with a revolution in
information technology was pure happenstance, yet the coincidence is also impor-
tant. It was also around this time that we introduced computers into design. The
spatial and temporal dimensions of our world expanded all at once. The buildings

ON A RCHITECTS A ND A RCHITECTURE / M O D E R N I T Y A N D T H E P R E S E N T 257

we currently create in Japan are hybrids of materials and products from around
the world; the design process, too, is undergoing an international division of labor.
The concentration of capital is giving rise to ­strange-­shaped cities such as Dubai;
we no longer consider it strange that Spanish ­Colonial-­style houses have become
wildly popular in a suburb of Tokyo. The excessive liquidity of capital solely in
search of profit is behind such phenomena.
Under such circumstances, how is the present now perceived? The term
ambivalence refers to a psychological state in which a person has two mutually
contradictory feelings toward a subject. The accelerating increase of information
and phenomena to be experienced and processed is generating hitherto unan-
ticipated ambivalent relationships at diverse levels in our world. Our world must
reconcile increasingly disparate and contradictory trends such as globalization and
locality, technological progress and ecological equilibrium. These circumstances
are calling into question the nature of architectural design.
In the past half-­century, I have experienced a consciousness filled with such
desires, anxieties, and contradictions. In reality, these presents—these states of
mind, these awarenesses—cannot be so cleanly divided into different periods, for
they have always been intertwined to some degree.
The consciousness of individual architects can be expressed in many different
ways. The famous Australian architect Glenn Murcutt maintains a one-­man office;
he has neither a secretary nor a computer. Nevertheless, he lectures and teaches
all over the world throughout the year. I recently met him in Glasgow, where we
were both speakers at an architectural conference, and I asked him what happens
to jobs in progress when he is away. He answered ­matter-­of‑factly that they come
to a halt in his absence. According to him, a number of clients are waiting for his
design even so. He is probably the only architect I know who insists on doing
everything himself; his designs are entirely his own.
At the opposite end of the spectrum are large architectural offices with hun-
dreds, if not thousands, of personnel. If we think about it, however, a design
project is always carried out by a small group of people, however large the office
or the project. My own office is of medium size, and no more than seven people
are ever involved long-­term in any one project (with the exception of the Nippon
Convention Center, completed in 1989, in which fifteen people participated at
the peak of activity). Of course, many people, such as expert consultants provid-
ing support, circle this group like a cluster of planets on the edge of the solar

258
system. However, the larger and the more complex the project, the closer the
coordination must be of the small group at the core—all the more so today, when
so much design work seems to require racing against the clock. The truth of my
assertion has been borne out in my experience of working with core groups and
“planetary clusters” of various sizes and characters over the past half-­century. Ar-
chitecture ultimately depends on the consciousness of individuals.
Several years ago, the architect Hiromi Fujii wrote:

Certainly today, when values have diversified and confrontation between

various fragmented philosophies is deepening the divide among them, the
role of modernism as an art of denial may already be at an end. However,
the spirit of modernism that seeks freedom of the human spirit, that rejects
a standardization which would integrate everything into one tendency, will
live on.4

The development of modernism is not dependent on a unilateral elimination

of the past. In this, it resembles waves on the sea. Different waves collide and
interfere with one another. Some waves disappear and others become even larger
than before. The modality of modernism is the sum total of all these waves, large
and small. Japan today is one of the international epicenters from which waves
emanate; no doubt it will continue to transmit new ideas in the immediate future.
The consciousness of the present among architects in the aggregate is what makes
this possible.
A work of architecture takes on a life of its own the moment it is created.
Recently I visited the newly renovated Crown Hall at the Illinois Institute of
Technology and was moved once again by the grace and nobility of Mies’s design.
I also saw recently for the first time the church in Firminy, France, that was based
on models and drawings left behind by Le Corbusier and completed in October
2006, more than forty years after the architect drowned in the sea at Cap Martin.
Natural light entering through numerous small round windows give the interior
of this soaring concrete structure enormous presence. These were two completely
different modernist buildings, but in them I reencountered history and was re-
minded how modernity can be compatible with timelessness. The ideal work is
one that accurately expresses—by its modernity—the particular present in which
it is constructed, yet is able to transcend that time and continue to exist. Time
alone is the final judge of any work of architecture.

ON A RCHITECTS A ND A RCHITECTURE / M O D E R N I T Y A N D T H E P R E S E N T 259


n o t es an d c r ed i t s
Notes

F orewor d

1. From a speech Professor Toshiko Mori gave at Harvard University, April 20, 2007. I
am grateful for Professor Mori’s permission to use her statement, and for the critical
advice given by my wife, Mary Patricia Sekler, PhD.
2. See below, “Formative Years,” p. 36.
3. See below, “Space, Territory, and Perception” (written with Mark Mulligan), p. 132.
4. Marcus Vitruvius Pollio, De architectura libri decem 1.1.3, <www​.thelatinlibrary​.com/​
vitruvius1​.html>; free translation by the author.
5. E. F. Sekler, “Thoughts about Architectural Education,” in Peter Nigst, ed., Architektur am
Schillerplatz, exhibition catalog (Vienna: Akademie der bildenden Künste, 1996), p. 6.
6. See below, “City and Modernism,” p. 88.

F ormat ive Years

1. The building that housed Sert’s office is still standing near Harvard Square at the time
of writing, though the name of the street has changed to John F. Kennedy Street.
2. I sometimes dream of foreign cities but, oddly enough, never of Paris or New York.
The city that appears most often in my dreams by far is St. Louis, and the scene is
never of a place I lived in or of Washington University but, rather, of the desolate
midtown or some fantastic townscape born of my memory of that place.
3. Peter Blake has vividly described the decade’s charged intellectual and social environ-
ment among modern architecture’s great masters and their followers: “What a marvel-
ous time it was, especially if you are involved in architecture and all the related visual
arts. . . . Our mentors and teachers were people like Corbu and Mies. [They were
frequently in and out of New York, as were Frank Lloyd Wright, Walter Gropius,
Alvar Aalto, Fritz Kiesler, Hans Scharoun, Alfred Roth, and Oscar Niemeyer.] . . .
 What seems most interesting about these encounters, in retrospect, is the fact that
very few of these architects tended to talk about their own work; they seemed much
more interested in what was happening in the US, and specially in New York—and
in what young people like ourselves were thinking and doing.” From Peter Blake, No
Place Like Utopia: Modern Architecture and the Company We Kept (New York: Alfred A.
Knopf, 1993), 192–­193.
4. George Anselevicius later succeeded Passonneau as dean of Washington University’s
School of Architecture and later went on to become dean of Harvard’s GSD.
5. Roger Montgomery later became dean at UC Berkeley.
6. Nearly forty years later, I found myself commissioned by Washington University
again, this time to design a new university art museum and annex to the School of
Art, next to Steinberg Hall. In the more informal environment of campus planning
in the 1950s, the design and construction of Steinberg Hall took only three years; by
contrast, nearly ten years passed from the time discussions were first held regarding the
new Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Arts until its completion in 2006.
7. Friends in the School of Architecture subsequently sent me slides of the building
under construction from time to time during my fellowship. On my return to the
university in fall of 1960, after the two-­year fellowship had ended, I found that Stein-
berg Hall had been brought to completion, thanks to many people’s efforts.
8. Tetsuro Watsuji, A Climate: A Philosophical Study, trans. Geoffrey Bownas (Tokyo:
Japanese Government Printing Bureau, 1961). Originally published in 1935 under the
Japanese title Fudo.
9. Joan Ockman and Edward Eigen, eds., Architecture Culture 1943–­1968: A Documentary
Anthology (New York: Rizzoli, 1993), 319.
10. Hajime Yatsuka and Hideki Yoshimatsu, Metaborizumu: Senkyuhyakurokujunendai Nihon
no kenchiku avangyarudo (Metabolism: Architectural Avant-­Garde of 1960s Japan)
(Tokyo: INAX Shuppan, 1997).
11. Recently, a book entitled Metabolism and Metabolists was published in Japanese by
Bijutsu Shuppansha, the publisher of the original Metabolism 1960. The book com-
memorates the retirement of Masato Otaka from active architectural practice and
includes interviews with Metabolism’s founding members, reflecting on their careers
over the past ­forty-­five years.
12. Sadly, most of the participants in the ­Bagnols-­sur-­Cèze conference, including the Smith-
sons, Voelker, Bakema, Woods, De Carlo, and Van Eyck, have now passed away. Even
by the 1980s, the Smithsons had retired from actual practice. Although they occasionally
took part in competitions or contributed short pieces to architectural publications, they
seemed to have deliberately avoided contact with the architectural world. I ran into
Alison Smithson on the Harvard campus in the early 1980s. She said she was collecting

NOTES 263
 material on Team X from old friends of the time, and that she would welcome any
recollection, however fragmentary, I might offer. It seemed to me the Smithsons wanted
to bring the curtain down in a definitive fashion on a period of history.
13. Within a few years, the Gaslight Square district would be abandoned and ­demolished.
14. Sigfried Giedion, Space, Time and Architecture: The Growth of a New Tradition (Cam-
bridge: Harvard University Press, 1941).

Invest igat ions in Collect ive F o rm

1. Paul Goodman and Percival Goodman, Communitas: Means of Livelihood and Ways of
Life, revised 2nd ed. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1960), 12–­13.
2. Kenzo Tange, “Architecture and Urbanism,” Japan Architect, October 1960, 12. (From steno-
graphic records of Tange’s speech at the World Design Conference in Tokyo, May 1960;
originally published as “Kenchiku to Toshi ni Tsuite” in Shinkenchiku, September 1960.)
3. Steen Eiler Rasmussen, Towns and Buildings (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1951), 81, 91–­92.
4. Louis Kahn, speech on the occasion of the World Design Conference, Tokyo, 1960.
5. John Voelcker, “CIAM Team X Report,” 1951.
6. James Stirling, “Regionalism and Modern Architecture,” Architects’ Year Book 8 (Lon-
don: Elek Books, 1957), 65.
7. Rasmussen, Towns and Buildings, 92.
8. Kevin Lynch first introduced the notion of “grain” as a defining aspect of cities in his
seminal essay “The Form of Cities,” which appeared in Scientific American 190:4 (April
1954), 55–­63.

Cit y and Mod ernism

1. David Riesman, Nathan Glazer, and Reuel Denney, The Lonely Crowd: A Study of the
Changing American Character (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1955).
2. The term sukiya refers to a style of architecture that developed in ­seventeenth-­century
Japan. Associated with the aesthetic traditions of the tea ceremony, sukiya architecture
values asymmetry, individuality, and beauty as expressed in the crafting of simple
materials rather than applied ornament.

My Cit y: The Acquisit ion of Menta l L a n d s c a p e s

1. Jonathan Raban, Soft City (New York: Dutton, 1974), 225.

2. Takeo Okuno, Bungaku ni okeru genfukei (The Primary Landscape in Japanese Litera-
ture) (Tokyo: Shueisha, 1972).
3. Raban, Soft City, 226.

264
Ame rica: Highways, Detached Houses, and Sk y s c ra p e rs

1. Manfredo Tafuri, Architecture and Utopia (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1976), 38.
2. Reyner Banham, Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies (London: Penguin Press,
1971), 213.
3. Vincent Scully, American Architecture and Urbanism (New York: Praeger, 1969).
4. Magda ­Révész-­Alexander, Tou no shisou: Yoroppa bunmei no kagi (The Concept of the
Tower: A Key to European Civilization) (Tokyo: Kawade Shobo Shinsha, 1992), No-
zomi Ikei, trans. Originally published in German as Der Turm als Symbol und Erlebnis
(The Tower as Symbol and Experience) (The Hague: M. Nijhoff, 1953).

Th e Draw in g Called Br asília

1. Albert Speer, Inside the Third Reich: Memoirs (New York: Macmillan, 1970).
2. Similar to the Western game of chess, go is a board game of strategy played in China,
Korea, and Japan.
3. Albert Speer, Spandau: The Secret Diaries (New York: Macmillan, 1976).
4. In 1998, more than twenty years after writing this essay, I had the opportunity to
return to Brasília once again. I was eager to discover what had become of the city
in the meantime—to see whether it had found a destiny quite independent of the
objectives of those who had so diligently built the city. Night had already fallen
when my plane landed, but the light of the following day revealed that the central
area of Brasília was indeed greatly changed. What was different about it? First, many
large trees—some of them twenty meters high or more—had grown up to fill the
city. Through them, the vast continent’s highland landscape expressed a dry lyri-
cism. The superquadra (super­blocks) occupying the ­north-­south “airplane wing” of
Costa’s master plan had matured into fully developed residential environments. The
­eight-­story apartment buildings typical here were not different from those proposed
by CIAM, but now they are shaded by—and compete for visibility with—those tall
tropical trees. Although the slate had been wiped clean by Costa’s vision of Brasília as
a ­techno-­utopia, and no space preserved any historical meaning at that time, over the
years it became clear that Costa’s vision had allowed for—indeed encouraged—the
formation of humane environments in Brasília’s neighborhoods.

Note s on Urban Space

1. Takao Aeba, “Seio to wa nanika” (What Is the West?), Mita bungaku, Autumn 1989.
2. Koichi Isoda, Shiso to shite no Tokyo (Tokyo as an Ideology) (Tokyo: Kokubunsha,
1976), 57.

NOTES 265
3. Human beings seem to have an awareness of an outland from early childhood, and it
is not difficult to discover outlands in the drawings of children.
4. Saburo Kawamoto, Toshi no fukeigaku (The Study of Urban Landscape) (Tokyo: Shin-
shindo Shuppan, 1985).
5. Spiro Kostof, A History of Architecture: Settings and Rituals (New York: Oxford Univer-
sity Press, 1985), 37–­41.
6. Fumihiko Maki, “Hiroba to niwa” (Plaza and Garden), in Kioku no keisho (Tokyo:
Chikuma Press, 1992), 275.
7. Augustin Berque, Nihon no fukei, Seio no keikan, soshite zoukei no jidai (Le paysage au
Japon, en Europe, et à l’ère du paysagement), trans. Katsuhide Shinoda (Tokyo: Kodansha,
1990).
8. Michel Foucault, “Space, Knowledge, and Power,” an interview with Paul Rabninow,
trans. Christian Hubert, in The Foucault Reader (London: Penguin, 1984), 239–­256.
9. The best-­known example is perhaps the reconstruction of Paris by Baron Haussmann
during the rule of Napoleon III.
10. Roland Barthes, “The Eiffel Tower,” excerpted from The Eiffel Tower and Other My-
thologies (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1964); reprinted in A Barthes
Reader, ed. Susan Sontag (New York: Hill & Wang, 1983), 240.

Space, Ter rit ory, and Percept io n

1. Michel Foucault, “Space, Knowledge, and Power,” an interview with Paul Rabninow,
trans. Christian Hubert, in The Foucault Reader (London: Penguin, 1984), 239–­256.
2. Walter Benjamin, “Paris, Capital of the Nineteenth Century,” in Reflections: Essays,
Aphorisms, Autobiographical Writings, ed. Peter Demetz (New York: Schocken Books,
1986), 146–­149.
3. Rem Koolhaas, Delirious New York: A Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1978).
4. Herbert Muschamp, “Architecture Review: Buildings that Hide and Reveal,” New
York Times, September 22, 1995.

Reflect ions on Harvard ’s 1956 U rb a n D e s i g n C o n f e re n c e

1. Yosuke Hirayama, Fukanzen toshi: Kobe, Nyuyoku, Berurin (Incomplete Cities: Kobe,
New York, Berlin) (Tokyo: Gakugei Shuppansha, 2003), 3; my own translations from
the original Japanese.
2. For example, the architect Giancarlo De Carlo was invited to MIT and UC Berkeley
at the time. Subsequently, a summer workshop, organized mainly around De Carlo

266
 and Donlyn Lyndon, was continued in Siena. In 2003, an international urban design
workshop was held, attended primarily by young researchers, at the University of
Pusan, South Korea. For the last several years, the GSD and Keio University have held
a joint workshop dealing with the reorganization of Tokyo. Washington University
in St. Louis too has established a Tokyo studio, which is being supported by many in
Japan’s academia.
3. Tamiment Institute, The Future Metropolis, ed. Lloyd Rodwin (New York: George
Braziller, 1961).

Th e Japan e se Cit y and Inner Space

1. The last three terms are derived from the fact that the wife’s quarters were in the inner
part of the residence.
2. Eiji Usami, Meiro no oku (The Inner Labyrinth) (Tokyo: Minizu Shobo, 1975),
211–­212.
3. Yuichiro Kojiro, “Nihon no komyuniti” (Japanese Community), Space Design no. 7
(November 1975), 8–­12.
4. Takeo Okuno, Bungaku ni okeru genfukei (The Primary Landscape in Japanese Litera-
ture) (Tokyo: Shueisha, 1972), 85–­86.
5. Takeshi Umehara’s description of the awe-­inspiring tower in Xi’an is recalled from a
lecture.
6. Maurice Halbwachs, La mémoire collective (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France,
1950).

Th e Kaz e -­n o -­Oka Cr emat or ium

1. Jun’ichiro Tanizaki, In Praise of Shadows, trans. Thomas J. Harper and Edward G.

Seidensticker (New Haven: Leete’s Island Books, 1977), 22–­23.

Th e Le C orbusier Sy nd rome: On t he Developm e n t o f M o d e rn A rc h i te c tu re i n J a pa n

1. Charles Jencks, Le Corbusier and the Tragic View of Architecture (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1973), 180–­182.
2. Colin Rowe, “The Mathematics of the Ideal Villa,” in The Mathematics of the Ideal
Villa and Other Essays (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1976); Robert Venturi, Complexity and
Contradiction in Architecture (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1966).
3. Ken’ichi Echigoshima, “Sakanoborareru korubyuje II” (Retracing Corbusier—Part
2), in Kenchiku Nenpou 1995 (Tokyo: Nihon Kenchiku Gakkai, 1995), 5–­6.

NOTES 267
4. Ken’ichi Echigoshima, “Rukorubyuje no keitaironteki saikou” (Le Corbusier: A
Morphological Reconsideration), Kenchiku Bunka, October 1996, 89.

Making Archit ect ure in Japan

1. This essay originally appeared as a foreword to Dana Buntrock’s book Japanese Archi-
tecture as a Collaborative Process: Opportunities in a Flexible Construction Culture (London:
Spon Press, 2001), xi–­xvii.
2. A keiretsu is a uniquely Japanese corporate entity, consisting of a family of affili-
ated companies that form a close alliance to ensure one another’s mutual success in
­business.
3. Kunio Maekawa, Kosumosu to hoho (Cosmos and Method) (Tokyo: Maekawa Kunio
Sekkei Jimusho/​Toppan Insatsu, 1985), 209–­210.
4. Buntrock, Japanese Architecture as a Collaborative Process, 39.

Togo Murano

1. Robert Venturi, Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture (New York: Museum of

Modern Art, 1966).
2. Terunobu Fujimori, Nihon no kindai kenchiku (Modern Architecture in Japan) (Tokyo:
Iwanami Shinsho, 1994).

St illness and Plenit ud e: The Arc h i te c tu re o f Y o s h i o Ta n i g u c h i

1. Yoshio Taniguchi, “Sekkei ni tsuite” (Concerning Design), Shinkenchiku, September

1979, 155–­156.
2. Yoshio Taniguchi, The Architecture of Yoshio Taniguchi, trans. Jeffrey Hunter (Kyoto:
Tankosha, 1996), 14.
3. Richard Padovan, “The Pavilion and the Court,” Architectural Review, December 1981,
359–­368.
4. Interestingly, Padovan quotes the late Peter Smithson as stating that the completion of
these two buildings heralded the end of the heroic period of European modernism
and that the two architects, taking different paths, subsequently focused their attention
on the eternal qualities and the existentialist values of architecture. Padovan, “The
Pavilion and the Court,” 366.
5. The notion of and methods for establishing za are analyzed in detail in a book by
the Toshi-­dezain Kenkyutai (Urban Design Research Group), entitled Nihon no toshi
kukan (Urban Spaces of Japan) (Tokyo: Shokokusha, 1968).

268
6. Lewis Mumford, The Culture of Cities (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1970),
210–­218.
7. Ignasi de Solà‑Morales, Cristian Cirici, and Fernando Ramos, Mies van der Rohe:
Barcelona Pavilion (Barcelona: Editorial Gustavo Gili, 1993).

On th e In dust r ial Vernacular

1. Yuzuru Tominaga, “Toshi no genjitsu” (The Reality of the City), Shinkenchiku, May
1981, 223.
2. The Japanese term ma means “interval” or “space between.”
3. Hidetoshi Ono, “Shuen ni chikara ga aru” (Power at the Edge), Kenchiku Bunka,
August 1985, 78–­82.
4. Alan Colquhoun, “Form and Figure,” Oppositions no. 12 (1978); 27–37.

On Un iv e rsalit y

1. Jay Appleton, The Experience of Landscape (New York: John Wiley, 1975), 73.
2. Spiro Kostof, A History of Architecture: Settings and Rituals (New York: Oxford Univer-
sity Press, 1985), 37–­38.
3. Sumet Jumsai, Naga: Cultural Origins in Siam and the West Pacific (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1988), 3–­5.

Arch ite ctu r al Mod er nit y and t he Conscious n e s s C a lle d th e P re s e n t

1. Alfred Roth, The New Architecture (Zurich: Verlag Dr. H. Girsberger, 1940), 8.
2. Octavio Paz, from his speech on the occasion of accepting the Nobel Prize in Lit-
erature, 1990. The full text is published in English (trans. Anthony Stanton) in Nobel
Lectures, Literature 1981–­1990, ed. Tore Frängsmyr (Singapore: World Scientific Pub-
lishing, 1993).
3. “My fear . . . is my substance, and probably the best part of me.” Franz Kafka, letter to
Milena Jesenská, quoted in Margarete Buber-­Neumann, Milena, trans. Ralph Man-
heim (German title Kafkas Freundin Milena) (New York: Seaver Books, 1988), ch. 7.
4. Hiromi Fujii, “Shinpojiamu: Kindai kenchiku wo dou toraeru ka I” (Symposium:
How to Understand Modern Architecture, Part 1), Shinkenchiku, January 1983, 154.

NOTES 269
O ri g i n a l P u b l i c at ion Data

The essay “Formative Years” has been written specially for this book, incorporating auto­
biographical passages that appeared in previous essays—primarily “Modanizumu to no
deai” (Shinkenchiku magazine, special edition, January 1991); “J. L. Sert: His Beginning
Years at Harvard” (Process Architecture no. 34, December 1982); “Years at Washington Uni­
versity” (in Eric Mumford, Modern Architecture in St. Louis: Washington University and Post-
war American Architecture, 1948–­1973, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004); and
“Notes on Collective Form” ( Japan Architect no. 16, Winter 1994).

“Investigations in Collective Form” first appeared in 1964 as a pamphlet published by the

Washington University School of Architecture. The second part of this essay, “Linkage
in Collective Form,” was coauthored by Jerry Goldberg. The preface that appears at the
beginning of this essay was written three decades after the main text and first published
in Japan Architect no. 16, Winter 1994, under the title “Notes on Collective Form: An
Introductory Chapter.” It appears here in abridged form.

“Time and Landscape: Collective Form at Hillside Terrace” has been rewritten specially
for this book, incorporating passages that originally appeared in “Time and Landscape”
( Japan Architect no. 16, Winter 1994) and “Fragmentation and Friction as Urban Threats”
(Harvard Design Magazine no. 24, Spring/​Summer 2006).

“City and Modernism” was published in the February 1984 issue of Shinkenchiku magazine
under the title “Toshi to modanizumu.” “My City: The Acquisition of Mental Land­
scapes” was published as “Watashi no toshi—kakutoku suru shinshofukei” in Tenbo, March
1976. “America: Highways, Detached Houses, and Skyscrapers” was published as “Amerika
no toshi to sono kouzou no ichidanmen” in Karamu Quarterly, 1982. “The Drawing Called
Brasília” was published as “Toshi to iu <ichimai no e>” (The Drawing Called a City) in
Sekai, April 1977. “Notes on Urban Space” first appeared as “Toshi kukan ni kansuru noto”
in Kioku no keisho. “Space, Territory, and Perception” first appeared in the Wissen­schäftliche
Zeitschrift der ­Bauhaus-­Universität Weimar, 1997; it was coauthored by Mark Mulligan.“Reflec­
tions on Harvard’s 1956 Urban Design Conference” was published under the title “Fragmen­
tation and Friction as Urban Threats” in Harvard Design Magazine no. 24, Spring/​Summer
2006; the current publication restores the author’s original title.

“The Japanese City and Inner Space” first appeared in the December 1978 issue of Sekai,
under the title “Nihon no ­toshi-­kukan to oku”; shortly thereafter, the same text became
the concluding chapter of the book Miegakure-­suru toshi (Seen and Unseen City) (Fumihiko
Maki and others, Tokyo: Kajima Publishing, 1980) under the title “Oku no shisou” (The
Idea of Inner Space). The essay first appeared in English translation in Japan Architect, May
1979, as “Japanese City Spaces and the Concept of Oku.” The preface was added in 1994,
when the essay was reprinted in The Building and the Town: Festschrift in Honor of Eduard F.
Sekler (ed. Wolfgang Boehm, Vienna: Boelau Verlag). “The Kaze-­no-­Oka Crematorium”
appears as an extended essay for the first time in this book.

The essay “The Le Corbusier Syndrome: On the Development of Modern Architecture in

Japan” was a contribution to the 1999 publication Rukorubyujie to Nihon (Le Corbusier and
Japan) produced by Kajima Publishing, Tokyo. “Making Architecture in Japan” was written
as a foreword for Dana Buntrock’s book Japanese Architecture as a Collaborative Process: Oppor-
tunities in a Flexible Construction Culture (London: Spon Press, 2001). “Togo Murano” was
written as an introduction for Botond Bognar’s book Togo Murano: Master Architect of Japan
(New York: Rizzoli, 2001). “Stillness and Plenitude: the Architecture of Yoshio Taniguchi”
first appeared in Japan Architect no. 21, Spring 1996.

The essay “On the Industrial Vernacular” is an excerpt from a longer essay, “Kindai-­shugi
no hikari to kage” (Light and Shadow of Modernism), published in Shinkenchiku, January
1986. “The Roof at Fujisawa” was published in Perspecta 24: The Yale Architectural Journal
(New York: Rizzoli, 1989). “On Universality” was published in Selected Passages on the
City and Architecture (Tokyo: Maki and Associates, 2000) and has been extended into a
full-­length essay for the present book. The final essay, “Architectural Modernity and the
Consciousness Called the Present,” is published for the first time in this book.

Hiroshi Watanabe has translated all essays in this volume, with the exception of three essays
originally written in English: “Investigations in Collective Form,” “Space, Territory, and
Perception,” and “The Roof at Fujisawa.”

O R I G I N A L P U B L I C AT I O N D ATA 271
Photo Credits

I would like to thank the following individuals and organizations for their permission to
use photographs, drawings, and other illustrations that appear in this book; and while every
effort has been made to identify copyright holders for each image, I would be grateful to
hear from those who may have escaped my notice.

The Art Institute of Chicago (3.11)

Asakura Real Estate Co., Ltd. (2.11)
ASPI (2.9)
Fabian Berthold + Kathrin Linkersdorff (4.31, 4.32)
Botond Bognar (4.8)
FLC/ ARS, 2007 (4.5)
Harvard University, Loeb Design Library (1.3)
Khushnu Panthaki Hoof (4.28)
Koji Kamiya (1.2)
Kikutake Architects (1.6)
Toshiharu Kitajima (3.9, 3.25, 3.26, 3.28, 3.29, 3.30, 3.31, 3.32, 3.33, 3.35, 4.4, 4.12,
4.14)
Fumihiko Maki (1.4, 1.7, 2.1, 2.4, 2.7, 3.3, 3.4, 3.6, 3.7, 3.8, 3.14, 3.15, 3.20, 3.21, 4.16,
4.21, 4.29, 4.30)
Maki & Associates (1.5, 2.10, 2.13, 2.16, 2.17, 2.18, 2.19, 2.21, 3.10, 3.19, 3.24, 3.26, 3.34,
4.1, 4.17, 4.22, 4.24, 4.25)
Nikkei Architecture (4.22)
Kaneaki Monma (2.15)
Mark Mulligan (4.26)
Osamu Murai (4.3)
Takashi Nakasa, Naçasa @ Partners Inc. (3.36)
Ota Kinen Bijutsukan (3.22)
Sakakura Associates (4.2)
Shinkenchiku-­sha (2.12, 2.14, 2.20, 4.6, 4.7, 4.9, 4.13, 4.18, 4.19, 4.20, 4.23, 4.24)
Shokoku-­sha Photographers (4.11)
Kenzo Tange Associates (2.3)
Taniguchi Architects & Associates (4.10)
US Geological Survey (3.1)
Wide World Photos (3.2)

Fig. 2.5 is reprinted from Susumu Higuchi, Sora kara mita Nihon ( Japan Seen from the Air)
(Tokyo: Bungei Shunju Shinsa, 1960).
Fig. 2.6 is reprinted from Candilis, Josic, Woods, Toulouse le Mirail: Birth of a New Town
(Stuttgart: Karl Krämer Verlag, 1975).
Fig. 2.8 is reprinted from S. Lloyd, H. W. Müller, and R. Martin, Ancient Architecture: Meso-
potamia, Egypt, Crete, Greece (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc. Publishers, 1974).
Fig. 3.5 is reprinted from A. Buchmann, Lúcio Costa: O inventor da cidade de Brasília (Bra-
sília: Thesaurus Editora, 2002).
Fig. 3.16 and 4.15 are reprinted from K. F. Schinkel, Collected Architectural Designs (London:
Academy Editions, 1982).
Fig. 3.17 is reprinted from Osamu Mori, Katsura Rikyu (Tokyo: Touto Bunka Publishing,
1955).
Fig. 3.18 is reprinted from Noboru Shimamura and Yukio Suzuka, Kyo no Machiya (Tokyo:
Kajima Publishing, 1971).
Fig. 3.23 is reprinted from Uzo Nishiyama, Nihon no Sumai I (Tokyo: Keiso Shobo,
1976).
Fig. 4.27 is reprinted from Takeji Iwamiya and Kazuya Takaoka, Katachi (Tokyo: P.I.E.
Books, 1999).

PHOTO CREDITS 273

Ac k n o w l e d g m e n t s

The essays and projects in this book cover almost my entire career as an architect, which
began in the early 1950s. Looking back, it was my very good fortune to be acquainted with
a number of people who not only helped me broaden my view of the city and architecture
but also were an important part of a fertile cultural landscape where I could nurture my
own dreams.
Among these many individuals, several deserve special mention. From Kunio
Maekawa, I learned a great deal about ethics in architecture. Kenzo Tange and Josep Lluis
Sert—my mentors at the University of Tokyo and Harvard’s Graduate School of Design,
respectively—taught me about the genesis of modernism in architecture and urban de-
sign. My colleagues at Washington University in St. Louis, in particular Jerry Goldberg,
helped me to publish “Investigations in Collective Form.” My colleagues at Harvard have
continued to support my work while inspiring me with their own. Among them, I am
honored to have the foreword of this book from Eduard Sekler (under whom I took
courses in European architectural history). I shared the Zeitgeist of the 1960s with fellow
young architects of my generation, the members of Metabolism in Japan and Team X
abroad—especially Aldo van Eyck and Giancarlo De Carlo, the conscience of European
architecture at that time.
In every person’s life, there are always a number of encounters. What is thrilling about
each one is that it opens up a new reality when we least expect it. My own life is no excep-
tion. For me, this new reality is often exposed by the younger generation, and I offer my
thanks to them for providing a connection between my own past and future.
Regarding the essays themselves, I am grateful to Hiroshi Watanabe for his artful
translations of my original Japanese texts, and to Mark Mulligan for his accomplished
editing. And of course, much of my debt is owed to the members of Maki and Associates
who have supported me throughout the past forty years of my practice, allowing me to
find time to travel and write.

Fumihiko Maki