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Agents of Transformation and the "Death" of Urbanism Preeminence of the Decorated Shed Staging Uncertainty |
[1S2] THE BRIDGE OF HESITATION. In Japanese culture, there has historically been another kind of interface; a psychological border between two opposed poles of awareness, which serves as a third, mediating element. I will suggest that this mediating element is described metaphorically in Kazuo Ishiguro’s An Artist of the Floating World: On three or four evenings a week I still find myself taking that path down to the river and the little wooden bridge still known to some who lived here before the war as ‘the Bridge of Hesitation’. We called it that because until not so long ago, crossing it would have taken you into our pleasure district, and conscience-troubled men - so it was said - were to be seen hovering there, caught between seeking an evening’s entertainment and returning home to their wives. But if sometimes I am to be seen up on that bridge, leaning thoughtfully against the rail, it is not that I am hesitating. It is simply that I enjoy standing there as the sun sets, surveying my surroundings and the changes taking place around me.36
Although this ‘war’ is more ambiguous today, it continues to take place. Garish pachinko parlors and late-night pornographic television abound, while sterile concrete structures and raked-sand gardens constitute a reactionary movement towards simple refinement. The duality extends far beyond these extreme examples, however, into the realms of consumer culture and mass media. In his essay titled "Architecture in a Simulated City," Toyo Ito discusses the increased homogenization of society as a result of widespread media technology and its focus on the consumer. He describes contemporary Japan as a borderless world of reality and illusion, in which the post-industrial subject leads a simulated life in an environment filled with ‘vacant brightness.’38 He writes: Media technology has isolated words from goods and diluted the reality of goods. We are able to develop images only by words or video images bereft of real entities. Thus simulated life has proliferated in other areas. Communication through media or, in other words, communication without entity has become a necessity in our daily life to the extent that communication without the media network is impossible. Communication that was once deeply rooted in an area or a local community has lost its significance. What is thriving in our cities is based on a network of instantaneous, ephemeral, and unspecific but numerous media that eradicate physical distance.39 One might conclude, therefore, that media technology has afforded a new manifestation of the ‘floating world,’ an abstract realm of words, lights, and images, in opposition to the reality which it attempts to usurp. Here we are reminded of McLuhan, who says that "societies have always been shaped more by the nature of the media by which men communicate than by the content of the communication."40 With regard to the age-old media vs. substance argument, it is important to note that as the boundaries become blurred, there is potential for increased diversity of experience. As I mentioned earlier, Ito suggests that the urban space on the commute between work and home in Japan is ripe for such diversity. McLuhan adds: "Students of media [in our case, designers of the modern city] are persistently attacked as evaders, idly concentrating on means or processes rather than on ‘substance.’ The dramatic and rapid changes in ‘substance’ elude these accusers. Survival is not possible if one approaches his environment, the social drama, with a fixed, unchangeable point of view - the witless repetitive response to the unperceived."41
Returning to Ito’s description of life in a simulated city, I would suggest that it is architecture which serves as the mediating device between the real and the ephemeral. Ito describes architecture as being caught between these two poles, facing contradictory problems. On one hand, how can we create a work of architecture as a physical reality at the same time that goods and consumer products lose their meaning, or that the demands for flexible, immediately accessible spaces escalate while local neighborhoods vanish and communications networks appear and disappear? On the other hand, how can we create a work of architecture as fiction given the physical nature of the medium, not to mention the ever-increasing need for habitable and culturally-enlightened space? Ito suggests that we face the seemingly impossible challenge of building "fictional and ephemeral architecture as a permanent entity."45 Despite the inherent implausibility of such a pronouncement, I would argue that it is possible to carry it out. In the spirit of the ‘bridge of hesitation’, then, architecture should serve as a vehicle for mediation between the substantive and the ephemeral in the three following ways: first, in terms of how physical and nonphysical systems are organized, considering the interface between the individual and the network; second, in terms of the instability of form, and the interplay between opposing geometries, as well as solid and void; and third, in terms of the membrane or skin and its invested capabilities for transformation. 36Ishiguro, Kazuo, An Artist of the Floating World (New York: Vintage International, 1986) p. 99 37Kerr, Alex, Lost Japan (Melbourne: Lonely Planet Publications, 1996) p. 61 38Ito, Toyo, "Architecture in a Simulated City" in Anywhere, Ed. Cynthia Davidson (New York: Rizzoli, 1992) p. 197 39Ibid., p. 197 40McLuhan, Marshall and Fiore, Quentin, The Medium is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects (San Francisco: Jerome Agel, 1967) p. 8 41Ibid., p. 10 42Kurokawa, Kisho, Rediscovering Japanese Space (Tokyo: John Weatherhill, 1988) p. 39 43Ibid., p. 54 44Kerr, Alex, Lost Japan, p. 62 45Ito, Toyo, "Architecture in a Simulated City," p. 197 Images: 1. Shotei Hojuku, The Great Bridge at Senju, 2. Pachinko Parlor, 3. Zen Temple Garden, 4. Toyo Ito, Tower of Winds, Yokohama
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Japanese
art has long been characterized by a strong duality between sensuality and ritual. In the
passage above, ukiyo-e artist Masuji Ono
describes ‘the bridge of hesitation’ as a physical threshold between his
residential neighborhood and the ‘floating world,’ the nocturnal realm of
pleasure, entertainment, and drink which served him in his youth as a place of escape and
redemption. This literal description of different physical zones within Ono’s city
may be taken as a metaphor for this inherent polarity in Japanese culture. Alex Kerr
writes, "On one hand, there is Japan’s free-wheeling sexuality, out of which was
born the riotous ukiyo (floating world) of Edo: courtesans, colorful woodblock
prints, men dressed as women, women dressed as men, ‘naked festivals,’
brilliantly decorated kimonos, etc... At the same time, there is a tendency in Japan
towards over-decoration, towards cheap sensuality too overt to be art. Recognizing this,
the Japanese turn against the sensual. They polish, refine, slow down, trying to reduce
art and life to its pure essentials. From this reaction were born the rituals of tea
ceremony, Noh drama and Zen. In the history of Japanese art you can see these two
tendencies warring against each other."37
Given
these conditions, is there a place in contemporary Japanese culture for a ‘bridge of
hesitation?’ What is the role of a third, mediating element? In his book Rediscovering Japanese Space, Kisho Kurokawa mentions
the Buddhist concept of sunyata, which assumes a third viewpoint between existence
and nonexistence.42 He also describes the importance of the engawa, an
intervening space between inside and outside, in Japanese architecture. For Kurokawa,
Japanese culture is multi-dimensional, and the so-called ‘gray space,’ or third
element plays an important part in negotiations between opposing views or positions.43
To cite another example - in his description of Kabuki theater, Alex Kerr suggests that
Kabuki has the perfect balance between sensuality and ritual. He describes a third element
- the pause - which is essential to this balance: "[Kabuki] began as a popular art,
and is rich in humor, raw emotion and sexual appeal. At the same time, after hundreds of
years, it has been slowed down and refined to the point where, within the sensuality,
there is that timeless ‘stop’ - the meditational calm which is Japan’s
special achievement."44
A Master's Thesis in Architecture at Rice University by Blaine Brownell. Copyright © 1998 by Blaine Brownell. All rights reserved. |
