co+labo Radović @ Keio University

co+labo radović   lecture+exhibition And... yet another Tokyo! @ORIS House of Architecture

On 27 February at ORIS, House of Architecture in Zagreb, Croatia, Darko Radović gave a lecture and Davisi Boontharm  an impromptu exhibition addressing the set of themes central to their research and work of co+labo radović, the concepts of ordinary and extraordinary, in architecture, urbanism and in the ways we live. The talk and exhibition were introduced by Andrija Rusan (an architect, Editor in Chief and spiritus moves of the broad cultural project called Oris) and Tadej Glažar (Professor of Architecture at the University of Ljubljana and, along co+labo, regular contributor to Anatomy of Islands 2012-16). In the media of words and drawings, Darko and Davisi introduced ordinary, dominant Tokyo which reluctantly opens itself to the stranger, and how they decided to embrace, for the foreigners rare, opportunity to live, explore and teach architecture and urbanism in one of the indisputable capitals of design culture. For that, one needs to learn how to enjoy what Barthes described as “the murmuring mass of an unknown language” which in Tokyo, indeed, “constitutes a delicious protection, envelops the foreigner […] an auditory film which halts at his ears all the alienations of the mother tongue”. In Tokyo they both understood Georges Perec, learned to observe and how to accept that, sometimes, one simply can not understand. Only then, Tokyo gives itself generously, opens up in its own, beautiful and provocative ways.

And ... yet Another Tokyo focused at some extraordinary places, practices and moments within the ordinary, lived Tokyo. Visual explorations of extraordinary-within-the-ordinary captured in Davisi's visual, drawing and watercolour diaries, both announced and, literally, unfolded in parallel with Darko's talk. The following day, Professor Glažar and the well-known architectural  critic, writer and an executive editor in Oris, Maroje Mrduljaš conducted a wide-ranging interview with Darko, which is going to feature in one of the future issues of the magazine.