Arata isozaki is on of the most influential architects working today.

Over the last four decades, he has designed an extraordinary series of projects and buildings that have made a significant contribution to the evolution of contemporary architecture worldwide. His highly original approach replaces the purely rationalist(berdasarkan apa) precept( aturan) underlying modern architecture with more personal, even idiosyncratic(istimewa), aesthetic- one that is synthesis of historical symbolism and the most advanced developments in technology and communication. His architecture neither blatantly quotes from a romantic past nor wholly embraces these forces in a specific contemporary context. The architect work was installed in 5 thematic groups: Theme 1 : genesis of imagination, featured proposal for Tokyo from the 1960s, including such schemes as clusters in the air. These projects demonstrated isozakis early interest in merging technology with urban design, and showed an already imagination working to address the challenges of

contemporary urban existence.The evolution of isozaki work over the following decades was explored in 3 successive phrases, beginning with theme 2: birth of an architect. This section, which focused on the early concrete buildings and those public structures of bold geometric. These designs include fukuoka city bank head office, the fujimi country clubhouse, kitakyushu city museum of art, the kitakyushu central library. Theme 3: catastrophe japan, explored isozakis search for a more individual architectural expression, one that also incorporated isozaki refernces to past historical. Among the buildings included in this period are the gunma prefectural museum of fine arts, kamioka town hall, the tsukuba center building and the art towe of mito. Theme 4: architect as world citizen, included the phoenix municipal government center, the museum of contemporary art, los angeles, saint jordi sports hall.

Theme 5 : hyper- technology, comprising isozakis proposal for the Tokyo city hall, ueno station, and the ntv plaza redevelopment plan. These projects presented his mature thoughts for greatly changed Tokyo in the 1990s, three decades after initial proposals shown in theme 1 of the exhibition Irony and its fulfillment( david b stewart) The perspective view of isozakis submission for the 1980 tegel harbor competition in berlin was freely adapted from plate 115 of karl schikels collection of architectural drawing, which depicts the berlin building academy, finished by schinkel in 1836. The engraving by mandel, after schinkel, published in 1833- a year after the building academy was begun- is the last of the great architects much loved topographical complex, the building academy project was conceived in a spirit of urban improvement, and schinkel actually lists the advantages that will come about as a natural consequence of this project, the school itself widening, the provision of the new amenities, and the disengagement of urban

vistas, none of which schinkel wishes to have escape public notice. Still, despite the fact that the ensemble of schinkels works, such as were built, profoundly changed the face of berlin in the course of the architects lifetime, he was never allowed free rein(kendali) of his instinct as an urban planner. Instead of being called upon by his sovereign(berdaulat) to redesign the whole berlin, the Prussian capital- or even isolated spatial tracts- schinkel was, even as state architect, obliged(terpaksa) to live by his wits(akal). Fortunately, he built widely enough within the city that his works do coalesce(bergabung) , leaving berlin with his inevitable stamp- just as isozakis three major buildings in kita-kyushu city endow(menmberkahi) that town with an architectural character rare in modern-day japan Arata isozaki joined his studio at Tokyo i=university in 1953 as a fourth year undergraduate and remained under the older architects tutelage(pengawasan) for a decade, eventually founding his own firm in 1963.

During these formative years, isozaki crossed the straits of metabolism that had opened in 1960, and about which more will be said, however, fitting together the pieces of this early formalist period and tracing the reciprocity(timbal balik) of influence between isozaki and tange, isozakis first mature work, the oita prefectural library, had more to do with aesthetic theories of schiller than of schinkel. We need to bear in mind that, for all the sophistication of the architecture of japan style during the 1950s as practiced by maekawa, sakakura, and others, the advisability(kelayakan) of using modern western architectural solutions in Japanese buildings had not been seriously questioned until the imposition of fascist architectural guidelines in the early years of showa. In his long poem the artist(1789), schiller traces the development of artistic sensibility from a condition of unreflective happiness to a state which a divided consciousness divorces a rupture between the beauty of phenomena and abstract truth and finally, reconciles these poles through a process of acculturation and a deeper understanding of the arts. Isozakis programmatic attempt to

refound the principle or modern architectre beyond the reach of conventional japanizing impulses, and notably the sensuous appeal of tea garden aesthecism, if sukiya ramification( percabangan) can be so characterized, was in some sense a latter day equivalent. It is true that tange had attempted to formulate the basis of a new critical self consciousness, but always in terms that now seem either downright (benar2) bizarre( witness the proposal to explicate(menjelaskan) le Corbusier via Michelangelo), or overtly(terus terang)politicized like the antithesis he designated between the archaeologically descriptive jomon and yayoi stles of ancient Japanese arts. Isozaki case, this provides a narrower, more poignant(pedih) interpretation of his retreat into maniera. This dates from the late 1960s and the early 1970s, the time of his works for the fukuoka city bank, which overlap with the official planning undertaken in collaboration with tanges office for expo 70 at Osaka, including isozakis realization of a robotactivated cybernetic environment for the festival plaza there. Through the interiors of the various bank branches and the head

office were semipublic, they are introverted and lyrical- sometimes to the point of hermeticism, as emphasized by dramatic, even jarring(gemuruh), effects manifestation of japan, inc and the festival plaza was a super mechanized, stage like development of tanges earliest ideas on the uses of public space in the greek agora. This near schizophrenic separation of roles has been stressed by isozaki himself. Isozaki born in 1931, was old enough to have remembered something of the upheaval(pergolakan) of world war 2 and coming from west japan, as did tange he was particularly vulnerable to the trauma of the atomic destruction of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Indeed, these were immortalized un the electric labyrinth, exhibited briefly by isozaki at the 1968 triennale in Milan. Similarly, the notion of the destruction of architecture relates, in one of its possible interpretations, to this exposure. Yet the traumas of the war in the context of the showa era have generally been played down; without necessarily being repressed(ditekan) they were integrated into the cultural of japans

entry, over the space of four generations, into the modern world. In literature, the cycle of this transformation was eloquently dealt with from the beginning, while architecturehardly surprisingly there had never been a Japanese wren or schinkel, at the level of national aspirations. Instead, there were the semi programmatic aims of Japanese modern architecture of the 1950s and the early 1960s, which however, after 1968 seemed to lead precisely nowhere. It is no wonder, then, that an artist and theorist as sensitive as arata isozaki had, by the time of his own coming of age( in japan, something like thirty years) taken up a stand reflective not only in the schillerian sense but also committed to romantic irony. In spite of schinkels known familiarity with the writings of friedrich and august- and, indeed, despite his romanticism- irony was visibly not a means of expression open to him. However, irony in the new romantic usage at the turn of the eighteenth century derives in part from schiller;s play-concept of art, and for friedrich schlegel the term is closely related to paradox, as isozaki shows him self-aware in the epigraph to this essay.

By the 1980s, things have calmed down, so that isozakis realizations like the tsukuba center building of 1983 or, in Tokyo, the renovation now known as the ochanomizyu square of 1987, do, actually, in their serenity and complexity- and, above a;;, in their neoclaccissim-resemble the late work of schinkel, such as the ideal capital city or the palaces near yalta and in Athens. Of early works by isozaki, the last to retain traces of the mode initiated in the 1962 compositions of ruins all capriccio of Hiroshima of 1968 was the kita Kyushu city museum of art of 1974. This was also the first of six large public buildings after oita work, all of which add up to isozakis beings the first of the post 1950s generation to complete a substantial corpus at a national scale, thus comparable with, say, the ouvre of maekawa or tange. The iota sequence, from the now to be destroyed medical hall of 1960 thorugh the branch there of the fukuoka city bank, was executed in form-faced reinforced concrete and aggressively delineated in thrusting trabeated forms, the bank branch adding precast panels to this idiom, in 1971 the banks head office at hakata was the first

isozakis works to be faced in redstone, a material that reappears in 1986 in the MOCA, los angeles. The kita Kyushu city museum of art, which added an annex(caplokan) in 1986, is built atop a ridge and was destined to be reappropriated by the fast growing local vegetation except for two massive caissons, square in section , aimed like a pair of binoculars at the distant landscape. Kitakyushu was prewar japans prime industrial city, formerly an amalgam (campuran) of townships that went ton to make up a heavy industrial complex, targeted by the us for destruction, in place of which, by miscalculation, Nagasaki was struck. Within the art museum much play is made with black-and white marble paving and cascading staircases, while the twin oversize flying beams are clad in gridded cast alumunium in order to heighten a powerful sense of abstraction. The remnants of the citys industrial monuments contrast with the no utilitarian play of the museum in repose, as pure cultural infrastructure- and artifact, a giant toy in the landscape.

The library and art museum in kita Kyushu fuly exploit the circle and the square, or rather the sphere and the cube, that were isozakis main fomal repertoire during the mid 1970s. instead of opposing the site, as the museum does, the big volume of the library are sculpturally integrated and set off by means of a meandering staircase, also the principal landscaping element. The fujimi clubhouse was derived from palladios front for the villa poiana, otself descended from roman architecture through barmante. Modern museum of modern art in gunma is surely isozaki statemnt about the nature and effects of nave. In the sculptural arrangement of giant cubical frames, which appear to make up the framing of the museum. Isozaki arguably comes closer then elsewhere to the resonant of the new neoclassicism of schinkels mature phase and the neo-neoclassicism of loos. The building fully embraces paradox at an experiential level while eschewing irony.

The 1960s= system The thinking behind Japanese architecture in the 1950s had been to attempt to unify traditional Japanese wooded structures with modernist architectural space, in which interior and exterior could interpenetrate. It could be termed a Japanese version of the new empiricism and new brutalism popular in the Europe. Metabolists architecture celebrated an industrial society. These architects believed that architecture was a durable consumer item. Consequently, their use of exterior capsules, units and panels was not necessarily a solution founded in theory but lauded in industrial society by displaying mass-produced elements and indicating the ways, which they could be replaced and altered. At about that time, I was given a chance to publish a project entitled incubation process in art magazine. In this context, I abandoned all the technical condiserations with which, as an architect and planner, I had been compelled to deal, and concentrated solely on the materialization of a concept that was given in the process of genesis.

Later this work was frequently cited as a representative metabolist work. But while I was certainly thinking in metabolist terms in this montage, as I dealt with the flux of generation and the destruction of the city. I was never a member of the metabolist group. Indeed, I always tried to make clear distinction between myself and their technological orientation, their somewhat nave pragmatism which allowed the to believe that a social revolution could be achieved by means of new technology. To discover the concept, I sought the ideas for the interpretation of space, time, and matter(architecture and cities). All three solely as metaphors. My equations for them are space= darkness time= termination(eschatology) and matter, or architecture and cities= ruin and ashes. Counterpoise(menyeimbangkan)invisibility and darkness with highly visible and substantial cities and architecture made my methodology more conceptual and metaphorical. Architectural design is the process of giving concrete form to intangible concepts. In this process it necessary to pick out all the things that denote architectural

elements then it is necessary to create a mechanism that will give new meaning to these now neutralized elements. This is the starting point of my architecture 1970s : the metaphorism Making multidimensional spaces from concrete objects necessitates basic lines and compositional units to serve as minimal clues. Through they were my ultimate concepts, from the standpoint of physical architecture; blankness and twilight can be nothing but from metaphors achieved by means of neutralized geometry and meticulously controlled conditions of light beam distribution. The device that I ultimately hit on was the use of a grid composed of homogeneous, limitless, square compartments to cover exterior surfaces. My entire visible world was to be covered with this grid of equal squares

RUINS
The combined effect was psychology traumatic. Etched into my very retina in that momet when suddenly time stopped, those burnt ruins would

come back to me every time I confronted a white sheet a drawing paper. Back in the early 1960s working on the city of the future, I could do little more that leave the white paper white. All I could draw were broken fragments, melted and fused, deformed, and distorted, which created objects that were only formed by chance. The concept of ruins is a potent idea found in the west, well represented by countless historical remains. Japan also has the same kind of concept, though, of course, the physical environment is very different. My interest in ruins, however, could never be just a question of architectural or archaeological study. I could never escape the connection with the ruins that surrounded and almost engulfed me on that unforgettable day. Despite the trauma, it seemed natural to associate the views of those burnt ruins with the ruins found in the west. The first structure that I dominated my thinking in my work as an architect was that of the ruin. Ruins can be seen as fragments within the complex of absolute and imaginative time, forming definite proof of past facts, facts broken and destroyed. We see them as once having formed part of completed, finished structures. Chance has conveyed them to us through the ravages of time. Extending imaginative time into the past generates such thoughts. Although they can never give us an accurate image of the complete structures to which the testify, none of this can diminish the

fascination of ruins or the temptation to speculate that they offer. They have hidden effects on us, stimulating fantasies, visions and illusions; the elevated gardens of Babylon, Easter Island, it is no exaggeration to say that we live within endless series of such fantasies. In 1962, my future city photomontage showed the city of the future formed amid the ruins of the past. I assumed ruins of the present persisting into the future and time inverted or deranged by combining constructions left to be completed in the future. Scales were distorted and distinct structural elements were coupled with opaque and invisible elements. It was a partial future and partially it was the past. None of it was clear in the present, for it was actually interstitial between latency (keadaan yg terpendam) in the present and nonexistence. GENESIS The strategy behind the concept of genesis consists of identifying and defining the origins or architecture as the basis for further expansion and manipulation. For isozaki, the discovery of the platonic solid was not simply the adoption of western form but rather a means to blur the differences between east and west, past and present. It also meant the introduction in his design vocabulary of the cube and the sphere-as the three-dimensional extensions of the square

and the circle-as well as the rectangular volumes with a square section and barrel vaults. Looking at the works in this chapter, one can see an interesting progression in the continued manipulation of the circle and the square. Both the kamioka town hall and the museum of contemporary art, los angeles are civic institutions whose design derives from isozakis research into the platonic solids. Formally, the 2 projects employ a cubic frame entrance- MOCAS barrel-vaulted entrance retains the section of the original Kamioka Town hall competition entry scheme. And one is led through the entry sequence for both along a characteristic marilyn Monroe curve low wall to enhance dynamic movement. Yet, the small mining town of kamioka cannot be mistaken for downtown Los Angeles where MOCA is located. While the shiny exterior of Kamioka Town hall represents the authority of a western inspired image landing in this small mining town. Mocas distinctive red Indian sandstone and pyramidal skylight could not be construed as japanese in and of themselves. However, its overall asymmetrical composition can be related to the Japanese precedents of hryu ji temple or nikko shrine and thus remains open to multiple meanings and interpretations A traditional feature in Japanese architecture is the tateokoshi plan drawing, in which all of the surfaces of a space are analyzed as if they were

floor plans. The theory is that the person examining them will mentally raise the drawings of the walls to their position in the completed rooms and in this way imagine the way that the space will look. This mental act easily allows the observer to visualize the elevations. The room the is the result of raising development drawings into place from all four directions. Yet, the actual space of the room is never presented in the drawings and from the standpoint of the drawings is a leftover. In other words, this method of producing architectural drawings does not result in an objectification of the space of the room. PURE FORMS When the pure cubic form is placed on an actual site, transformations must be worked on it. First, the names of its constituent elements alter. Naturally, the vertical lines become posts and the horizontal lines connection the tops of the vertical elements become beams. The lines on the surface of the ground are then called foundations. Since the frame must occupy a definite place, its abstract linear components must be given concrete names. This primitive question became the key to the solutions of all problems arising on the morphological level in connection with the gunma museum. For instance, the horizontal and vertical linear elements in the imaginary cube- the post

and beam frame-ought to assume the same form. But when the frame is expanded to reinforced concrete framework 12 meters to a side, the dynamic conditions at work in the posts are vastly different from those at work on the beams. Although the cross section of the posts may be square, it is not necessarily true that the cross section of the beams will be the same. Unless one thickens or pads the parts, there is likely to be a discrepancy in their measurements. Covering the exterior with alumunium panels and thus allowing the discrepancies to be apparent only on the interior can compensate for this. This is the policy-followed gunma. Discrepancies and intersections of moderate degree are apparent in the entrance hall- a place in which the interior of the cube can be experienced in its true size. Pure abstract form and actual architectural structure follow different codes. Although the architect suppresses the differences between them to the greatest extent possible, places where they disagree will emerge. It is therefore impossible to maintain perfectly pure forms in architecture, and the gap between the pure form and the form made expedient by conditions grows greater when the composition involves materials of great gravitational mass.

Tom heleghan Unlike most of his international peers, his work follows no expressive formula. Approaching his architecture with considerable dedication, intelligence, and even humility. Isozaki constantly changing architecture might be seen as almost: autobiographical:- expressing the oscillation and development of his thoughts, his many inspirations, and occasionally quoting openly from the architecture of his heroes, his friends and from his own works of earlier periods. But, while: autobiography might be considered to be part of isozakis self-expression, the definitive self: of isozaki remains elusive. In the many changes in the expressions of his works, we are unable to judge his buildings as the symbols of particular person, we

must judge them as the products of mind. Based in country in which- as he has written architecture has sometimes been seen as merely: a production technology . Isozaki has constantly asserted that architecture can be a philosophy in itself, and an ideology with its own cultural legacy. He roots his works in a response, which is simultaneously intellectual, physical, emotional, and cultural. In national context, his works can be seen as attempts to develop and indicate an appropriate direction for the architecture of a rapidly changing japan. Unlike, the west, where spatial concepts, and even building techniques, have progressively transmogrified to meet of the time, the historic architecture of japan is difficult to reconcile with the scale, requirements, and technologies of modern building programmes. In

seeking to uncover this new: national language, isozaki has had occasion to adapt and quote freely
From western classicism- earning him criticism as a post modernism- an allegation he refutes. Indeed, his works cannot be justifiably bracketed with those by, for example, graves and stern, in which- both intellectually and physically- the veneer is cut very thin. Perhaps this criticism shows a slight miss reading of isozaki intent. At his controversial tsukuba center building- a project that was effectively the foundation stone of a new city- isozaki emphatically proclaimed the projects future urban centrality by overstating architectural symbols or codes, which are instantly-, legible, even by a publicunfamiliar with ledoux and romano. On the absence of any comparable japanese codes of urban hierarchy. He referred to western modelsresorting, as he explained to the evocative power of stylistic fragments as kitch:. The irony of this proposition should not be ignored( irony being one of isozakis habitual tools). He subsequently compared tsukuba to his team Disney building, suggestint that

what was required at Disney was a representation of entertainment, while what was required at tsukuba was a representation of state. That tsukuba is- for isozaki-almost a parody, which simultaneously satisfied and debunked the pretensions of that state, is emphasized by the projects grouping around a symbolic central oval piazza-, which he intentionally left void, and without purpose. Interestingly, now that a large body of isozakis works can be formal outside japan, it can be seen thatparadoxically-these western over or undertones are more prevalent I his works within japan. It seem likely that isozaki perceives the western classical code to have a different meaning for the Japanese than for westeners- who have become desensitized by its familiarity by its historical association. Isozaki works can never be judged by appearance aone. His search for language of architecture appropriate to modern japan is coupled with a continuing investigation of prototypical solutions to functional issues and to be the dilemma of urban response. Isozaki attempts to lock his Kyoto symphony

hall into the historical context by ordering the principal elements of his composition along three axes, excavated from the ancient pattern of Kyoto- the true north/south grid of the city, its deviation from magnetic north, and the line of the kamo river, close to the site. The contextual device of referring beyond the sometimes-confused surroundings of the site is repeated at other projects, including Nara, and the extraordinary Nagi Museum of Contemporary Art. Two recent projects show, unambiguously, isozakis continuing skill as a master of the modernist tradition, with a delicate sense for locality. Distant but formally related, his nara convention hall and his interactive museum about humans, in la coruna, spain are set carefully into their different contexts, and appear destined-upon completion- to join the register of his undisputed masterworks. At nara-as at iota and nagi-isozaki has dissected and reinvented the buildings functional programme. The main hall becomes a mechanism. With adjustable flying balconies allowing infinite possible uses of the space. The smaller concert hall becomes

a visually transparent, but acoustically opaque glass-encasedobject within an object. Wrapping the whole, a block ceramic-tiled shell, elliptical in plan and section, harmonizes with the forms and colors of the principal temple roofs, and reduces the scale of this large buildingallowing its dignified, coherent form to be read in contrast with the surrounding visual noise. In this , isozaki might be compared to the late sir james stirling- the only other architect of this period who shared the power of his intellect, his formal virtuosity, and his complete disregard for histrionics and posturing. Of approximately similar age, they have both carried the heavy burden of their generation- the nedd to extend and redirect early modernism to engage with their very different social, cultural, and physical contexts. Both have seemed willing to take risks which architects of similar status might consider hazardous-perpetually challenging our preconceptions and their own reputations. God s and men David b. stewart

When compared with arata isozaki entry for the 1980 tegel harbor competition in berlin, the splendid copperplate engravings commissioned between 1819 and 1840 by the Prussian neoclassical architect arl friedrich schinkel after his own works seem rather inadequate. This is partly because the tegle area redevelopment comprised, within a single project, housing, a cultural center, and sports and other recreational facilities. It is also because, according to isozaki, the low rise housing in his scheme was set off by precast-concrete panels that were to have been exact replicas of faade motifs designed by schinkel. In the panoramic restaurant overlooking the tegeler see, isozaki seized the rationale for dummy faade replicating the humblotdt schloss in tegel, the house that schinkel remodeled and extended from 1820 to 1824 for his friend the philologist and diplomat Wilhelm von Humboldt, former Prussian ambassador to rome. The perspective view of isozakis submission for the harbor complex was freely adapted from plate 115 of schinkels collection of architectural designs, which depicts the berlin building academy finished by schinkel in 1836. The engraving by

mandel, after schinkel, published in 1833- a year after the building academy was begunis the last of the great architects much loved topographical views drawn from the banks of the river spree. Like the tegel harbor complex, the building academy project was conceived in a spirit urban improvement, and schinkel actually lists the advantages that will come about as a natural consequence of this project. The school itself occupies the former site of a customs depot, and its planning suggests various street widenings, the provision of new amenities, and the disengagement of urban vistas, none of which schinkel wishes to have escape public notice. Still, despite the fact that ensemble of schinkels works, such as were built, profoundly changed the face of berlin in the course of architect lifetime, he was never allowed free rein himself as urban planner.

Arata isozaki after 1980 From mannerism to the picturesque Hajime yatsuka The tsukuba center building, designed and constructed between 1979 and 1983, was a

major turning point in the career of arata. For some it indicated the end of his mannerist period; for others, the beginning of his postmodernism phase. In fact, this huge complex perpetuated the manneristic handling of themes and forms that had characterized most of isozakis works in the 1970s, but it also contained quotations of western classical, or neoclassical, idioms never before introduced by the architect in such an overt and literal way. Arata isozaki inspired by Rudolf wittkowers study of renaissance neoplatonic architecture-proved to be a decisive influence of peter eisenman, who was to become a close friend of isozakis in the course of 1980s. however, while eisenman unearthed similarities between the works of paladdio and those of terragni in terms of syntaz, isozakis development was largely without theoretical background. It seems, rather, that the modernist-classicist paradigm formed an unconscious base for his work. A comparison of tanges Hiroshima peace center and isozakis tsukuba center building uncovers common characteristics-as well as major differences-between the 2 architects.

As an architect of the symbolic public building, isozaki was to some extent a successor to the modernist-classicist legacy of his former teacher. Compared with authentic modernists, tange, like le Corbusier, was a mannerist in his tendency toward the dramatic. He transgressed the modernist sense of discipline, and was never afraid of his buildings appearing symbolic beyond the dictates of program. The tsukuba center building was designated as the central element of the new town called tsukuba science city, one of the most pointed attempts on the part of the Japanese government to restructure the countrys postwar society. The program was such that the building, if monumentally designed, would appear as an authoritative representation of the will of the nation, independent of stylistic aspirations on the part of the architect himself. At the same time, since it would be the only major public space in the new town, the building nevertheless needed to take the form of a symbolic center. Responding to this double bind had become something of an automatic reflex for the Japanese intelligentsia of the period, most of whom

still nurtured a leftist view of society. By contrast, in designing the Hiroshima peace center, tange was able to be far more straightforward and optimistic about the relationship between architecture as symbolic form and society, its symbolic content. Isozaki strategy for the tsukuba center building was to try to bridge the contradictory, half hidden gap in the nature of modern architecture. Just as modernism had wanted its buildings to appear free of imposing symmetry and authoritarian character, isozaki, though adopting more literal classical vocabulary, tried to avoid an excessively hierarchical ordering the composition. He did this by presenting a void- a sunken plaza- in the center, where one would expect the most monumental element of the composition. Although perhaps not by intention, this refusal of the monumental seems to have fulfilled hans sedlmeyers apocalyptic view of modernism as loss of the center the tsukuba building demonstrates the impossibility of any center for architecture in contemporary society. But despite the intellectual underpinnings, because it uses classical

language and is simply monumentar, the omplex offers an easier reading, and we are left with two ways of interpreting it: we can see it as manifestation of the architects uncertainty or as a successful attempt to inspire a plurality of readings, depending on the observers own preoccupation and interests. Isozaki work in tsukuba would generate two types of reactions. The first was from such younger architects as had been much influenced by isozaki during the 1970s. for them, the undeniable monumentality of the tsukuba center building signaled blatant commitment to the idea of the public realm, a notion that in thir minds had lost all validity. Compared with stirling, gehry, or rossi. Isozaki has never been an architect with local bias. Even with his extensive general knowledge of traditional Japanese art, he has rarely used the vocabulary of traditional Japanese architecture. He continued to use geometric elements such as cubes, cones, and pyramids- a tendency inspired by the works of enlightenment architects like boulle and ledoux. But these forms act as episodes in the loosely composed whole and they are treated not as stark geometrical objects

deprived of meaning but as elements with rich associations,this drift away from mannerism to the picturesque also reflects the fact that many works of this period were designed for sites in the country or with abundant natural surroundings, which tends to inspire the use of picturesque devices. Even isozakis proposal for the new Tokyo city hall, involving a site that is the most urban of all his recent project and incorporates two bare geometric forms as a roofscape, serves to illustrate the new tendency. But even given the relative rigor of an urban picturesque scheme, it seems undeniable that isozaki took a more relaxed approach after tsukuba center building. This reflects changes in society- and, more generally, the birth of the empire of the ephemeral. The implication is that our social and cultural circumstances echo the atmosphere of hedonism that prepared the way for the picturesque style in eighteenth century Britain. The basic vocabulary-classicism feely arranged-is no different from that of isozakis other works, but it now also incorporates the pueblo typology of the indigenous

inhabitants, which is, in a certain sense, a rather orthodox strategy whereby the picturesque is invoked. It is not a superficial adoption of a vernacular idiom, like the approach taken by the tourism industry, for there must also be a hedonistic play of imagery and icons within the picturesque. But isozaki provocative gesture-adopting a space of pueblo origin instead of the classical western clich of the European civic plaza-may have been interpreted by local authorities as uneccessarily critical of the significant anglo establishment. That an urban form originating in ancient Greece was judge more appropriate to phoenix than that of an indigenous culture is curious. But it is also a paradoxical conclusion for isozaki, who chose to eschew Japanese forms in the tsukuba center building. The architecture of isozaki is discernible. In this respect, isozakis most recently completed work, the art tower mito, is informative. This is a cultural complex consisting of a theater, a concert hall, an art museum, and other facilities. The huge triangulated tower covered in silver titanium panels dominates the whole complex, an exceptional condition in isozakis recent projects. It appears,

however, not as the summit in a proposed hierarchical order but a sudden protrusion above the low volumes of the other masses, which are moderate, restrained, and classizing Paradoxical process For over half century, arata isozaki has followed an architectural design process that engages the realms of the unbuilt and built, east and west, the future and the past. Throughout his career- including more than 40 projects that span the globe- each work has been shaped by the technological and cultural of its respective time. Yet, transcending a single master narrative a personal method links these projects from the early visionary proposal for cities in the air that rose above the congestion of 1960s Tokyo to the nara centennial hall, which used the latest panta-up construction process developed in the 1990s. isozakis design process gives concrete form to elusive concept that embraces constant change. This is evident both in specific designs, including theatrical spaces such as the festival plaza expo with moving stages and

seating, and with the changes between successive designs from decade to decade. But rather than just creating new form. Isozakis process engenders new meanings of using ruins- actual ruins of structures from the past and existing building falling into a state of ruin- as a starting point of his architecture. Isozakis critical and creative process relies on a series of constrasts that evoke open-ended change. For isozaki, this corresponds to an understanding of the world based of the Buddhist notion of mujo, which means mutability, uncertainty, transience, impermanence, uncertainty. As he noted in his 1972 essay about my method ultimately then, the only thing that can control the design is a concrete method and this method is linked throughout the whole process with the original image in what might be called dilectic. Transcending strict functional and progressive modernist paradigms. Isozakis architecture embraces the complexities of the experience of architecture, its perception and the meanings it conveys. This work acknowledge the chaos of the contemporary experience aspiring towards multiple focal points rather than unity or universality.

consequently, isozakis process cannot be reduced to a single overarching theme, paradigm or god. It imagines the world as collage, a mosaic or even a kaleidoscope. These metaphors are all conceptually important assemblages that go beyond the divisionsa between the disciplines of architecture, art and literature, and the dichotomies of east and west, and past and future. Ruins: past, present and future Ruins were symbolizing the past and some proposed structures of the future. The past and the future had to be together in the present. This is not the image of the future, nor the image of the past; this was an image of the present (arata isozaki) Isozaki has persistently considered the potential of ruins to be the foundation of his dynamic design process. His ironical stance questions whether the constant evolution of ruins- of a city, a building or even an abandoned design approach- is a source of growth or decay. Are ruins objects falling down or a framework for the future? Isozaki

asserts, since change is half-destructive and half- constructive, it should be permissible for architecture to create the exact appearance of ruins. Architecture as ruins is both fundamentally linked to the past and open to the future changes. This fatalist position takes into account the gravity of the seen and unseen forces that actually shaped the built environment and thereby Remains critical of a native belief in progress- whether of the modern movement in architecture or of post war japan in general. This worldview of the city and architecture was shaped by isozakis experiences coming of age in japan during the pacific war, of which he has written: throughout my youth, until I began to study architecture, I was constantly confronted with the destruction and elimination of the physical objects that surround me. Japanese cities went up in flames. Forms that had been there An instant earlier vanished in the next. Between east and west The fusion of classical greek and japanee ruins in cities in the air highlights a wider

dialectic between east and west within isozakis wok as a means of breaking down borders to draw critically from an international context. This is not a singular and homogeneous notion of international comparable to the international style codified by the New York use of modern art in 1932. It is rather a distinct position between nations whereby one is able to borrow selectively from different cultures and ideologies. This interstitial position has allowed isozaki to see both commonalities and differences between japan, asia, Europe and America. Isozakis education at Tokyo university further expanded his horizons, intellectually, geographically, and temporally. He came to study architecture and city planning. Later, his understanding of modern architectural history was shaped by the European and American accounts of banister fletcher From 1954 , he become a member of the studio of kenzo tange, who was searching for a methodology to synthesize Europe and japan , or modern architecture and Japanese tradition, according to isozaki. In effect, isozaki was able to draw equally from

classical European and Japanese traditions and history. A consciousness of Japanese architecture and city spaces emerged in the 1950s in reference to this international euroAmerican context among tange and his group pf students, including isozaki. Tange, together with 12 other members including isozaki and architectural historian teiji ito, subsequently formed the city design research group and first published their research as Japanese city space. This research began with a survey of euroAmerican urban planning and design examples as a basis of a comparison with Japanese context. Based on the four levels of analysis of the physical, functional,structural, and symbolic city, they surveyed cities including georges-eugene haussmanns paris, Ebenezer howards garden city, the mars groups 1938 london plan and Alison and peter smithsons cluster city. To this group they added their own proposal and finally isozakis city in the air as an example responding to the invisible city, particularly rampant in the hazy conditions of japan. Isozaki concluded, this study revealed that many of the characteristics of Japanese cities cannot be

adequately explained on the basis of western urban concepts

Terence Riley, ed., The Changing of the Avant-Garde: Visionary Architectural Drawings from the Howard Gilman Collection, New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 2002, p. 49
In Arata Isozaki's unrealized design for the Joint Core System spatial construction, massive pylons support elevated transportation, housing, and office systems as well as parks and walkways, suspended above the existing city. This scheme was undertaken at a time when Kenzo Tange and a group of five young architects working in his office, known as the Metabolists, were creating radical solutions for restructuring Tokyo's rapid and uncontrolled postwar growth. As a member of Tange's office, Isozaki was inspired by Tange's proposal for a multilevel urban construction above the city. But, unlike Tange's plan, in which a square support system limits expansion to four directions, Isozaki's round columns permit growth in any direction. Bevin Cline and Tina di Carlo

Matilda McQuaid, ed., Envisioning Architecture: Drawings from The Museum of Modern Art, New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 2002, p. 120
Arata Isozaki began his career in 1954, in the office of Kenzo Tange, his former professor and the most influential figure in postwar Japanese architecture. While Tange's architecture was in itself radical in its conception, it was his urban projects that most influenced the younger generation of architects, including Isozaki. Tange's Plan for Tokyo (1960) is critical in this regard. Trying to reconcile the incredible density of Tokyo's urban fabric with the rapid expansion and reformulation of modern social structures, Tange's plan proposed multilevel urban construction layered over the existing city and its waterways. Radical new visions of the city were not limited to Tange's plans for Tokyo. The New Babylon project that Constant Nieuwenhuis began in the 1950s, Yona Friedman's Spatial Plan for Paris of 1958, and the work of the collective Archigram in the 1960s embraced urban transformation as a means toward achieving social change. In Isozaki's City in the Air (Joint Core System) project of 1962, the multilayered city hovers over the traditional city, the scale of which can be seen at the far right. Highways and parking structures thread their way between massive pylons that support blocks of offices and apartments above. The ground plane is reconstituted as tiers of gardens above and within the blocks. sozaki's City in the Air (Joint Core System) project was undertaken in 1960, the same year a number of younger architects, almost all of them affiliated with Tange, issued the Metabolist Manifesto. While Isozaki was never formally a member of the group, his project and the work produced by the Metabolists over the course of the decade largely reflected Tange's description of his own urban work: "By incorporating elements of space, speed, and drastic change in the physical environment, we created a method of structuring having elasticity and changeability."

Terence Riley rata Isozaki The Japanese architect Arata Isozaki (born 1931) developed a style which reflected both Japanese traditions and Western post-modern and mannerist influences. Isozaki also wrote about architecture and taught in several universities. Arata Isozaki was born in Oita City, Japan, in 1931. He studied with Kenzo Tange, one of Japan's leading modern architects, at the University of Tokyo from 1950 to 1954. He continued to work for and with Tange as a graduate student at the university and then in the older man's firm from 1954 to 1963. At that point Isozaki established his own practice but did not disassociate himself from his mentor, continuing to design occasionally for Tange into the 1970s. This attitude is in keeping with native Japanese practices that stress collaboration and cooperation, rather than competition, among professionals. Influences Nearly all of the leading 20th-century Japanese designers have attempted to synthesize indigenous traditions with Western forms, materials, and technologies. Isozaki's "style" has in fact been a series of modes that have come as a response to these influences. As a young architect he was identified with Metabolism, a movement founded in Japan in 1960. However, Isozaki minimized his connections to this group, seeing the Metabolist style as overly utilitarian in tone. By contrast, in the 1960s, Isozaki's work featured dramatic forms made possible through the employment of steel and concrete but not limited aesthetically by those materials. His designs of branch banks for the Fukuoka Mutual Bank of the mid-1960s are characteristic of this early phase of Isozaki's career. The Oita Branch Bank (1966) is representative of the group: its powerful cantilevered upper stories are more characteristic of his English contemporary James Stirling that of any of his fellow Japanese architects. In the 1970s Isozaki's architecture became more historical in its orientation, suggesting a connection with the burgeoning post-modern movement of Europe and the United States. His sources included classical Western architects, especially Andrea Palladio, tienne-Louis Boulle, and Claude-Nicolas Ledoux. These connections Isozaki did acknowledge, and his work of the 1970s represents a mature synthesis of formal, functional,

and technical considerations. A representative work of this period is his Fujimi Country Club, Oita City, constructed in 1973, which displays the love of pure form that also characterizes 18th-century French neoclassicism. Another French principle, architecture parlante (architecture that bespeaks its function), is also at work at Fujimi: by massing the building in the shape of a question mark, Isozaki commented wittily on his incomprehension of his countrymen's obsession with golf. Later, his Western influences were decidedly mannerist, with Giulio Romano and Michelangelo replacing the classicists as sources. Isozaki's Tsukuba City Center of 1979-1983, located in Ibaraki, is a complex of buildings clearly indebted to Michelangelo's Campidoglio in Rome, but not at all limited by it. Chosen as project director for this urban development, Isozaki created a design that included large, colorful buildings, a large plaza, and a sunken garden that provides as clear a statement of postmodern aims as any project built in Europe or the United States. Building Outside Japan This new-found fascination with what post-modern guru Robert Venturi called "complexity and contradiction" coincided with Isozaki's interest in building outside of his native country. His Los Angeles County Museum of Contemporary Art (1984-1985) may be the best known structure by a Japanese designer in America. Isozaki was, in fact, one of only a handful of Japanese architects to have some impact in the West. In June 1997 the MOMA celebrated its 18th years by honoring 18 individuals, including creator Isozaki. Isozaki's popularity and prestige as an architect is reflected in the commissions he took throughout the U.S. and Europe. He was a part of a cadre of exclusive architects enlisted by Disney to design buildings throughout the U.S. His creation stands just outside Orlando. The only house he has designed outside of Japan listed for $1.3 million in 1997. Isozaki was one of a team of world-famous architects to design two huge business complexes on Berlin's Potzdamer Platz. He branched out by designing the sets for the Lyon Opera's production of Madama Butterfly. Beside the Barcelona Olympic stadium is the Games' most striking structurethe $100-million Sant Jordi sports palace designed by Isozaki for the 1992 Olympics. Its 3,000-ton roof was raised by a dozen hydraulic jacks over a period of 20 days to a height of 45 m. The result is an airy

structure whose undulating white roof is pockmarked by 100 transparent bubbles that flood its interior with daylight. When it opened in 1990, 300,000 local people came to view it. Domus, or the House of Man, the interactive science museum in La Coruna, a northern Spanish city 600 km from Madrid. Set on a dramatic rocky site overlooking the Atlantic, the museum is housed in a towering pink-and-gray granite building designed sby Isozaki. Other buildings in the West designed by Isozaki include museums in Nice, Cario, as well as Los Angeles, and Brooklyn (NY), the American Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, and the Palladium discotheque in NY. Charles Jencks, an American critic noted Isozaki has taken the style of the West one step further. By carrying Western concepts to their logical conclusion, Japanese architects introduced new elements. Reyner Banham explains that "it is the marginal minor differences in the thinkable and the customary that ultimately make Japanese architecture a provokingly alien enclave within the body of the world's architecture."

Crosscurrents through the cube Neo-platonic strategy refuted the direct translation of rectangular members of traditional trabeated Japanese wood framing into an exposed concrete frame, as expressed in tanges kagawa prefectural hall. This was a project that isozaki himself had worked on, and the shift to a square, seen in the square concrete members of the oita prefectural library, marked his independence from both his master and direct references to Japanese tradition. While the square as a 2 dimensional figure is a common occurrence

within Japanese design, the 3 dimesnional transformation of a square into a cube has not been nearly as pervasive. The closest equivalent are the exploded axonometric drawings of a tea house, but they emphasize a combination of 2 dimensional planes to create a volume rather than a solid cubic volume. Isozakis cube on the other hand, is an indirect reference to platonic forms of Etienne-louis boullee. Claude nicolas ledoux, andrea palladio and kazimir Malevich, among many other examples. The uniform of proportions of the cube could thus literally present an equal face and structure towards east and west, future and the past, without particular emphasis on one or other. Rather than employing a fixed, solid cubic figure, however. Isozaki selected an open cubic frame, open to seven strategies of transformation and multiple interpretations. As he articulated in 1972, this was a method of seven operations, amplification ( the subjugation of all components to divisions of a uniform grid), packaging ( the enclosure of figures through disjunctive forms), transferrable ( the arbitrary imposition onto

neutral forms of totally alien configurations)). Projection ( one form onto another), fuseki ( a term from Japanese game go, where the square grid of the playing board provides the basis for an infinite number of strategic configurations) and response ( the interpretation of architecture as a dynamic, changing environmentdefining media rather than fixed object) from the outset of his career, he embraced the cubic frame at all scales, from square section members of the oita prefectural library, open for heating and ventilation, to the cubic composition of the nakayama residence, or the scale of the kitakyushu amd gunma museums, both of which provide a 3 dimensional frame of art. Here, the cubic frame could be a modular unit for spatial distribution and no mere structural device, representing instead the idea of the art gallery as void The manipulation of the square grid was a strategy common to isozakis generation of architects, including peter eisenman and Richard meier . it is formal approach that can be interpreted as a critique of functionalist modern architecture. But, it is also a

theoretical research that aims to bridge the gap between architecture and conceptual art. By contrast, the square grid for isozaki is open to infinite overlapping interpretations. As a fusion between multiple forces, it retains numerous connotations, from east and west, past and present, and is a perceptual as well as structural frame. Kenneth framptomn has noted the personal and formal connections between isozaki and Italian architect adolfo natalini of superstudio in the early 1970s, during the design of the gunma museum of modern art and kitakyushu city museum of art and pointed to the strong affinity between those projects and superstudios gridded frames, within which perception constantly changes according to ones physical and temporal vantage point. Isozaki has written about this experience: