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Megalopolis Over Tokyo
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19178 |
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Section : |
THE ARTS
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| Issue
Date : |
7 / 1991 |
1,536 Words |
| Author
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Elbrich Fennema
Elbrich Fennema writes on the arts from Tokyo. |
Our conventional notion of architecture is being challenged by a couple of ambitious Japanese construction companies. The megaprojects that they have mapped out on their drawing tables necessitate a new vocabulary. The most modest proposal involves a 1,000-meter-high Sky City, made of fourteen tiers that consist of fourteen floors each. You might also call it a "vertical composite urban community." The most extravagant proposal concerns Future City, the 4,000-meter-high X-Seed (exceed) project, a concept for an aerial city in the twenty-first century. In between comes Try 2004, a 2,004-meter-high three-dimensional city planned by Shimizu Construction.
The most obvious similarity between the three projects is the prominence of technical feats over artistic merits. Maybe that is unavoidable when you have high ambitions. Technical problems no doubt multiply the higher you get. Where an architect used to suffice, now a whole organization of engineers from different disciplines is needed to address transport systems, water supply, garbage disposal service, fire prevention, environmental impact, information and data systems, and of course the construction itself.
Mega-architecture
The teamwork that this kind of mega-architecture requires might well explain why it is the Japanese that are coming up with these exceptionally large-scale proposals. In Japanese culture the notion, or even the ambition, of individual recognition for one's work is almost absent. What counts is the group effort and the group results. The performance of the group or company reflects on every member, and every member renders his or her contribution according to ability.
At each of the three Japanese construction companies a special task force has been at work to create its brainchild. Each team's members are subject to change. And that is not necessarily because of their below-level performance. It is more often than not the result of the regular employee shake-up that occurs in any Japanese company to promote an all around homogenous and modest work force. At two of the three construction companies, even the project's initiators are no longer on the task force.
There is another reason why the idea of vertical expansion finds particularly fruitful soil in Japan. Japan is one of the most crowded countries in the world. This in turn has led to spiraling land prices, to the extent that the average Tokyo office worker cannot hope to ever possess his own home in the Tokyo
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