“Photography
is not about recording. It is about looking. To freeze and to frame a view of
the ever-moving, frameless world of reality means to show a subject through an
explicit perspective.” These words by Kenya Hara are the perfect explanation, if one were needed, for reproducing in a book Kenzo Tange's contact sheets of 35-mm negatives from the '50s.
Tange once wrote: “Architectural
creation is a special form of comprehending reality. It works upon and
transforms reality through the construction of a substantial object of use. The
artistic form of this object, on the other hand, has the twofold quality of
both mirroring and enriching reality. This understanding of reality that takes
place through architectural creation requires that the anatomy of reality, its
substantial and spiritual structure, be grasped as a whole […] Although
reality is outside us it is reflected within us. This inner reality takes shape
through the method of architectural creation. Comprehension of reality in
architecture occurs through this architectural method and it is in turn
deepened by the latter’s improvement and enrichment.” [Boyd, p. 113]
The camera viewfinder allowed Tange to comment on his own built work and to question the conventional historical perspectives on Japanese architecture. If we look at the images of the Hiroshima Peace Centre we see that his focus was on the fifty thousand people entering the plaza from the boulevard, traversing the ground floor of the museum as if it was a gate, and heading towards the cenotaph beyond it. If we look instead at the images of the Katsura Imperial Villa we see his interest in recreating a visual record of the living Katsura as it exists in the mind of an architect: the human scale of the screens and bamboo parts, the great tension between interior and exterior, the rich combination of natural materials. These sequences are an articulate and explicit expression of Tange's thoughts.
The book
accompanies an exhibition and symposium curated by Saikaku Toyokawa and organized by TOTO Gallery-MA in Tokyo
in March 2015.
Further reading
Boyd, Robin. Kenzo Tange. New York: George Braziller,
1962.
Kósa, Zoltán.
Kenzo Tange. Berlin: Henschel, 1978.
Ota, Kayoko
with James Westcott, eds. Project Japan.
Metabolism Talks… Rem Koolhaas, Hans Ulrich Obrist. Köln: Taschen, 2011.
Tange, Kenzo,
Walter Gropius and Yasuhiro Ishimoto. Katsura.
Tradition and Creation in Japanese Architecture. New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1960.
