Any architecture tour of Tokyo should devote time to it's urban structure. Its loose hierarchy of urban spaces filled with scale contrasts and mixed uses is part of what visitors find stimulating and inscrutable at the same time.
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I once read a surprising statistic: the average age of buildings in central Tokyo upon demolition is 17. Coincidentally, 2011 - the year of the Tokyo UIA “DESIGN 2050” conference - will be my own 17th year in Tokyo. Asked to share some thoughts on line for the UIA's website, I have been unable to shake this nagging question: is the city that I tirelessly explored in my early years here doomed to this 17 year architectural “half-life” (and therefore already half gone)? By 2050, will it be all gone?
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I made a tour of Japan in 1992 for the first time when I majored in architecture at my university, and later I came back here in 2000 for my doctoral course at University of Tokyo. Now, after almost 10 years' living in Japan, though I think to have gained more self-confidence about Japan and Japanese Architecture, I realize that in reality there is still so much to be discovered.
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So here I go again, after a ten-year-hiatus in this chaotic, hot, noisy, ugly but at the same time ultra-sophisticated, comfortable and yes, at times even charming city, picking up the threads I dropped 10 years ago - business connections, friendship, favorite restaurants and funky bars.
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How we grasp changes? How can we recognize future trends, in the present? Where can we observe socio-cultural changes? At what extent can they be generalized?
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Sometime around 1980, Tokyo emerged as a place visitors came to see the future. Despite being reset to zero twice in the 20th century, devastated first by the Great Earthquake of 1923 and then by WWⅡ bombings in 1945, the city had already caught up with other major metropolises within a generation, under the tonic of an official “income-doubling plan” of 1960 and the 1964 Olympics. By the 1980s, the city was accelerating into its own alternate future, boosted by a surging yen and a frenzied real-estate bubble.
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A visiting architect-friend of mine described Tokyo colorfully as “an urban disaster with shit-piled-upon-shit”. Seeing my slightly annoyed face, he thoughtfully added “but it is fascinating shit”. This is a stereotypical reaction I have heard many times over, and not only from visitors. The Japanese themselves, architects as well as non-architects mutter an apologetic reference to European cities when we talk about Tokyo. Kenzo Tange once said that Tokyo has had many times over the chance to rebuild itself: after the Great Earthquake of 1923 or after the World War Ⅱ bombings, but according to Tange the rebuilding from an urban design's point of view always failed. Did Tokyo, the world's largest urban entity, really fail?
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As I was born in Turin, Italy, and I'm living and working in Tokyo, I feel lucky I could go back home in 2008 to see the UIA Congress and now I just have to wait that 2011 comes bringing another one to my doorsteps.
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