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Mutations and Contemporary Architecture in Tokyo

by John McGee

Installation view of Mutations architecture exhibition

“Mutations” is a group rumination on contemporary urbanism: What does the city of today look like? What forces and forms create it? How are they shaping the future? 

Originating at the Arc-en-Reve architectural center in Bordeaux, France, this exhibition mutates—like cities continually do—as it travels from one location to the next. Here at TN Probe, its program adds the specifics of Tokyo to the dynamics of contemporary cities in general. The four original groups—architect Rem Koolhaas and the Harvard Design School, philosopher Sanford Kwinter, curator Hans Ulrich Obrist, and architect Stefano Boeri—are joined by Tokyo-based architecture collective Atelier Bow-Wow. 

The ongoing projects of Atelier Bow-Wow and Koolhaas and Harvard are exciting and thought-provoking. Atelier Bow-Wow maps Tokyo’s super-planned macro-development—like Nishi-Shinjuku and Tokyo Bay landfills—and the opportunistic, micro-spaces wedged between. “Pet Architecture,” for example, catalogs the tiny shops and homes—closet-sized real estate offices, mini-car garages—that typify Tokyo as a space-conscious if not particularly efficient megalopolis. “Recycle Tokyo” proposes the adaptive re-use of idle urban infrastructure—a rotenburo (open-air hot spring bath) atop an incinerator smokestack, cattle-grazing pasture on apartment rooftops. 

Rotenburo (open air bath) in the top 
of a smokestack, a proposal by 
Atelier Bow Wow

The annual “Project on the City” carried out by Koolhaas and his Harvard students explores new trends in urbanism. Pages of photos and explanatory text from three different studies cover the main gallery walls from floor to ceiling. In “Shopping” they look at how the entertainment-oriented mall experience—what some call Disney-fication or Americanization—is infiltrating all areas of urban design. One page has a cartoon, “Mall Across America,” parodying the American Dream as a coast-to-coast, climate-controlled interior of Body Shops and Orange Julius. The “Pearl River Delta” project examines the politics, ideology, architecture and money that are going into the overnight construction of a 12-million-strong complex of five cities in southern China. “Lagos” attempts to understand how this sprawl lacking any infrastructure or organization can still function as the biggest city in west Africa. Their display is a bit text-heavy and uncomfortable to read (probably better in book form), but anywhere your eye stops is a view into the city of the near-future. 

Hans Ulrich Obrist’s twin projects expose invisible elements—sound and rumors—that compose the city. Of the two, the city as rumor mill is the more successful. Architect Arata Isozaki pulled items from various websites dedicated to urban legends and requests visitor to add to his list. Kazuo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa/SANAA piled cards inscribed with rumors on a low platform, encouraging visitors to take and spread them. The stale “Sonic City” has musicians like Cornelius, Yoko Ono and Merzbow interpreting the city as a soundscape. 

General construction firm Obayashi Corporation opened TN Probe in 1995. They hold two major architecturally-themed exhibitions per year, with smaller shows, lectures and other programs in between.

This exhibition was held Dec 2001-Jan 2002 at TN Probe in Aoyama, Tokyo, Japan.

©2007 John McGee

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