OMA sent us an absolutely fascinating book that tells the history of the Japanese architecture movement known as Metabolism. “Between 2005 and 2011, architect Rem Koolhaas and curator Hans Ulrich Obrist interviewed the surviving members of Metabolism, together with dozens of their mentors, collaborators, rivals, critics, proteges, and families. The result is a vivid documentary of the last avant-garde movement and the last moment that architecture was a public rather than a private affair…” You can see a few of the iconic buildings from the Metabolism movement here on ArchDaily: works by Kenzo Tange and Kisho Kurokawa’s Nakagin Capsule Tower.
If you are not familiar with Japan’s architectural history during the 1930s then the beginning of this book is eye-opening. Architects, including the future leaders of the Metabolism movement, had their eyes on designing utopias in the newly conquered lands of China, Korea, Mongolia, Thailand, Vietnam, Laos, Burma, the Philippines, and Indonesia. They envisioned their designs arising out of a tabula rasa. Ironically, it would be the wholesale destruction of Japan during World War II that would provide these architects with that “tabula rasa”. Interestingly, when Koolhaas interviews Arata Isozaki, you discover that Kenzo Tange never spoke of the two competitions he won during the war years and the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park.
