INFRATECTURE. Agents of Transformation and the "Death" of Urbanism.

[2L4] AGENTS OF TRANSFORMATION AND THE "DEATH" OF URBANISM.

Kenzo Tange, Osaka Expo Pavilion (1970) Beginning with the formal establishment of their movement at the World Design Conference in Tokyo in 1960, the Metabolists declared an allegiance to the uniquely organic Japanese city and its complex evolutionary processes. With an optimistic fervor, they sought to develop a new language for architectural and urban design which would be sensitive to the changeability of space and function, as opposed to previous notions of fixed form and function.⁷² The projects that the architects Kiyonori Kikutake, Fumihiko Maki, Masato Otaka, Kisho Kurokawa, and others developed were concerned with alleviating problems of urban congestion, meanwhile embracing futuristic visions of cities with moving and interchangeable parts, similar to the work of the contemporary Archigram Group in London. Unlike the members of Archigram, who were more theoretically oriented and stood in opposition to the establishment, the Metabolists promoted the established design and building professions in Japan, and sought to work with the increasingly eager and capable construction companies to realize their designs.⁷³ Many of the projects, such as Kikutake’s Floating City (1960) and Kenzo Tange’s Tokyo Plan (1960), involved urban-scale megastructures built above the sea or on artificial land in order to ameliorate worsening urban conditions.

Toward the end of the decade, the Metabolist movement came to a close, as a new generation of Japanese architects turned their backs on mega-scale urban complexes, instead focusing on smaller, contextually-sensitive projects. The Metabolists had planted the fertile seed of heroic urban pragmatism, however, which has continued to influence the imaginations of Japanese city planners and developers in subsequent decades. Nevertheless, the so-called death of urbanism (which was, by all accounts, a global event) has led to the complete abandonment of urban design, at a time when cities could benefit most from it.

"Malling" the Globe What caused this death? On one hand, once optimistic planners and architects were involved in too many failed projects in the latter part of the twentieth century which left blighted or malfunctioning urban landscapes, resulting in the notoriety of Modernism. On another hand, the proponents of urban design discovered the countless social, political, and economic forces that shape cities in a fundamental way to be hopelessly beyond their grasp. Rem Koolhaas highlights this paradox: "Only 25 years ago architects were shamelessly projecting new cities. Now they invest the same amount of energy in regretting the disappearance of the existing city. The profession that once thought of itself as shaping the world no longer truly believes it has anything to add."⁷⁴ Thus, in an act of humiliating acquiescence, advocates of the ‘vernacular’ and the historic in architecture gave in to mediocrity and led the design profession down the luddite path we now call Postmodernism. In retrospect, however, if the International Style suggested a frightening world of homogenization and sterility, devoid of regional and cultural differences, Postmodernism only succeeded in exacerbating the situation by thematizing the past, thus emptying culture of its significance and transforming the world into a global Disneyland. What is more, Postmodernism is completely unreal. Not only is its imagery escapist, but at an operational level it completely ignores the technological advances and lifestyle transformations of our time. Thus, if Modernism resulted in a fight, then Postmodernism only led to flight. And, like the collapse of the artificially inflated bubble economy it fed, the empty age of design which Charles Jencks christened has reached its own end. We have learned our lesson well, and now know that the answer lies somewhere between the global and the regional, the heroic and the ordinary, the machine and the shed.

⁷²Bognar, Botond, The Japan Guide (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1995) p. 17

⁷³Ibid., p. 32

⁷⁴Koolhaas, Rem, "Fishing in Troubled Waters" in Anywise, Ed. Cynthia Davidson (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 1996) p. 160

Images: 1. Kenzo Tange, Osaka Expo Pavilion (1970), 2. "Malling" the Globe

A Master's Thesis in Architecture at Rice University by Blaine Brownell.