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Agents of Transformation and the "Death" of Urbanism Preeminence of the Decorated Shed Staging Uncertainty |
[1M3] TERMINAL.
This is certainly the case in Japan, where airports and ferry terminals occupy their own artificial islands, and train stations are typically the largest, most diverse urban complexes for collective activity, usually sprawling across many city blocks. Every major city on the eastern seaboard of Honshu island possesses a sophisticated train terminal with virtually every function and amenity. Barthes writes of the station as being the "spiritually empty" center of the Japanese city.21 He describes his experience in the train terminals of Tokyo in the 1960’s:
High-tech railroad systems speed commuters on express trains from the most outlying suburbs into central exchanges where they transfer onto the underground system that runs three and four layers deep at major hubs. The management of the flow of millions of commuters through this subterranean net requires technical precision at every stage, from the scheduling of trains and the speed of escalators to the surface to detailed evacuation procedures, sophisticated ventilation, back-up electrical generators large enough to run a small town, automated ticket machines, and wickets. On the major freeways huge computerized screens warn drivers of road hazards and delays and flash recommended alternative routes. Trucks, commercial-hire cars, and private vehicles alike frequently sport a satellite-controlled mapping system that, in addition to providing traffic information, offers updates on weather and lists hotels, restaurants, and other facilities in an area on request. Commuter movement is ordered to create a smooth and predictable flow of traffic and to avoid arterial blockages.24
Simulated life is based
on the saran wrap of society. For instance, men and women stop at places before going home
after work in order to eat, sing, dance, talk, watch movies, go to theaters, play games,
or shop. The time and space positioned somewhere between office and home for such
activities are fully functional. People eat whatever is served there as if the dishes were
cooked by their mothers; sing and dance as if they were movie stars; discuss topics with
whomever happens to be there as if they were best friends; shop to cultivate rich dreams;
and exercise in an artificial space as if they were running in a field or swimming in the
sea. All are simulations, from the space to the actions to whatever experiences one gains
there.26 21Barthes, Roland, Empire of Signs, Trans. Richard Howard (New York: Hill and Wang, 1982) p. 38 22Ibid., p. 38-42 23Buckley, Sandra, "Contagion" in Anywise, Ed. Cynthia Davidson (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 1996) p. 83 24Ibid., pp. 83-84 25Ibid., p. 84 26Ito, Toyo, "Architecture in a Simulated City," Anywhere, Ed. Cynthia Davidson (New York: Rizzoli, 1992) p. 197 Images: 1. Liverpool Street Station, 2. Terminal, 3. Map of Shinjuku Station, Tokyo, 4. Sony GPS Advertisement, 5. Japanese Mall
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The train terminal is one of the most
familiar industrial-era typologies. Like the transformation of our definition of city,
however, the terminal has assumed a broader meaning in our vocabulary. Today,
terminals boast access to, and exchanges between, several different means of
transportation. Equally important is the fact that transportation terminals have evolved
into complex, multi-dimensional social condensers which are effectively urban microcosms.
Airports, train stations, subways, bus stations, and ferry terminals have all advanced far
beyond their typological origins into a new species, in most cases replacing the piazza
as the new ‘civic’ space.
The station,
a vast organism which houses the big trains, the urban trains, the subway, a department
store, and a whole underground commerce - the station gives the district its landmark
which, according to certain urbanists, permits the city to signify, to be read. The
Japanese station is crossed by a thousand functional trajectories, from the journey to the
purchase, from the garment to food: a train can open onto a shoe stall. Dedicated to
commerce, to transition, to departure, and yet kept in a unique structure, the station
(moreover, is this what this new complex should be called?) is stripped of the sacred
character which ordinarily qualifies the major landmarks of our cities: cathedrals, town
halls, historical monuments... To cross the city (or to penetrate its depth, for
underground there are whole networks of bars, shops to which you sometimes gain access by
a simple entryway, so that, once through this narrow door, you discover, dense and
sumptuous, the black India of commerce and pleasure) is to travel from the top of Japan to
the bottom, to superimpose on its topography the writing of its faces.22
Because these
stations are all connected by the arterial Tokaido corridor, the average Japanese (and
especially tourist) spends a significant amount of time in them. In fact, a one to two
hour commute is common for millions of Tokyo workers five to six days a week. In her
article "Contagion," Sandra Buckley offers an understanding of the Japanese city
as a "complex spatiotemporal configuration constituted in and out of movement."23
She provides this description of the complex infrastructural systems serving the Japanese
commuter:
Buckley writes
of commuter space and the movement through it as being unproductive and unremarkable;
"dead time, vacuous space."25 Because commuting occupies
such a significant place in the typical Japanese schedule, it has traditionally served to
separate different sides of Japanese life, such as home and work. However, Japanese
commuter space has increasingly offered artificial means for mollifying this distinction,
in an attempt to fill the dead time, in the form of surrogate socio/cultural experiences.
In his essay titled "Architecture in a Simulated City," Toyo Ito describes the
kinds of artificial experiences which this smooth, ‘in between’ space allows, as
part of the larger notion of what he calls ‘vacant brightness’ in the
contemporary Japanese city:
A Master's Thesis in Architecture at Rice University by Blaine Brownell. Copyright © 1998 by Blaine Brownell. All rights reserved. |
