Japanese Houses Reading Response 3: Tarzans in the Media Forest / Toyo Ito

12 March 2020

Japanese Houses Reading Response 3

Article: Tarzans in the Media Forest / Toyo Ito
• What is the Reality of Architecture in a Futuristic City? (1988)
• Dismantling and Reconstituting the ‘House’ in a Disordered City (1988)
• Twenty-First Century Curtains: A Theory of Fluid Architecture (1990)

Summary
Ito’s impression of a city is gained while travelling from the airport to the city centre; as this journey displayed the visual, smell, sound, characteristics and expressions of the city. Ito thinks Tokyo is a city with a labyrinthine interior, but without an exterior.

A city is designed and built based on an architect’s dream of a future city. However, urban spaces transformed repeatedly and could become completely different from the architect’s aspiration, but could still be futuristic. Films successfully visualized the image of invisible urban spaces of a futuristic city. The switch from reality into futuristic image resulted from the transformation of scale, movement, noises, spatial conception and time.

Tokyo is a consumption city and dwellers are increasingly dependent on the city’s amenities and spaces to satisfy their daily needs. Hence, the house is reduced to an idealistic concept, where urban nomads retreat for sleep and privacy.

Urban space is a space for flow of people and various elements. A temporary space ensured freedom. The contrast in urbanism leads to the creation of metaphor, which reduced architecture into its form.

Ito opined his architecture cannot be understood in isolation and architecture is an element forming part of the environment.

Opinion
Everybody remembers cities differently. The impression of a city is derived from experiences and memories.

I disagreed with Ito’s impression on Tokyo. Based on my personal experience travelling from Narita Airport to the 23 wards via the Narita Express, my impression of Tokyo as a huge metropolis reveals slowly as the train travels past the fields of Narita, suburbs of Chiba and the buildings intensifies till Tokyo Skytree becomes visible. This impression remains constant for every trip to Tokyo.

It is true that everything in Tokyo changes rapidly and videos of Odaiba do give an impression of a futuristic city.

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