Invisible strings bind two countries as diverse and as far away as Italy and Japan. Those strings are made of creativity, innovation, respect and sometimes criticism of history and tradition. One of these invisible strings is represented by architecture. Both countries have been able to be at the center of great revolutions and at the same time decided to ignore this capacity to create and innovate.
150 years have passed since the two countries started their relationships and just more than 50 since they were among the leaders of what has been the last global avant-garde movement in architecture with the Japanese Metabolists and the Italian Radicals. 50 years ago the two countries were in full demographic, economic and cultural expansion, and those avant-gardes well-represented the vibrant seeds of their architectural proposals.
In a curious parallel, 50 years after Italy and Japan live similar cultural and economic conditions and a new generation of architects deals with the timeless themes of living and design.
This volume and the eponymous exhibition present a new and innovative parallel between the two countries, two generations, two ways of making architecture and to look into the future.
Rome, Museo Carlo Bilotti, January - March 2017
Contents
Address of Ambassador Umberto Vattani
President of the Italy–Japan Foundation
Invisible Architecture: the exhibition
Rita Elvira Adamo
A parallel in time and space: Japan and Italy
Cristiano Lippa, Federico Scaroni
Cultural context: An introduction
Avant-garde Architecture in Japan and Italy between the 1960s and the 1970s
Environment
The understanding behind environmental issues
Technology
Japanese and Italian avant-gardes: the possible future that was never fulfilled in the 1960s
Inhabiting
The dramatic evolution of the concept of living in the 1960s
The Heritage of the Avant-garde Era in Current Practice
Environment
Japanese and Italian contemporary understanding of the environment
Technology
Japanese and Italian contemporary approach to technology
Inhabiting
Japanese and Italian contemporary housing. Similar approaches for different contexts
Sou Fujimoto describes his architecture and the concept of “Primitive Future”
Eight questions to four Japanese architecture practices
IaN+ presents the backstage of its work
Eight questions to seven Italian architecture practices
Theoretical essays
Outdated Pavilions: Learning from Montreal at the Osaka Expo
Yasutaka Tsuji
Metabolist time
Julian Worrall
Maki and the concept of 'oku': The idea of depth in the Japanese city space
Cristiano Lippa
From ruin to ruin: Destruction, rubble and ephemeral in Japanese and Italian postwar
Federico Scaroni
Dawn of Industrial Design in Japan: From crafts to design in the 20th century
Kaon Ko
In-between space: Italy and Japan. Tafuri, Tange, Isozaki and beyond
Ken Tadashi Oshima
The packaging of Superstudio: From technomorphism to neutral surfaces
Beatrice Lampariello
Documents
Designers who philosophize: Superstudio in Japan
Gabriele Mastrigli
Superstudio, or the flood marks
Arata Isozaki
Japanese Stories: Pages from my Travel Log around the East
Paolo Riani
Lapo Binazzi. Excerpts from an interview, Florence, Lapo Binazzi Architectural Office, 2013
Rita Elvira Adamo
Sou Fujimoto. An Interview from November 2016. Tokyo, Sou Fujimoto architects Main Office
Federico Scaroni, Transcript by Francesco Martella
Intruso. A project by Analogique
Claudia Cosentino, Dario Felice, Antonio Rizzo