As the last of the debris is cleared from the Great East Japan Earthquake and plans are drawn up to reconstruct the devastated towns and communities, architects and planners are pondering not just to how replace what was lost, but how to improve upon it. With fortuitous timing, Tokyo this September is hosting a feast of architectural exhibitions and discussions looking to the present, the past, and the rest of the world for ideas and inspiration by which to rebuild Japan for the better.
The World Congress of Architecture, the triennial gathering of the world's peak body representing the architectural profession, will be held in Tokyo during the last week of September, drawing an estimated 10,000 participants of professionals, researchers, students and the public. In addition to numerous small-scale satellite initiatives, two institutional exhibitions are spinning off from this event — the Mori Art Museum's "Metabolism: The City of the Future", opening Sept. 17, and the Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery's "House Inside City Outside House: Tokyo Metabolizing", which closes on Oct. 2.
Although separately planned and with quite different origins, scales, and agendas, the titles reveal the shared ground between these two exhibitions — the noun "city," the central object of concern, and the verb "metabolize," using a biological analogy to grasp how the city evolves and transforms. Both shows interpret the legacy of the Metabolists, a legendary grouping of young Japanese architects that came together in the late 1950s to advance a radical program of architecture and city-building for postwar Japan that became globally influential in the 1960s. The Mori show looks backwards, opening the archive of the Metabolists after a half-century for a new generation's attention; the Opera City show reinterprets the Metabolists' take on the city through the lens of contemporary Tokyo, seeking to tease out fresh principles from an analysis and response to the city's present condition.