Antonin Raymond competition Study Trip Report by Tadeas Riha

The Antonin Raymond student competition was held in June of 2013. I took part together with Martin Špičák and Kateřina Frejlachová. We have we won the competition and therefore were awarded the shared prize of study trip to in April 2014. Even though he is by far the most successful Czech Architect in history, Antonín Raymond is barely known in his homeland. The sheer distance one has to travel in order to see his buildings was enough to diminish the awareness of his legacy. At least in the . The first time I have heard about him in school, was not in , it was few years ago at my Erasmus Exchange program in TU Delft. A Canadian scholar named Liane Lefaivre was (with an incredibly wrong pronunciation) mentioning certain ‘Antan Raimnons‘ as a great example of what she had referred to as ‘Critical regionalism.’ And she truly knew what she is talking about for it was she and her colleague Alxander Tzonis who invented this world famous theoretical posture. That day I have been the only Czech person in the room, and quite probably the school as well. And I barely knew him. I started to be interested in his work. Who is he, where is he from, what did he build? How is he a critical regionalist? The last question was answered still by Liane Lefaivre. Antonin Raymond keeps an interest of Architectural historians because he transposed the style of , ruling in Europe of his time, into the completely different conditions of far Japan. He did so in such a way that the techniques, typologies and quite often even forms of the traditional mingled with the strict abstract forms of Modernism. The resulting product is an architecture as modern as and utilitarian as that of for instance, New Objectivity in Germany, but on the other hand, enriched by countless details, materials and distortions resulting from the Japanisation of itself. The early examples of Antonin Raymond ingenious works are as modern as those of Ludwig Hilbersheimer or Gropious, but still softer and much more open to the local conditions and constrains. These open qualities are exactly what the authors of critical regionalism apprised and what we can be studying even now. In person, if possible. The latter would, at least to me, be hardly possible if there was not for the Antonin Raymond competition organized by the city of . Together with Martin Špičák and Kateřina Frejlachová we submitted a proposal. In our project we did not necessarily use Raymond’s building as a reference point. Still there were some similarities, or rather points of friction between what we tried to do, and the ideas of critical regionalism, such as reacting to the memory of the place and the typology natural to the location. This lengthy introduction finishes with the message I got few months later, about us winning the competition and going for the furthest trip in my life. Before starting to describe the stay I would like to thank to everyone in the Raymond office, namely Rahman Kac, Mr. Tschutchya, Mr. Toshinobu Miura, Missis Miki Watanabe. I also need to mention the further willingness of the Czech Centre in Tokyo, only thanks to which we could actually carry out the trip. We did the project together and by equal part in three people, and it was only thanks to Czech centre that we also could find an accommodation for all of us. Without that it would hardly be possible for all of us to go. I am using this paragraph as an excuse to express my gratitude to everyone at Raymond’s, as well as Ms. Takamine, which I will nevertheless do again at the end of the report. Speaking about the accommodation, this was itself an interesting encounter with the complete strangeness of Japanese culture. The cover of the Bedroom floor, the location, and, indeed, the toilet as a kind of robotic guardian of the single cell bathroom were all there as a sort of amuse bouche of what was to come later. The first day we met mr. Tsutchiya, manager of the office and our future guide Rahman Kac. They showed us the office as well as the original Raymond designed room on its roof. Antonin Raymond office is rather large one, running across several floors. They are working on variety of projects that stretches out from Japan. Later we also met the main manager of the office: Toshinobu Miura-san who was kind enough to speak about his personal memories of Antonin Raymond. He also has showed us photographs and plans of buildings that were never published. Meeting someone who actually was working with Antonin Raymond for so many years was quite an enriching experience.

1/ Visit to the manager: Toshinobu Miura-san, me on the left and our Friend Nikola who has just joined us for few days from his studies in Hong Kong to see some of the Raymond buildings with us. 2/ Group picture on the sightseeing platform above Tokyo. From Left Mr. Tsutchiya., our guide Rahman Kac, Kateřina Frejlachová, Tadeáš Říha, Martin Špičák, Nikola Dočekal

Church of St. Alban, Interior with diagonal rods

9th of April In the morning we went to see the Church of St. Alban. A humble wooden structure in the busy Shiba- koen borough. It was interesting for us to see the masterly crafted roof structure, system of diagonal beams and rods, in its fragile stiffness able to survive most of earthquakes. I personally appreciated the ‘trick’ Raymond has used - the double columns and double beams. Instead of singular clumsy structure, Raymond chose for doubling all the rods and columns, so the result is both aesthetically more appealing as well as stiffer. I have also enjoyed the unusual combination of bare brickwork and timber. After the Christian church we came across by a chance to A Shintoist temple. Shaped as a reversed Pyramid, cladded with some exotic kind of Marble or stone I did not know and standing there strangely and obviously as if it was the most normal building on earth. We entered and heard recordings of religious singing, we thought they were recordings at least, just to find out a minute later, that within the empty church one and only person sits in the front row and sings. It was interesting to compare this huge and deliberately impressive space with the humble materiality and scale of the Christina chapel we have seen minutes before. Even though, as a student of architecture I should not admit that, but what came after the church of St Alban was yet more interesting. The lunch. Mr. Tsutchiya invited us to a small but very busy Japanese restaurant specialised on, what else than, Sushi. It was my first experience with this all so Japanese dish in its homeland. It also happened to be the best Sushi I had within the entire stay. After the Lunch we aimed for an office tower with an incredible view over Tokyo. Unlike many similar towers in Europe, here you could actually go on the roof of the building and admire the panorama from exterior. After this brief stop we headed for another sacral architecture example designed by Antonin Raymond. The church of St. Anselm. This much larger building also joins an educational centre, composed around a common courtyard with the actual nave of the church. First concrete building that we saw of Raymond. It was also the first encounter we had with the designs of Noemi Raymond. In this specific church it was the altar and several other objects designed by the wife of Antonin Raymond. I must say that in comparison to other Raymond’s buildings we saw later, this one would not belong to my favourites, if there was not for the beautiful enclosed garden on the rear of the church nave. The nave itself, as an interior, shows an extraordinary lighting. Raymond used a typical way to bring light into factories> Shed like roof, which’ opening are oriented just to one direction, namely the north. He rotated this form from a horizontal structure of the roof into a vertical from of a wall. This lightening wall then is the main feature of the nave, it creates vertical ‘columns’ of light, directed towards the altar. After the scheduled program, with the enthusiasm typical for the first day, we headed to the centre of Tokyo, to one of its boulevards known for many examples of from names like Herzog De Meuron, Sannaa and others. 10th of April The next day after a some time spent in the Raymond office, where we talked about our future program, there were no more visits scheduled. Therefore we decided to visit the Asakusa temple. I mentioned the modern Shintoist temple from the day before, but Asakusa could hardly be compared to it. The slightly kitsch all-encompassing red colour, the entrance street crowded with souvenir shops and thousands and thousands of tourists all around. Asakusa, undoubtedly beautiful religious complex, did not become our favourite part of Tokyo. Therefore we have decided to just walk around the complex. We came across a traditional lampion workshop FOTKA and we found a tiny ramen ‘fast food’ where we had most tasteful, and surprisingly cheap lunch.

Church of St. Alban, Interior with the vertical openings directed towards the altar

We have also visited Kengo Kuma Tourist information on the edge of Asakusa complex. It is composed as several traditional Japanese Pitched roof houses piled on top of each other, the inevitable diagonal spaces in-between were then used as screening rooms. In the evening we went to see the famous Shibuja crossroads of pedestrian walkways. As many times before and after, we got lost to each other among the thousands of people, but luckily found everyone just in time to have a dinner in a small place close by.

11th of April On Friday we went to see the Tokyo women college. The most remarkable, as well as most famous feature of this building is staircase, or rather, ramp-hall. This space of black and white served as a more secure way of communication for the countless students. The surface of the ramps is cladded with anti-sliding tiles. The contours of the white ramps, columns and walls are highlighted with verticals, horizontals and diagonals made of black painted wood. Yet another feature, even though formal, that Raymond took from traditional Japanese architecture.

We also saw the auditorium, where, at the time of our visit, was an ongoing lecture. It was a shame that we could not explore the space of the main auditorium in closer detail, on the other hand, we could at least see the building being used. Much as in a similar way, in which it was used in the time of tis construction. In the next, smaller lecture room, we experience a strange sense of familiarity. Before leaving , Raymond has been a student of Czech Technical University in Prague, the same school that we are students of. Now when we entered the small lecture room we felt like being back in Prague. The materiality, window proportions as well as similar furniture might have emerged from Raymond’s study years memories.

The last room we have visited was the former swimming pool, currently an archive of the university. As a swimming pool it must have been an enjoyable space, as an archive it is now a rather ordinary storing space, was it not for the secret double floor, underneath which you can still see the original bottom of the pool. I found this mysterious covering of the past unusual, but most interesting way of dealing with the heritage of the lost function. We used the rest of the day for further architecture sightseeing. We have visited the Pasona Urban Farm by Kono Designs, An unusual combination of working spaces and agriculture. I must say that I found it rather funny, that the spaces meant as meeting rooms, were , because of the needs of the plants, heated up to such an extent, it was impossible (for a European) to stay there longer than few minutes.

Tokyo women college. Staircase hall

After this we visited Ryue Nishizawa’s garden house. This is a typical member of a row of most unusual Japanese houses that are occupying the websites of Dezeen and Archdaily for the past few years. I was always rather sceptical to similar exhibitionism of the architect. My feelings about this particular house were rather ambivalent as well. It is composed as a series of horizontal slabs supported by the slimmest of columns steel columns and most sculptural concrete shapes in- between. Was it not for these supportive mechanism the appearance of the building would be completely open. Its walls are made of curved glass, and the interiors are only hidden behind somewhat plastic curtains and extensive greenery. This sort of house is great to visit, even better to spent night in, but live in it is unimaginable for a Czech person, used for thick walls, and windows.

Later in the evening we went to see the ’s famous congress centre. The journey with the monorail proved itself to be an interesting destinati0on, mostly, when it was going across the see, in great height, just to descend as a plane thorough a huge circular turnoff, itself probably bigger than our university campus in Prague. Last thing that day we went for a dinner with Katerina’s friends and professors that she still kept in contact with after her exchange program back in 2012. We had a special type of dinner, I cannot remember the name of, sort of omelettes that you make yourself on the hot plate in the middle of the table. For the next day, we were scheduled to go see the Tama Art Library designed by Toyo Ito. Martin and Katerina did go there. I myself however did not feel very well and decided to stay home for that day. After what I have heard about it from them however, I still decided to go there the last day of my stay. 13th of April The next day I went to a trip to Kyoto. Even though there was just a very limited timeframe for the visit, I managed to see quite a few of its famous gardens, monasteries, and even the famous Castle in its centre. It is here for me to note, that to our great luck, the time of our visit to Japan was also the time of the Sakura trees blossom. It was especially in the castle that I could enjoy most if them. They were lighten up the same way as we light up churches and statues in Prague. People were standing underneath, taking pictures or just sitting. There were too many beautiful things I saw in Kyoto. Just to note one I will speak of the temple Fushimi Inari Taisha. A temple sitting on the foot of a mountain, which in fact is just a gate to much larger complex. The mountain itself is the real temple. There are several routes going on its top, which are completely surrounded with red gates, each with a different inscription of its donator. The visitor walks beneath this forest of redness for minutes, and hours if he does not limit himself to the shortest route. After this, we were just in time at the station, to get one of the last trains to Tokyo. 14th of April The next day was also free of program, so I visited the Hakone National park. There is tour that includes a steaming volcano, lake with cruise ships and spa town at the end. Even though especially the volcano was worth seeing, the entire circle was slightly over planned by the Odakiu company that runs it. In the evening I stopped by in the city of Odawara, to see their traditional castle. I have spent the next day exploring Tokyo. I have seen the Imperial Palace, the fish market and some of the boroughs around it.

1 Pasona Urban Farm by Kono Designs,2/ Ryue Nshizawa garden house

16th of April

We continue with visiting Antonin Raymond’s buildings. This day we are about to see my most and least favourite of his designs. We are heading north to the town of Gunma by Shinkanzen train. The travel itself is a great experience. We went all the way here to see the Gunma Music centre. In a way it bears a similarity to the st. Anselm church. It is a shell concrete structure, which’ broken shapes allow for greater stiffness. This structural principle is governing the form of the building. Resembling some kind of evil sea creature it is composed of the body – Main auditorium and two pincers – services and amenities. In the case of St. Anselm church the peripheral wall ‘broken’ into segments allowed for interesting lightning conditions in the interior. In the Gunma music centre Raymond used the broken form only as a structural principal. The lighting inside is positioned in the similar way as in the st. Anselm church, only it is not a natural, but artificial light. While this makes a perfect sense in the case of a cultural building, still, compared to the St. Anselmo, Gunma music centre was not too appealing to me. Its interior is somewhat too expressive, while the exterior too directly shows the structural principal used.

Later that same day we saw a true proof that Antonin Raymond had mastered the form, the typology as well as the technicalities of traditional Japanese house perfectly. The house family house in Gunma was inspired by Raymond’s own house and studio in Tokyo. His friend and commissioner liked it so much that he commissioned a sort of copy to be made on his plot in Gunma. This building has a simple rectangular plan, except for few point that I will refer to bellow. The windows are made of single glazing, covered from inside by the typical paper walls. The furniture, the surfaces and even colours are all original thanks to the great effort made by the officials of the Gunma museum. The structure of the roof is that of the church of St. Anselm that we saw the first day. By far my favourite part is the thinnest hall that connects the more private and more social parts of the house. In this point the building is reduced just to this hallway. The result is an exterior space cut in the otherwise simple plan of the building. This exterior space allows for a smooth and in-violent transition between the exterior and the interior.

The lightening ‘cracks’ in the Gunma Music centre

Kateřina and The Head of Gunma Museum admiring the original way electricity installation In a way this last house that we saw is a sort of fusion of all that I admired in the previous designs by Raymond. For in my humble opinion, whenever Raymond wanted to be worldly, like in the Gunma music centre for instance, he somewhat fails to compete with the top architects of his time. On the other hand, whenever he submits himself to the laws of local culture and tradition, and fuses this pliancy with the strength of the modernist form, then his buildings get most interesting. It is also especially these buildings that belong to this second group that are so appreciated by the Critics and Historians like Keneth Frampton, Alexandre Tzonis or Liane Lefaivre. There are few buildings like the Tokyo Fukio Kikusaburo villa or the Daniel Henry Blake house, that are even more than what we saw embodying this principle of fusing the , which from its nature refuses any contextualism with the local building culture. There are quite a few masters of modernism in the Architecture history books, but few of them were capable of stepping out of the shadow of their own style and create much richer works informed by the ground from which they have emerged. In that sense, Antonin Raymond was a true master and it is also thanks to this quality that he finally is getting a worldwide recognition in the past decades. But back to the subject of this text, that is reporting. After the visit of Gunma our guides returned back to Tokyo, we however, had proceeded further north to Nagano. We did not choose this city for the important chapter in the history of Czech sport that was written here, but simply because of its proximity to Gunma. We arrived quite late, still early enough to see the beautiful temple. By far my favourite in Japan. It might have been thanks to the complete vacancy of the complex, still the combination of natural wood, white painted walls and black details was much more appealing to me than the red and gold of, for instance, the Asakusa temple. After visiting these religious masterpieces, we were walking around Nagano, just to come across by accident to some kind of Sakura Blossom tree festivity. On a small hill above the city there were countless temporary pavilions in which people would gather to meat and eat, and for a little while we did so as well. As it happens, we had barely managed to catch the last train back to Tokyo. 17th of April This day we got separate. I went to see the Tama art Library that I missed before because of malaise. Luckily this report is not a list, it would be hard to compare whether I liked more the Antonin Raymond’s family house in Gunma or the contemporary Tama Art library design by Toyo Ito. Even though I have spent around three hours getting there by subway and walking I have finally found it late in the afternoon. What I most appreciated was the unusual combination of the concave curved plan and the use of another curve – Arched façade. There even was a third curve, that of the floor which was sliding alongside the terrain. The arches of this building are very slim, the rods holding the huge glass block in place still slimmer. This is possible because of steel trusses hidden behind these slim rods in the interior. This building was a great end of much greater stay in Japan.

1/ Tama Art Library, exterior 2/ Group picture in front of our house, with our guide Rahman

On the 18th of April I had to leave. It was earlier than Martin and Kateřina, and also the same day as the official goodbye party. I am really sorry that I have missed it, but it was only so, because of my school duties back home. Before I get to the end of this report I would like to stress that I did not write about every single visit we undertook, I chose what in my view the highlights were. This is how it has happened that I skipped for instance, the Kindergarten in Tachikawa, or the Tokyo Women’s Christian College, although they were very interesting to see indeed. To conclude I would like to thank (again) to all the parties thanks to whom this trip was made possible. Firstly I would like to thank everyone in the Antonin Raymond office. Everyone that we met was most helpful and friendly. Open for our own suggestions as well as providing us with many interesting details about what we are seeing, hearing, and tasting. Namely this is Rahman Kac our guide, translator and friend, Mr. Tschutchya who was our occasional guide and host, Mr. Toshinobu Miura who spent few hours with us going through the old drawings, publications and Photogprahs of Antonin Raymond, and Missis Miki Watanabe who was most helpful with organizing our schedule. Secondly I want to thank to the Czech Centre in Tokyo that provided us with accommodation that was not only very convenient, but also absolutely necessary for all the three of us to be able to afford this trip. Namely I would like to thank to Missis Takamine, who was in contact with us the whole time. Indeed I would like to thank also to the city of Kladno who has paid for one of our three flight tickets as well as, indeed, organized the competition. Until last April I have never stepped foot out of Europe. My first non-European experience was quite a shock, in the best meaning this word can have. I hope I will soon come back to this incredibly different country on the other side of the world.