Aras Burak / AA Diploma 9

25th January 2010 Monday

Diploma 9 / Iconic Fictions III

The Impermanent Icon

The year started with the research for two post World War 2 buildings built in the two ends of the world. They are both not designed as permanent, final product. One is the Inland Steel in Chicago and the other one is the Nakagin Tower in Tokyo.

Inland Steel by SOM provides flexibility and accepts the impermanence of the building by having column and service free open plans. These 13 floors connect to a service and circulation providing core. On the other side, as a completely different approach, Nakagin Tower by Kisho Kurokawa is about the physical replacement of the residential capsules in time. These capsules can be equal to the column and service free floor plans of the Inland Steel building.

While the SOM's open plan takes its origins from the principles of modern architecture that we are all very familiar with in the western side of the world, Nakagin Tower takes its roots from the metabolist movement of Japan.

The metabolist group was formed in 1960's and was active for a decade. In 1970's the movement was disowned by most the founder team and the only representative of the group was their youngest member, Kisko Kurokawa.

Impermanent Tower

Nakagin Tower construction was finalized in 1972. The building is formed around a steel core, where the plug in living units - capsules - are hanging from. In September 1972, in a month's time all 140 capsules were sold out. The people who bought these capsules were in-town bachelors, families and corporations. Families used these places as an extension to their own houses, for their guests and corporations were finding it cheaper use the capsules as hotel rooms than paying for a regular hotel room.

However, these capsules were too much like a prison cell for their inhabitants. They were only 8 square meters in size and were designed for a single person to live in. A capsule would not even share its walls with their neighbours. The moment a capsule owner steps out of their personal space, he would be only facing a 1m wide, dark staircase and a lift.

In contradiction to this very lonely condition created, the rooms would face each other at many points from the large circular windows creating a huge privacy issue for inhabitants.

Capsules survived for 20 years just like Kurokawa's projection. They were not designed to be maintained, preserved forever therefore they were falling apart in year 2000.

The internal space of the capsules, with the built-in equipment and furniture was another failure.

A man removed his bed and pinned his favourite paintings on the plastic built in storage spaces, threw his own classical looking chairs and a tea table.

A young man got rid of everything in the interior and built his own bookshelf and placed a sofa-bed.

A woman removed the insufficient yellow lighting, replaced it with a really big white light source and brought in a large fridge for herself.

But my question at this point is; can Nakagin Tower really represent what metabolists were trying to achieve? Is looking at Nakagin Tower enough for understanding the ambition behind the metabolist movement in Japan?

There were very interesting ideas bringing six men together in one house for discussions that lasts until the mornings.

One metabolist, Kikutake's family was a well known landlord family providing infrastructure for many. His house was hosting many people for different events. This kind of shared infrastructure and shared spaces disappeared in Japan after the new land laws that did not allow one single person's ownership for a plot in order to slow down the development of Japan after the World War 2. As a response to this new law, Kikutake was supporting the idea of artificial land platforms that allows denser developments independent from the city plots.

Another metabolist architect, Kawazoe said once: "Metabolism is not something cooked up by architects and designers for fun". All five architects and one industrial designer were traumatised by the effects of the war. They all saw their cities destroyed and did not believe anything can last forever. They strongly believed in the impermanence of the materialistic world.

Impermanent World

We are in the shock of one of the biggest economical crisis of the last century. Giant music stores, banks are falling apart and closing down their braches on the most popular streets. Big names of architecture lost most of their commissions in the Middle East and shrunk their number of employees immediately.

There are no bombings, there are no military invasions but there's a physical environment dissolving every passing day around us. Architecture is too slow, architecture is too expensive.

How can we respond to the this constantly mutating world in an efficient and attractive way?

Site

Istanbul is one of the most impermanent cities in the world. It is a multi-centred metropolis that would not have a OS map like system at any point. The business district keeps migrating towards the north with an incredible speed, almost every decade. The consumption of the land is marked with the migrating icons. Two bridges to cross the Bosphorus soon to be joined by a third one, two stadiums of Galatasaray, one under construction in the north. The city keeps replicating itself leaving less popular city centres behind.

In this north migrating city, construction of the twin towers of Tatlici is being paused for 15 years and Cevahir Mall construction took 25 years to be completed. The unstable economical and political conditions forces us to look for new ways of building in cities like Istanbul and by the time they are finalized, the focus of the city is moved towards north and the building is already unpopular.

Also because of the earthquakes, Istanbul has been an impermanent city since Constantinopolis. The most important icon of the city, Hagia Sophia and it's dome was rebuilt more than two times in the history.

Metabolist idea of gradually developing buildings can be ideally tested in a city like Istanbul.

The modern Sisli municipality in north hosts the old and new business districts and it is developed on the sides of a main road called Buyukdere. The linear development of this district is caused by the geographical limitations the city provides. Because of it's non-flat topography. The city could never have a grid system. This topography forces the city to be denser on the sides of the main street and be linear.

Developing Form

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09 - 10 diploma 9 project (year 1)

09 - 10 history and theory

09 - 10 technical studies

08 - 09 intermediate 6 (jonathan dawes, marco guarnieri)

02 - 07 portfolio (works)

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