Topics in Arch Theory: Modern Architecture in Japan: Culture, Place, Tectonics

This course explores the diversity of forms and expressions that architecture took on in Japan from the 19th century until today. It poses questions on the capacity of design and construction to express and represent cultural, aesthetic, climatic, social, and political concerns. Through lectures and discussions, it examines drawings, images, texts, and films about architects whose work and words were emblematic of the following topics: The human interaction with the country’s climate and geography; The tectonics and construction of preindustrial civic and domestic buildings; The Meiji-era shift from carpentry to masonry; The adoption of foreign technology and styles; Visiting architects’ reflections on Japanese identity, style, and modernity; The critical reception of global ideas by local architects in the 1930s; Tradition and creation - their tectonic and technological expression in relation to socio-political motivations; The Metabolist group - its conceptual, metaphorical and technical underpinnings; Relations between form, abstraction, and meaning in the postmodern era; ‘Relieving’ architecture of its materiality through the concepts of flows, media, and scale; The challenges and opportunities of returning to wood as a construction material for public architecture in the 1990s; The concept of ‘weak architecture’ and the shift in the relation to the environment in the 21st century; The meaning of resilience in architecture in response to its clashes with environmental forces.