Japan can lay claim to six Pritzker Prize winners, more than any other country except the US. The influence that two of them, Toyo Ito and SANAA, have had on the next generation of Japanese architects will be explored at MoMA in “A Japanese Constellation: Toyo Ito, SANAA, and Beyond,” a survey of Japanese architectural creations since 2000.Starting with Ito’s Sendai Mediatheque — a glass cube with interior tubes and platforms that made it both elegant and earthquake-proof — and SANAA’s 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, the show will display models, drawings, and images of more than 40 architectural designs. The layout, consisting of intersecting spaces separated by translucent curtains on which are projected multimedia presentations, will echo the connections between the architects represented. The exhibition suggests that Japan’s culture, characterized by collaboration rather than competition, fosters a complex transmission of sensibility across generations that is quite unlike, and offers an alternative to, architecture’s “star system.”Since many of the participating architects — Ito, Kazuyo Sejima, Ryue Nishizawa, Sou Fujimoto, Akihisa Hirata, Junya Ishigami — have been involved in the reconstruction following the 2011 earthquake and tsunami, the show also addresses Japanese architecture’s response to the disaster, which has produced unusually beautiful buildings that demonstrate both a commitment to users’ emotional needs and a sensitivity to practical constraints.March 13 through July 4, Museum of Modern Art, New York.
↧