The new building of dutch firm MVRDV is the main architectural event in Tokyo these days. Check it out
The first impression is the silent facade according to Tokyo standards. The reason is mostly due to the fact that the building is not for one firm (as Toyo Ito for Tod’s or SANAA for Dior) but for different and changing brands… in search of a diastema (cfr. Dorfles)?

In a recent speech at NAI in Rotterdam, famous artist Olafur Eliasson said two things that I am really happy to hear from a person of his popularity and skill:

“This is so boring, but I dream that content will kill form.”

“A spatial practice about communal and social interaction, to sustain a kind of collective, with responsable criticality.”

Really happy two hear this for different reasons: in the surmodernité the abundance of things is almost unbearable. Second, due to the excessive density designers/architect/artist/managers will mostly be editor instead of creators. In applying this new modus operandi hopefully a new critical spirit will rise. Today it seems that finally some architect and designer are realizing that the true core of their work consists on human relation, not form. So let’s forget for a while the star system with its geometrical tribes (blob architects, squared, minimalists, etc…). As Eliasson reminds us is time to think about the why more than the how.

Interesting that is not a city of one of the supposed G-8 leading country to enforce a radical policy against public space advertisement.
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