The continued post-war fascination with the possibility of harnessing technological advancements to further Modernism's utopian project was not limited to the West. The sci-fi flourishes popularized by groups like Archigram and the critique of consumer society found in Superstudio found resonance... [more]

The continued post-war fascination with the possibility of harnessing technological advancements to further Modernism's utopian project was not limited to the West. The sci-fi flourishes popularized by groups like Archigram and the critique of consumer society found in Superstudio found resonance in the efforts of many Japanese architects. In the 1950s, the Japanese Metabolists proposed giant mega-structures as an antidote to the overcrowding in their cities. These architects -- including Kiyonari Kikutake, Noriaki Kurokawa, and Kisho Kurokawa - zealously drew up such imaginative designs as floating cities and giant prefabricated "plug-in" living cells that could be inserted into helicodial skyscrapers. The Kurokawas' 1962 "Nagakin" capsule apartments remain one of the few realized Metabolist projects. Like similar Futurist movements in other parts of the world, the Metabolist vision could never overcome the unreality of its schemes and the impossibility of their scales. Moreover, the Metabolist projects came under greater scrutiny by a younger generation of architects -- a group that was suspicious of the totalizing yet almost reductive approach of its elders. Dubbed the Japanese New Wave, the new architects emerged in an era marked by an ideological emptiness left after the turbulence of the late 1960s. The young architects turned away from the mega-structures of the Metabolists, which focused on re-conceptualizing the urban fabric. Instead, they retreated inwards into a more reflective, poetic practice. Thus, architects like Tadao Ando, Hiromi Fuji, and Toyo Ito created a series of houses in the 1970s that were all extremely formal and introspective. For Ando, the need to escape the onslaught on technological modernization resulted in houses defined by walled enclaves designed to restore and sustain a lost intimacy with nature and culture. While Ando's use of concrete may initially appear dull and techno-efficient, he actually employs it to suggest a smooth plane on which to realize "surfaces created by rays of sunlight [where] walls become abstract, are neglected, and approach the ultimate limit of space. Their actuality is lost, and only the space they enclose gives sense of really existing." Ando's reflective approach suggests the New Wave architects' attitude towards the modern metropolis. They resisted the decorative delirium of much new architecture realized in the 1970s, notably enshrined in the scenographic tendencies of Postmodernism. While many architects would embrace a kind of historical kitsch vaunted by the populist tendencies of Robert Venturi and the impact of his strangely seminal "Learning from Las Vegas" (1971), the Japanese New Wave chose to rely instead on a poetic spirit that was aesthetically motivated and ideologically critical. [show less]