Today’s lecture by Dana Buntrock of UC-Berkeley was an excellent crash course on contemporary Japanese Architecture, I wish I could have sat in a semester long seminar on the topic but alas we had only one hour. The bulk of the talk focused on two schools of architecture happening in Japan at the moment which she called “Red” & “White” with one architect spanning the two in so-called “pink” range. She went into great detail about the characteristics of the two groups and the characteristics of color used to describe each. Red being rough and rugged, demonstrating traditional craft and even the “ineptitude” of traditional hand work. Even “childish” motifs aren’t out-of-bounds. It is more important to demonstrate the culture than to be technologically, compositionally or aesthetically perfect.
The other school, White, was initially more recognizable to me as “contemporary Japanese Architecture.” Firms like SANAA, Toyo Ito and Fumihiko Maki have created buildings known for their thin, flat transparent qualities, and often their white color. That is not to say they are solely meant to be perfect objects in the landscape and do not reflect the culture of Japan. The House in a Plum Grove by SANAA demonstrates its thinness in the wall section, plate steel, and details like the window frames which nearly disappear into the wall. Japan’s ship building industry has produced a glut of skilled welders who can no longer find adequate employment in the industry. This has drove down the price of on-site welding, thus steel walls don’t seem as extraordinary as they did upon first glance.
So much ideas, so little time. I will try to impliment my plans. Thank you so much.