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Architecture in a Simulated City

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Architecture in a Simulated City Oz Volume 14 Article 10 1-1-1992 Architecture in a Simulated City Toyo Ito Follow this and additional works at: https://newprairiepress.org/oz Part of the Architecture Commons This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License. Recommended Citation Ito, Toyo (1992) "Architecture in a Simulated City," Oz: Vol. 14. https://doi.org/10.4148/2378-5853.1237 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by New Prairie Press. It has been accepted for inclusion in Oz by an authorized administrator of New Prairie Press. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Architecture in a Simulated City Toyo Ito Images ofTokyo photographed aerially phone, and so on. These video images like a map are projected onto the floor. are incessantly shuffled and collaged on One is a flat and homogeneous scene the forty-four screens. Only occasion­ taken from three hundred meters above ally are images repeated. Environmental and graphically processed by a comput­ music processed by a synthesizer fills the er. Another shows the back of young space from sixteen-channel speakers to boys standing in a row and playing with add another dimension to the scene. game machines. The screen then abrupt­ ly changes to a scene of an expressway. This is the space entitled "Dreams," the The scene disappears into the depth of third room of the "Visions of Japan" the screen like the speed of Akira on his exhibition held in London. Visitors are motorcycle. By graphic processing, the showered by floating video images and screen is made completely flat without soaked with the sounds. Their bodies depth and the images become those of float on the river of the acrylic floor and dramatic cartoons. sway as if they were seasick. The Crown Prince of]apan, who opened the show, A floating floor ten meters wide and said he wished to have had a cup or two twenty-eight meters long is paved with of sake before he came so that he could opaque acrylic panels. A translucent feel the space more vividly. Prince acrylic screen five meters high undulates Charles, on the other hand, asked what in the longitudinal direction. A liquid could follow from these images. When crystal screen is incorporated along the I answered there might be nothing, he way which can be electronically con­ as ked if I was an optimist. I said of trolled in its transparency and translu­ course I was. cency. A side wall is finished with alu­ minum panels while a translucent cloth Although it was entitled "Dreams" by hangs from the ceiling. These screens Arata Isozaki, the organizer of the show, receive images from forty-four projec­ the space was originally to be called tors: eighteen suspended from the ceil­ "Simulation." This name was intended ing cast images on the acrylic floor while to evoke modern Tokyo, the simulated the remaining twenty-six project over­ city (the title was revised to respond to lapped representations on the screen the opinion of the London side who from behind acrylic or cloth shields. believed the name "Simulation" was too difficult for the general public who Numerous images edited and accumu­ would visit the show). The experience lated on twelve laser discs show everyday was to be like walking through scenes ofTokyo: flocks of people cross­ Kabukicho Street at night-exposed to ing zebra-zones, businessmen talking on tremendous video images and showered the platform while waiting for a train, with sounds. By looking into the screen a young man speaking over a public tele- of the video game, one was already with- "Simulation" Space from Visions of Japan. (Photo by Naoya Hatakeyama) 49 in the screen-intoxicated with the designer, Anthony Dunne, look like to the one above. An egg sixteen meters Coincidental to the time of the creation illusion oflight and sound in the space television sets fresh our of their pack­ long and eight meters in diameter is of the Egg of Winds, a model of similar as suggested by the Japanese Crown ages or comical androids breathing the wrapped with aluminum panels and shape was displayed at an exhibition in Prince, and suspended in a futureless air of information. They convert floats in front of two high-rise apart­ Brussels. This model for the River City space as implied by Prince Charles. images in response to noises filling in ment buildings. While the Egg is mere­ Town Gate 21 was shaped like a ship Perhaps we have no future to reach. the space or they generate strange ly an object which reflects the sunlight or a polyhedron with triangular planes. sounds. While commercial television in daytime, it displays video images The Brussels Egg was made with trans­ There exists, however, a distinct differ­ sets are packaged in ready-made (including both recorded and live parent acrylic material on the floor and ence between the simulation in the room clothes, (like businessmen in business broadcasts) at night. The images appear covered by translucent cloth and and the reality in Shinjuku. While the suits conveying mainstream informa­ on internal screens and the partly punched aluminum panels. Visitors real city is endlessly filled with noise and tion unilaterally) these objects are high­ punched, aluminum-paneled surface . could not enter. it, but could see chairs chaos, the collaged city displayed on the ly personal and poetic, allowing us to when a set of five liquid crystal pro­ and tables installed inside through screen is soon to be filled with white recognize anew that we are surround­ jectors are switched on. The Egg is translucent coves with the natural light noise or phased out into a computer­ ed with noises. We may have already turned into a vague 3-D existence coming from above. They saw a city life graphic stream. In short, the urbane grown an additional organ within the without a sense of reality, as if holo­ packaged within the Egg like an illu­ "scene" is destined to lose its clear con­ body which inhales noises like objects. graphic. Passers-by look up at the egg, sion: transient objects, like a mirage figuration and fade into morning mist. Even though these things are not seen stop for a moment to wonder what it without a sense of texture or existence. All the· realistic images melted into a with our eyes, our bodies, constantly is, and then walk away. The object dif­ They are. spontaneous phenomena: state of calm enlightenment may be seen exposed to the air of technology, fers in character from television sets ephemeral objects more like a rainbow as a "nirvana." If we are to imagine the respond to them, and synchronize our installed on street posts or a large than structures. future, what conditions other than the biological rhythm with them. Un­ Jumbo-tron color display which deco­ extreme state of technological control consciously, we may already have a rates the wall of a downtown building. If we think of the two Eggs of Winds can we expect? robotized body like an android. It is an object of video images which together, we may, perhaps, refer to them can be seen through the information­ as the "Design ofWinds." When we use In the space, five objects are placed in The Town Gate for Okawabata River filled air of the surroundings. This a filter of some kind to screen the infor­ the shower of the video images. These City 21, which we call the Egg of image-object comes with the wind and mation-filled, not-yet-visualized air, the objects, created by a young English Winds, is based on a concept similar is gone with the wind. object becomes visual. Acts of architec- 50 Egg of Winds, Town Gate for Okawabata River City 21. (Photo by Tomio Ohashi) Tower of Winds, japan. (Photo by Tomio Ohashi) ture today should attempt to discover home to such a kitchen and dining room from a grocery to a house) which super­ ety which was as obscure and heteroge­ such a filter for visualization. where his smiling wife and children ficially look quite individualistic. In neous as lava. Therefore, even if archi­ waited for him. If a Volkswagen or a other words, as observed in car design tects successfully attained homoge­ The Tower of Winds which I built a Citroen 2CV was parked outside, the of today, homogenized contents permit nization in a universal office space, it few years ago in front of Yokohama image of a new life would be perfect. trivial differences in superficial character. was limited within an enclosed terri­ Station, Japan, embodied most effi­ Nor only houses are destined to go in tory. When they took one step out of ciently this Design of Winds. The tower While the ideal life in the electric age the same direction, but also architec~ the office, there extended real and is characterized by being installed in was embodied in essence in this space ture. For example, air conditioning tech­ muddy spaces. the neon-lit downtown rather than of "modern living," we have not yet nology severs a building from the local beside a museum and the rower's lights found a space suitable for the ideal life climate and allows houses of the same Today, our environment is filled with wink like advertising neon. It is said in the computer age. This is more effec­ style to be built anywhere in the world; vacant brightness. Just like commodi­ to give an impression that the air tively reflected in the difference between it can be used in all styles of architec­ ties filling up the shelves of a conve­ around it is filtered and purified.
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