Structures in Kansai New Collection

KAWASAKI Kiyoshi
Professor, Department of Science and Engineering, Ritsumeikan UniversityGArchitect

The Changing Environment

I make my home in Kyoto, and though I am rarely conscious of the fact that I live in the Kansai region, the region does form the base for my work as an architect.
When I first began my career in architecture, the entire Kansai region was preparing for the Japan World Exposition 1970 in Osaka, some five or six years before the event's opening. Until that time, Tokyo and Osaka, or more widely the Kanto region and Kansai region, were thought of as contrasting spheres of culture. Furthermore, because the economic disparity between eastern and western Japan had grown ever since the Tokyo Olympics in 1964, with rumors of Kansai's collapse being whispered, everyone in Kansai was focusing on the Expo as a last-ditch form of resuscitation. Those of us in the architectural world focused our efforts on the Expo as well, keeping the international theme of the event in mind as we worked. The Expo proved to be the start of cooperation between architects in the east and west of the country and provided a springboard for other projects such as city and regional development plans and the resolution of environmental problems from the architectural perspective. It would not be an exaggeration to say that the framework for new concepts such as metabolism* and futurology in Japan arose in Kansai.
It is my belief that these events served as a sort of starting point for Kansai's new postwar cosmopolitanism. In this new milieu, in which architects from across the country were collaborating with each other on a variety of projects, the traditional geographic divisions between Kanto and Kansai began to shrink. In other words, unlike the geographical concept of applying the term Kansai to everything west of the old Osaka checkpoint, I believe it better to use the word Kansai as a pronoun representing the culture and identity inherent in the Kansai region. Although we might say that a new cosmopolitanism has come to the fore in Kansai, the region is also home to such ancient cities as Kyoto and Nara. Osaka is the stage upon which much of the area's history was played out, and Kobe exudes its retro air. Looking at these cities, it becomes evident that Kansai has its own particular brand of modern culture that has been built on an array of longstanding cultures. Thus, when we speak of modern Kansai, we must imagine it in terms of the intertwining of its endemic characteristics with cosmopolitanism.
In the beginning, modern Kansai architecture was pioneered by TATSUNO Kingo, KATAOKA Yasushi, TAKEDA Goichi, YASUI Takeo, and others, but the fact remains that the ideas behind it came out of Tokyo. Yasui, one of the University of Tokyo's elite who arrived in Kansai through a series of circumstances, assumed a rather challenging attitude toward the east, and yet, while he was cosmopolitan, I cannot help but think that Yasui was transformed somewhat into a Kansai person. The progenitors of full-fledged Kansai architecture were the WATANABE Setsu-MURANO Togo line of architects. It was Murano in particular, considered a representative Kansai architect, who pioneered the design of buildings that exhibited the real flavor of Kansai. In his work one can see modernism, but it also contains a perspective quite different from modernism, and because of this Murano has become a type of spiritual leader for other Kansai architects.
I do not know whether Murano was particularly conscious of Kansai itself, but in the breadth of his design repertory and sophisticated techniques was something that indicated that he had somehow absorbed the variegated design sense of this region. His habit of making change after change right at the site is something that is typically seen during the construction of tea houses and gardens, and that in itself runs counter to modernism. URABE Shintaro and others who appeared shortly after Murano were similar to Murano in perspective, yet they were not as sophisticated and their designs contained more of the primitive. This sense of style, which appears somewhat unrefined at first glance, has come to be a representative element of Kansai architecture.
When we speak of Kansai, we must also mention the general architectural offices such as Nikken Sekkei. Nikken Sekkei and those belonging to the rationalist school, such as TOHATA Kenzo and SANO Shoichi , the successor to Yasui's legacy, were direct opposites to MURANO and URABE. The synergy between the styles helped bring together modernist and more traditional forms of architecture to achieve an original new style that was an amalgam of the two. Along with modernism, which was spreading throughout the world, this multifaceted architectural movement was beginning to blossom, feeding off culture-rich areas while melding with the present. Tokyo may have received the lion's share of architectural projects that made the headlines, but as the twentieth century comes to a close, a considerable number of large-scale projects are being developed in the Kansai. These include the Kansai International Airport and the Akashi Kaikyo Bridge, and Kansai's growing exposure in international circles means that Kansai architects' sphere of operation is becoming global as well.

* Metabolism. This word was originally a biological term relating to living things. I use it here to describe a dynamic process that changes cities and architecture and as a way to predict what changes will occur and what types of architectural plans will need to be created for this future.