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| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Recurso digital |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Zenodo
2017
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| Online Access: | https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15174242 |
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Table of Contents:
- <p>This essay traces the ideological and architectural lineage that connects Toyo Ito and the group of Japanese architects featured in <em>A Japanese Constellation</em>, a 2016 MoMA exhibition curated by Pedro Gadanho. Using Ito’s 1998 essay “Shedding the Modern Body Image” as a conceptual anchor, the author explores a recurring tension in Japanese architecture between the natural body and abstract spatial typologies. Ito’s reflections on Juan O’Gorman’s functionalist modernism and subsequent rejection of architecture set the stage for a broader inquiry into the politics of space, identity, and housing in post-war and post-bubble Japan.</p> <p>The essay engages with how modernism, biopolitics, and rapid economic cycles have shaped Japanese subjectivity and the home, framing contemporary architectural works by Sejima, Fujimoto, and Ishigami as responses to this deep history of spatial and ideological transformation. These works are seen as inhabiting a precarious balance—seemingly emancipatory, yet possibly complicit in systems of post-Fordist reproduction. The author argues that while these architects produce spaces of openness, lightness, and abstraction, they also risk aestheticizing homelessness and depoliticizing vulnerability.</p> <p>Through architectural theory, historical context, and critique of exhibition curation, the essay reflects on the political potency and limitations of radical spatial openness. In doing so, it positions architecture as a tool for shaping subjectivity, collective identity, and resistance—or acquiescence—to dominant economic and cultural forces.</p>