Cosmos and taxis in Japanese architectural design thought
Paper presented at the 4S/EASST conference, 17-20 October, 2012 in
Copenhagen, Denmark.
Masato Fukushima
The University of
Tokyo
In recent decades, the term design appears to be gaining in currency
not confined to its original sense of engineering, but in such fields
as policy analysis where it is said that more design thought is needed.
Such growing concern of design thought both in things and humans,
however, raises question about the relation between these two different
realms of concern. To examine this relationship, I will draw upon a
well known criticism of the idea of designing society at will, by
Friedrich Hayek, Austrian economist and social theorist on free market
and free society. Despite of recent misidentification of Hayek as the
mastermind of neoliberalism in currency now, his comprehensive
examination of the constitution of social order is instructive in
thinking about the question above.
He emphasized that our society is largely based upon two different
principles. One is taxis, social order created by intentional design,
such as creating an organization with intended objectives. The other is
cosmos, spontaneous order created by accumulated interaction of various
actors like process of market exchange. Hayek vehemently criticized the
idea that the society can be designed in the way of taxis, i.e., top-
down manner just like designing particular organization with the
limited purposes. Hayek emphasizes that social order at large should be
understood as the outcome of the evolutionary process where infinite
interaction of individuals are accumulated in the manner of bottom up
that he called the principle of cosmos(Hayek, 1978).
Now his sharp criticism of the idea of ordering society as top-down
manner raises interesting question about its applicability to the area
of designing materials. Despite of the difference between human society
and order of things, we know that ordinary design process of things
inevitably entails social elements, so it is interesting to observe how
this kind of criticism works in the areas of designing activity at
large.
To answer this question, I will take up a case of a Japanese
architect who have fought against the conventional meaning of
architectural designing. No need to point out that architecture is a
product of complex process of designing, and its products usually
exhibit long lasting potential of constraining and guiding human
behaviors, and in general architects appear to be very conscious of the
social implication of their own works. This said, I like to ask whether
it is possible to bring in the conceptual dichotomy like cosmos and
taxis in the analysis of the design thought of architecture, and my
answer is yes, indeed, only if necessary conceptual modifications are
made for such application. In this presentation I will focus upon Toyo
Ito, one of the most influential architects in the post-war Japan. He
has been well known for his radical style of architectural design,
awarded with various international prizes, and his architectural
thought have deep impacts to his following generations such as SANAA,
the Pritzker prize winner in 2010.
I will follow Ito's changing ideas about his criticism of
conventional architectural design. Ito has maintained that architects
tend to design spaces based upon their arbitrary intention for such
space to work, which Ito believes to deprive the users of the freedom
to act. The picture presented here is Ito's favorite drawing describing
the traditional scene of a picnic under cherry blossom in spring. For
Ito, architecture should be something like the curtain here only to
demarcate the inside from outside. His message is that architects
should not impose their designing intention to the users, but should be
minimal like this curtain.
Ito's persistent criticism of the designers' arbitrary intention
reminds me of Hayek's criticism of rationalist constructivism based
upon the idea of taxis, but then a question arises how architectural
design is possible without such intentional designing, which sounds to
me to be self-contradictory. I will show, however, that it is exactly
this self-contradictory nature of his criticism that has made him
search for proper answer to this question, and that meandering process
reveals the intriguing process of finding the real meaning of the
social in designing practice.
There are largely three periods of Ito's changing practice of design.
The first period is his early days before Sendai Mediateque in the year
2000. In this period, his criticism of imposing character of
architecture were mainly conceptualized in temrs of his choice of
materials that resulted in his pursuit of thin and light architectures.
His own house called silver hut and a restaurant called nomad,
demolished within a year were the example of his pursuit in these
years. .
At that period, he wrote about ephemerality of architecture as the
criticism of the ideal of ever-lasting architecture in the western
tradition (Ito, 1989) . This pursuit of thinness was further extended
by his followers, like in the case of Kanazawa museum designed by
SANAA, well known of its transparent glass walls and thin structure.
This tendency is further developed by Jun'ya Ishigami, who was honored
with the Golden Lions Medal at Venice Biennale in 2010 for his light,
thin, airy architecture.
Ito's quest for material thinness as the criticism of imposing
character of architecture, however, changed dramatically at the time of
Sendai Mediateque. And this is the second period. The original plan of
this world famous media center was seen in his first sketch imagined as
see-weed-like pillars supporting the whole structure, intended to be
light in structure. However, this idea was radically transformed by an
ingenious structural designer Mutsuro Sasaki(cf. Sasaki, 2017) as the
monumental structure of tube like pillars made of iron that resulted in
the superbly original structure that made Ito's name globally famous.
In the process, however, Ito was reported to be agonized by observing
the gigantic volume of the building coming into being, his philosophy
of thinness as the fight against the arbitrary design was shattered by
his own work. In the process, however, he realized that there should be
other means to avoid architect's arbitrary intention than to seek for
thinness only.
After this Mediateque, what Ito adopted as his new style was the
sort of computer based algorithmic design that in principle was
expected to exclude arbitrary intention of architects by its automatic
creation of complex forms. In collaboration with Cecil Balmond, well
known structural designer, Ito's architectural style dramatically
changed from thinness to materially voluminous, yet structurally
fractal or curvy (Ito, 2002).
Another element that impressed Ito during the process of
constructing Sendai Mediateque was his enormous efforts to negotiate
with various concerned citizens groups in question of Ito's design
plan. Opponents argued, for instance, that his brand new design was too
conspicuous, being obstacle to the exhibition of the artworks therein.
Through the process of public discussion, he gradually realized the
importance of involving possible users even in the process of design.
Interestingly however, these two developments after the Mediateque,
namely algorithmic design and the involvement of users, are not really
commensurable to each other. He did not seem to realize the possible
hiatus of these two different directions because for him, these are
both in line with his objectives of eliminating the personal intention
of individual designers. But soon he would realize this is not the
case.
The third period of his development is after the Tohoku disaster
last year. Among architects who responded quickly to this catastrophe,
Ito also launched a concerned group of well known architects. However,
they were forced to face with the severe reality that in the time of
emergency, their expensive and artistic design method was not needed by
those who were afflicted by the disaster. Their first meeting was in
fact filled with deploring that architects were not needed by the
society at large.
Ito made contact with Kamaishi-city that was also heavily damaged by
tsunami, and in the process of planning to reconstruct the area, he
decided to build a communal house among the victims living in makeshift
housing. What surprised those who knew him was its utterly conventional
style, following the traditional pattern of Japanese wooden houses.
This is the first time for his long career to adopt such vernacular
element for his design.
This indeed is an impressive break from his earlier pursuit of
radical avant-gardism. Although he had often emphasized the meaning of
architecture in the social context, his notion of 'the social' had been
often ambiguous. His earlier ephemerality was a mirror of the consumer
society at that time, and his closer contact with concerned groups for
Sendai Mediateque made him more perceptive about such groups. Yet the
notion of the social was still restrained by his ambition to be avant-
garde in architectural design.
Interestingly, he should have realized the cleavage between these two
orientations, as he had started emphasizing the hiatus between
architects and the society at large even before the disaster. His House
for All, shows his determination to take the notion of social more
seriously. His adoption of traditional style follows the wish of
refugees in the makeshift housing. He actually confessed the
conflicting feeling about such vernacular vocabulary, which clearly
shows the depth of such cleavage.
Concluding remarks
Ito's case is an interesting example of the consequence of the self-
contradictory claim of how to design without arbitrary designing
intention. Despite his incessant criticism of a sort of top-down
approach to designing process, he never had adopted such idea as
pattern language by Christopher Alexander for the design method using
vocabularies of vernacular architecture before the House for All
(Alexander et al. 1977). Rather, what he has been doing was to have
constantly reinterpreted what was the meaning of realizing self-
contradictory concept of anti-design within the framework of avant-
gardism. .
Interestingly, this notion of anti-design can be interpreted from
various aspects. In the first phase, it was mainly about the
materiality of architecture, so anti-design is interpreted as thinness
and ephemerality of material. Sendai Mediateque made him realized
however, that there were other ways than being thin for this anti-
design. So he shifted his emphasis not upon the thickness of the walls
but the very design process of using algorithm. His growing concern
about the social aspect of design process was also becoming important,
but it was exactly when the Tohoku area was hit by disaster, his rather
abstract rhetoric of anti-design and the meaning of social became in
the forefront for his own activity.
Ito's pursuit reveals the complex constellation of elements where
leading architects like him is situated. Architects' design works that
are accompanied with social impact. And Ito's criticism of top-down
design process shows its self-contradictory character that results
various answers that he produced. His final answer so far, House for
All, strongly reminded me of Alexander's "pattern language", with the
own ideal of self-built architecture. I am not quite sure if this is
what Ito wants now, but at least this rather fits the dichotomy between
taxis and cosmos, shown in the introduction.
Hayek never insisted that it's only the spontaneous order that
should be applied to society. His message was design thought should not
monopolize the scene in the context of constitution of society. Then
can architecture be ordered in the manner of spontaneity? Ito's
challenges, including his failures, seems to show how it is possible in
the context of architectural designing.
Reference
Alexander, C. et al. (1977) A pattern language : Towns, buildings,
construction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977
Hayek, F. (1978) Law, legislation and liberty, Volume 1: Rules and
order Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Ito, T. (2002) Serpentine gallery pavilion. Tokyo: Kenchiku-Toshi
Workshop. (in Japanese).
Ito, T. (1989) Transformation of winds: A chronicle of architecture.
Tokyo: Seido-sha. (in Japanese)
Ito School (2006) Ten adventures around the world of architecture.
Tokyo: Shokoku-sha. (in Japanese)
Sasaki, M et al. (2017) Structure, construction, architecture: The
structural vision of Mutsuro Sasaki. Tokyo: LIXIL. (in Japanese).
