co+labo radović co+labo's Samejima Taku@Todai on architecture and form + much more 

Following his presentation so co+labo and TAUD 2O2O students at Keio, our Samejima-san continues the development of his theme with a talk at the University of Tokyo - by zooming into the themes opened and zooming out, to explore the widest horizons of his interests. He explains that, very much in tune with Darko's own gaijin fascinations and frustrations discussed and problematised within TAUD since its inauguration on 2009, he is going to argue how "the impossibility of the translation between 'Architecture' and kenchiku precisely lies in the matter of 'Form'. If kenchiku made its prior concerns on the problem of 間 (ma = space, atmosphere), or the interface between Interior and Exterior, or its harmony with the surrounding environment, 'Architecture' on the other hand, has been dealing with the matter of 'How to create buildings as a Form-Object?'." Samejima-san claims how "it is not an overstatement to say that History of 'Architecture', is precisely the History of Form. This can be seen in the continuous discourse on Form, from Brunelleschi, Alberti, Bramante to Palladio, Borromini, and even to Corbusier, Louis Kahn, Aldo Rossi and O. M. Ungers. Such discourse on Form can still be seen in the contemporary dialogue among architects in the US, continuous from Renaissance for more than 500 years." He promises that in his Todai lecture "I will talk about this 'Matter of Form', through my Graduation thesis done in co+labo, education at Yale, fFormal Analysis with Peter Eisenman, Studio curriculums, and by introducing some of the contemporary discourses in the US. Such topics will include 'Image-culture', 'Theories on color', 'Pop-Post-Modernism', 'Primitive Forms' and 'Object-Oriented Ontology'. The discussion will elaborate this topic on Form in relation with contemporary issues such as 'Black Lives Matter' movement, the recent presidential election in US, and the age of Anthropocene and so on." For co+labo, this is a moment to cherish, a moment when one of our own takes off high, into the fascinating confluences of diverse architectural histories, theories and practice(s). Samejima-san's departure to Yale helped him enter the fertile fields of thinking about built environments which, to a careful observer and learner as he is, expose the limitations of both strong, but still regional Japanese ways, and of domineering, but still weak and insufficient "American" ways. The world of architecture is always richer and - what to say about the worlds of urbanism. At co+labo and at co+re we hope and we promise to wholeheartedly support discussions of the kind which Samejima-san brings back to his laboratory, and to his own intellectual world in the making.

 co+labo radović TAUD 2O2O special lectures 6+7: Tamao Hashimoto and Tetsuo Kondo 

The series of TAUD guest lectures continues with presentations by two inspirational architects and long-standing co+labo associates - Tamao Hashimoto and Tetsuo Kondo. Tamao-san, after his successful work at Geidai, recently joined Nihon Fukushi University. In his work, he focuses on a notation of the city, based on the scale of the body/directness "explores a way for celebrating our everyday life. In this case, the celebration means kind of the representation, the mediation, and the configuration of architectural /urban space twisted together with our daily routine, which looks like same repetition but there are quite diverse and overlapped rhythm physically & socially." At the scale of the body/directness, in his own words, Tamao "mainly tries to deal with choreography of movement, as a key term for representing architectural/urban situation, and at the scale of the architecture, he is tying to mediate a series of territorial conditions with spatial configuration of architecture. And, at the scale of the city, even though it’s still conceptual, he keeps describing a series of eccentric, conflicted, and peripheral conditions of the relationship between physical and social structures of the city." In his practical design, Tamao has adapted a method of mapping the city, such as trajectory, time-geography, and personal space, onto residential design process (left). And, in his design-research, he starts to deal with facility of mental disability, "which might be key for figuring out hidden essential relationship between object, human, and design, without reducing purposive affordance. Since Modernism, specifically speaking, since Alexander Klein described the circulation of human movement inside of a house around 1920, by following Taylor system, the circulation of human movement has been kept as a static/linear relic of lived experience of everyday life. From the point of view for tackling those situations, this work tries to invent for notating conceived, perceived, and lived spatial experience onto the static/linear relic of that."

Tetsuo Kondo who, after seven years at SANAA, since 2006 runs his own Tetsuo Kondo Associates, will address TAUD students live, focusing on the theme of "Architecture and people" as addressed in some of his latest projects, such as Inujima Hoppy Bar and Shichigahama (below).

 co+labo radović aSAUD 2O2O lecture 3: Matyas Gutai completes inspiring cycle of 3 talks  

aSAUD students have lived up to expectations, responding with interest and passion to the final in a series of excellent lectures delivered by Matyas Gutai, our Special Guest from Loughborough University. The final lecture reached crescendo by touching upon the largest, urban scales and detailing some probing examples of possible paths towards the more sustainable world. The ensuing discussion has not stayed at technical and spatial themes, but reached towards the associated philosophical issues, the questions of ethics of sustainable design, the dynamics of control and freedom, tradition and anti-traditionalism, and more.  That sets an excellent platform for successful completion of TAUD 2O2O, provides students with much needed inspiration and courage not to be shy when entering their next project. Thank you, Maytas and we will continue this collaboration though co+labo and co+re networks.

   co+labo radović TAUD 2O2O special lectures 4+5: co+labo's Takashi Takei+Rafael Balboa 

TAUD 2O2O series continues with presentations by co+labo's own Takashi Takei and Dr Rafael Balboa.

After graduating from co+labo in 2011, Takei-san joined Mt Fuji Architects Studio, and stayed working with Masahiro Harada+Mao ever since. The title of his TAUD 2O2O lecture is "design process of Hotel Siro - about concept". In his introduction Takei-san says how he approached this lecture as an OB, relatively close to everyone in and around co+labo , and talks about his personal experience with "engaging in design at an atelier based design office. I will talk about how exactly my latest project, Hotel Siro in Ikebukuro was developed.

The site is about five minutes of Ikebukuro station. The frontage is narrow, surrounded by a multi-tenant building and a love hotel. It is a corner facing north. From the situation of the site, one can feel psychological, more than logical connection with the city and the street. The planning evolved on under the concept of "hotel to stay in the city". The building was completed in April 2020, and the process consisted of ten months of design, an application and estimation period which took six months, and one and a half long construction period. What are the designers doing over that long period? In a shortest, we thoroughly consider and decide on "everything" that is related to design and usability. What we call basic design takes a quarter of the total work. The remainder focuses at a study and decisions regarding the dimensions, materials, and details of each part. That a concrete and very detailed work. We also, occasionally, negotiate with various government offices and agencies the interpretation of relevant laws and regulations.

While thinking about what kind of stance should be taken for this detailed and raw work, for us the "city" was consistently at the center. By standing by the keyword "hotel to stay in the city" we were able to keep direction and set pace in completing the project. From my personal position, rather than that of the staff member in a design office, I have been wondering if I needed such keywords when I was a student. Many work without their own design concept. That is hard to explain, but too many important things were there to spill out of the concept. In my case, this seemingly unanswered question has been heavily influenced by Mount Fuji's textbook, since the times when I was a student. I have also learned a lot from Jun Aoki’s writings.

In any case, the lack of an organised disorganized story is a problem, for both those who want be designers and those who don't. I hope that my presentation helps students in their thinking.

As our visiting research fellow in 2020, Rafael Balboa of Studio Wasabi was a regular speaker at co+labo. His TAUD lecture broadens his already significant contribution to all undergraduate students of architecture at Keio's SD Engineering. Rafa's lecture is entitled "Studio Wasabi Architecture: recipes for a perfect flaw". He explains how “The word is in romance with success”, was once the start of a talk session between its director Brett Steele and the American architect Mark Wigley about failures at the Architectural Association (AA)  Success in the creative fields (if not to say any other body of human knowledge) is in fact intimately entangled with failure. Almost in a masochistic fashion, architects struggle today submitting several ideas for competitions, in order to have very few of them built. In his book The Architecture of Failure how Modernism Douglas Murphy emphasizes the “suppressed, ignored and denied failure in the way we design our cities”.

Today, the failure has simply become a common ground for anyone who attempts to innovate. Hence some fundamental questions arise. Is architecture repressed only in the built environment that we experience or rather in the very concepts and ideas that generates such environment? What is to learn in the cognitive process of creating something? 

Under such theoretical frame, the lecture will revise some of the un-built projects of our practice, creating a narrative around the sketches and preliminary ideas that lead to a final proposal. Moreover, it will elaborate on the lessons embedded in the creative process, addressing the thesis that it is only through failures that we can start to understand success, or better rephrased, redefining the very idea of failure in our contemporary material and intellectual culture." 

co+labo radović  aSAUD 2O2O special lecture 2: Matyas Gutai, Loughborough University

Matyas Gutai's second special lecture focused at concrete projects using the concepts of Trans Architecture, two designed by Knego Kuma and Associates and two of his own experimental project - P1 built in his native Hungary during Matyas' Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Tokyo, and P2 in Taipei, while he was teaching at Feng Chia University. 

The lecture was followed by good discussion, confirming what Darko has stressed in his introduction - that the quality inputs can only create the possibility of a Masters level class, while the actual quality depends on quality of reception, interaction, thinking and discussion. The above screenshot captures the key aSAUD discussants who helped the session reach that level.

  co+labo radović   Darko's keynote at Symposium on Urban Morphology @ La Sapienza  

The keynote address by co+labo's Darko Radović has opened an intensive, online Symposium on Urban Morphology, which was held at  Sapienza, Universita di Roma, hosted by their (fittingly named) PhD Programme DRACo - Dotoratto di Ricerca in Archtettura e Costruzione. The Symposium explored "new scenarios, from the city of proximity to the city of sharing", starting from the list of key terms shared, smart, recycled, temporary, sustainable (see the details on the flyer, left).

Darko's keynote, entitled Japanese urbanity and urbanism: impossible parallels with the "West", introduced several fragments of his recent and current investigations of cultural difference as expressed in cities and urban life, starting from the arguments from "The strange idea of public" (published in Routledge Companion of Public Space, 2020), recent "Notes on (aesthetic) judgment in the times of globalisation" (International Aesthetic Association Yearbook, forthcoming) and "infraordinary Tokyo, the Right to the City?" (a+u shikenchiku, forthcoming). The opening was to stress all live in an increasingly homogenised world in which, due to proliferation and acceleration of all modes of communication, literally everything, from ideas to products, from people to viruses, almost everything instantaneously becomes global. Then a single but critical issue was tabled, the one directly related to radical globalisation – the importance of cross-communication capable to celebrate diversity and treasure the cultural Other - it attempted to point at dangers associated with an evident lack of such sensibility and, consequently, of the cultural diversity itself.

As early as 1967, in The Society of the Spectacle, Guy Debord has foreseen the dangers. He pointed out that “the modern spectacle was already in essence: the autocratic reign of the market economy which had acceded to an irresponsible sovereignty, and the totality of new techniques of government which accompanied this reign” (Debord). In 1988, not long before ending his own life, in Comments on the Society of the Spectacle the key Situationist has warned how “the spectacle has spread itself to the point where it […] permeates all reality. It was easy to predict in theory […] that the globalisation of the false was also the falsification of the globe” (ibid.). Since then, “a false ideological universality, which masks and legitimises a concrete politics of Western imperialism, military interventions and neo-colonialism” (Žižek), the irresponsible sovereignty of which has evolved into a fully-fledged reality. The perceived inevitability (ibid.) of the new, neoliberal version of the flat World needs to be confronted. 

The real discussion has only started from there, leading to elaboration of the finest nuances of difference base in the thought of François Jullien and his expertise in Chinese (and, thus, Japanese) thought of relevance to urbanism and architecture. The bottom line for Darko is, of course, in agreement with Jullien - that in many situations, important Western or Eastern concepts simply fall among those “in which other cultures have shown hardly any interest, to the extent that often they do not even have name for it” (Jullien). Historically, the (narrowly defined) “West” used to impose its ways. The key point of the key-note address was that that should not be allowed to happen any more, not even in the spectacular guise of globalisation. In the context of Rome he reminded of Italian sociologist Franco Ferrarotti, who has wisely warned how, when facing irreducible complexities of the Other, it is better “not to understand, rather than to colour and imprison the object of analysis with conceptions that are, in the final analysis, preconceptions”. Such absences highlight the possibility, inevitability and the beauty of difference.

 

The ensuing discussion was chaired by Dr Luisa Bravo, the President of City, Space Architecture the co-founder of Journal of Public Space and a long-time co+labo associate.

   co+labo radović    TAUD 2O2O special lecture 3: Saikawa Takuomi, ST Architects + KKAA   

The KKAA DNA code in TAUD 2O2O lectures will continue with presentation of Takuomi Saikawa, former Kengo Kuma and Associates who has recently decided to establish his own office Takuomi Saikawa Architects, while staying in close contact with his previous office and colleagues. To TAUD Saikawa-san, who also generously contributed to co+labo over the years, will present precisely that transition. He points out how "architectural design usually begins with an analysis of the site and the client’s requirements, building type, programme ... However, long after the completion the site conditions will change, the original client will be not there anymore, the building program will also change… What will remain of that architecture? 

My recent interests are the site geography and the structure design. Those two aspects do not change easily after the completion and are close to the nature’s blessing. They have the capacity to add special quality to the space."   

In direct continuity with Meijo-san's lecture, Saikawa will present both some of his projects done with Kengo Kuma at KKAA (Nezu Museum, Tokyo and Memu Meadows Project, Taiki-cho; photo above) and Takuomi Saikawa and Associates' recent M- and I-Projects. 

As Saikawa-san will present live, his lecture will be attended by Sano Satoshi, who will lead discussion and TAUD Q&A. 

co+labo radovićTAUD 2O2O special lecture 2: Meijo Toshiki, Kengo Kuma & Associates 

Some of the finest design produced by KKAA, famous for its excellence, bear signs of touch and quality of Mijo Toshiki, a KKAA architect of special talent and refined design sensibility. Associated with co+labo since its establishment, Meijo-san has, on a number of occasions, provided inputs to our activities, from guest lectures and involvement in design teaching, to joining co+labo symposia and parties. This year, he has also accepted to take part in the TAUD 2O2O Special Lecture series. In a brief summary of his lecture, Meijo-san explains how "boundaries always exist, in buildings or on larger, urban scale. Boundaries create multiple areas. Looking back at our work, we see how enthusiastic about creating such spaces we have always been. The theme of boundary was crucial to our two recently completed projects, in Tokyo and Minamisanriku. 

At the Meiji Jingu Museum (above), the key issues were integration of the new building in a hundred years old Jingu Forest, minimising the impact of our project on the forest full of memories which our predecessors have wisely created, and the creation of the territory that will exist next 100 year. The arrangement of trees in the forest, and various buildings in the inner garden form soft boundaries, creating a continuous interlocking of inside-outside spaces with the forest.

The main theme of the other project, the Minamisanriku Town Masterplan was creation of a new boundary to the area that was completely washed away by the Great East Japan Earthquake. Particularly important was the restoration of Nakahashi (left), a bridge which spans the Yawata River that runs through the centre of the town. This theme strongly defines the area which connects places beyond the boundaries of the river, and creates a new boundary. The bridge provides an unprecedented experience, a memorial space based on connection with the reconstructed park and two slabs that provide new movement opportunities to the town.

As an architect, I want to softly enclose spaces, and create a connected place. I feel that, by using the latest technology and incorporating historical character of the place its surroundings, the projects like Meiji Shrine Museum and Minamisanriku Nakahashi form a designed basis of good life." 

   co+labo radović   aSAUD 2O2O special lecture 1: Matyas Gutai, Loughborough University 

Matyas Gutai, a lecturer at the the University of Loughborough, School of Architecture, Building and Civil Engineering, who hold PhD from University of Tokyo will deliver a short lecture series, Masterclass within aSAUD 2O2O, which focuses at three of his favourite themes in his own research and practice. He explains how "the lectures take a journey starting from the idea of Trans-structures, an emerging new concept of adaptive buildings that achieve permanence and stability through structural responses. The name Trans-structures come from the fact that such structures are always in transition instead of definitive stable states. We explore two types of Trans-structures: buildings with embedded material responses (change of environment triggers a change in material) and hybrid structures such as Water Houses. In our last part of our series we will take a visionary perspective and explore how such structures can change the course of architecture and urbanism in the future." Matyas will deliver his lectures on Fridays 30 October, 6 and 13 November 2020, and take part in discussions with students.

  co+labo radović   TAUD 2O2O special lecture 1: Sano Satoshi, Eureka エウレカ + co+labo 

Satoshi Sano, who is with co+labo since its inauguration in 2009, opens TAUD 2O2O Special lecture Series on Tuesday, 26 October with his discussion of his design and design-research within Eureka, an award-winning practice which its members describe as "collaborative team of architectural planners and designers, structural and environmental designers". 

For TAUD 2O2O, Sano-san explains spatial compositions  of his architecture  by referring to influences of Hans Sharoun and Carlo Scarpa. He says how, "based on the hypothesis that the spatial residue (poche) in Hans Sharoun's organic space is an element that creates an organic spatial composition, we find how to create and design the residue. In Carlo Scarpa's space we focus on multiple, diverse floor levels, and find how to design floor levels as a starting point for people's actions. Herman Hertzberger's ideas about architectural space also features in projects of Eureka, especially when it comes to the relationship between spatial elements and composition and people's actions.

 co+labo radović  series of special guest lectures to mark the final edition of co+labo@Keio

2020 is the twelfth and final  year of the  co+labo radović@Keio experiment. The Autumn semester is marked by a number of events, including the series of guest lectures. In addition to those delivered within co+labo itself, two discrete series will provide special nuances to the concluding editions of Darko's regular courses at Keio University - Theories of Architecture and Urban Design (TAUD 2O2O) and Advanced Sustainable Architecture and Urban Design (aSAUD 2O2O). 

These lectures will be delivered by some of the outstanding practising architects and academics who have, over the years, left significant mark of quality on our work - to whom we thank and for whom there will be space in new incarnations of co+labo. TAUD 2O2O lecture series includes, in alphabetic order Rafael Balboa, Tamao Hashimoto, Ryoko Iwase, Katsuhito Komatsu+Midori Oshima, Tetsuo Kondo, Toshiki Meijo, Satoshi Sano, Takumi Saikawa, Takashi Takei.

These young, up and coming architects were invited to introduce their own work, influences and inspirations, and thus unveil the links to practices, literature and other sources. The exploration of those links will help TAUD students further explore and discuss the degree to which design does (not) operate in the vacuum, but within specific environmental and societal conditions, the larger cultural and intellectual scene. The ultimate agenda behind this lecture series is to advance an inquiry into the ways in which architecture and urban design (can) contribute to creating a better world, the quality of life beyond the bounds of consumption, and the right to the city (Lefebvre).

This stellar series will be introduced by Sanja Žonja discussion of the themes of Place Theory, and it will end with Davisi Boontharm's take "On theories of architecture and urban design".

co+labo radović Sanja Žonja's talk on Place Theory opens TAUD 2O2O guest lecture series   

An introduction to Theories of Architecture and Urban Design  (TAUD 2O2O) guest lecture series will be delivered by Sanja Žonja, co+labo's PhD candidate and her lecture entitled This must be the place: on Place Theory and Architecture. Sanja argues how the consensus what do we consider to be place tends to be taken for granted - while the term has the capacity for broad interpretations and applications, across many disciplines. Her talks focuses at relevant ideas which are well established in geography, philosophy and social studies, and their relevance in the fields of architecture and urbanism. 

Michael Nash's photo "A Beautiful Place" (Warsaw, 1946) with which Sanja illustrates this post promises even more.

co+laboradović  co+labo+co+re @ City Street Conference, Ljubljana

Darko Radović and Davisi Boontharm have delivered their key-note addresses at the Streets for 2030: Proposing Streets for Integrated and Universal Mobility, which was held on 23 and 24 September 2020 at the University of Ljubljana, Urban Planning Institute of the Republic of Slovenia and - reflecting the zeigeist - online. Darko's talk, entitled "When we think about streets, we are always thinking about something else", introduced some of his current work and, together with Davisi's "Capturing the Captivating Streets", charted the key ideas in the making of their co+re platform for strategic thinking making and living better cities. Rich follow-up discussion included the third key-note speaker, Dr Luka Mladenovič and co-chairs, Professor Alenka Fikfak and Dr Matej Nikšič.

Abstract of Darko's talk:

The title of this presentation paraphrases an argument, most likely formulated by Felix Guattari, that “when we think about cities, we are always thinking about something else.” I use it to point out how streets encapsulate many of the key aspects of what the urban is all about, its ultimate complexity. Properly conceived, (re)produced and (well) lived, the streets are indicators of healthy urbanity. Such statement sounds agreeable, apart from that indeterminate qualifier – “properly” –from which numerous legitimate questions arise. For instance, what do we think when we say – street? When we gather at international conferences and utter that word – to what degree does what we meant corresponds with Dutch expectations from their straat; Bosnian, Croat, Serbian, Slovenian or Russian from ulica or улица; Italian from strada; Spanish from calle, Catalan carrer; Vietnamese đường phố, Thai ถนน, Japanese 通り, Chinese 街, Arabs شارع, Israeli גאַס, or Turks from an, again internationalised – sokak? To what degree does what sociologists assume when saying “street” resonates with what a traffic engineer, an ethnographer, an urbanist, politician or a resident who has, perhaps, grown up in that particular space may think – and feel? The examples in this presentation are mainly from Tokyo, where I frame my research to include subjectivity of lived space, my own vécu. Attempts at conciliation of my personal, external and increasingly internalised views create conflicting perspectives, hint at the variety of possibilities and degrees of entry. As Jullien puts it, when exploring cultures and thought of the Other “only crossing thresholds and ‘entering’” might be possible. Thus Japanese, along many other non-Western languages, has no words for “public”. Neither the transcribed paburiku, nor indigenous kōkyo encapsulate the true meaning. That indicates an absence, or at least (to me) a very unusual situation with the concept of public – the cornerstone of my cultural, professional and academic frameworks. How to think streets without the idea of public?! How to admit that, as Jullien puts it mercilessly again, “other cultures have shown hardly any interest” in many of our key concepts?! In this talk, my aim is to be polemological and to both, in de Certeau’s tradition, help “force theory to recognise its own limits”, and demand humility from common expert practices of solutionism. In that, I favour local criteria of excellence (as in the old environmentalist adage, critically associated with global awareness), as expressions of (also controversially untranslatable) – the right to the city.