Sou Fujimoto: Primitive Future

I found a marvelous book while walking in the streets of Shinjuku.
The diagram popped out and called for my attention.
It was titled, Sou Fujimoto: Primitive Future.
Let not the simple appearance of the cover nor the slim 14o somewhat page structure deceive of its intriguing content. It focuses on one of the fastest rising young Japanese architect of this generation. Ok, that had a lot of adjective in it, but it suffices to say that Sou Fujimoto requires many descriptors.
The structure is a novel bilingual format well laid out and with images that are at times fresh and other times almost nostalgic as if I am peering into my own childhood image. As the idea for the book was "concept book" in which the architect is free to write, propose, draw, basically to do whatever, it exemplifies this architects wide interest in music and poetry, linguistics and phenomenology. I think it has the lightness of looking through a picture book, with a deepness of reading into the text to share Fujimoto's own journey in the palimpsest. Like his architectural concepts and diagrams, the book is not organized in terms of temporality or scale. The organization of the book seems to be totally reliant on the relationships formed between pages.
The margin of pages are thoughtfully laid out as the images and texts require all the white space it needs to breeze. The vocabulary of "ambiguous" and "complexity" is reimagined here in the 21st Century by Fujimoto to be that of tectonic, spatial, and corporeal ambiguity instead of Post-Modern language of historical, iconic, signs and symbols.
I think Sou Fujimoto is a must see character in coming decades.
As Paulo Portoghesi noted that all architects reach their maturity by their fifties, I cannot wait to see and imagine what Fujimoto will be doing in two decades.

Japanese Architecture

I came to a simple epiphany today.
Japanese architecture is sought after and we find it interesting notwithstanding its simplicity because it seeks multiplicity and complexity in simplest form.
In fact, Japanese architecture is not interested in form but rather in various spatial qualities that can be created by the least amount of intervention.
Most rigorous process of design ultimately and ironically produces something minimal and seems effortless. Unlike Western paradigm, where complex formal analysis and process yields architecture of equal formal and programmatic complexity, Japanese paradigm is content with disjunction between intricacies of process and simplicity of "product." Much like its culture of ambiguity and hyperbole, Japanese architectural world embraces space over form, and simultaneously looking as if a purely formal product.
The apparent dislocation between what we see at first impression as a minimal matter, in fact has multifarious spatial consequences as eye travels with time. I think unconsciously we detect the traces of spaces melting into one another through fenestrations, inside-outside, columns, slabs, stairs, doors, walls... all nascent qualities that constitutes "Architecture" of new ambiguity.

Ordos 100

Ordos 100...
100 Architects invited to design 100 individual houses in 100 days for people with too much money.
On one hand, this is a great opportunity for young architects to be exposed to each other and share their architectural bravado with the world. I have my reservations but I also can respect that someone is willing to invest such astronomical moneys.
However, I can also take of it as a mockery of Architecture as a machination of consumption of spectacle. If you can create a kind of architectural masterpieces in 100 days that created history, instead of being left on pages of history as failures, then I will stand corrected. I may be rare species who romanticize architecture is profound and time-tested and therefore takes lengthly process and contemplation.
On the other hand, it is an extremely naive and to me a demurring act towards architecture.
I read a New York Times article recently and its open paragraph had two young architects react to their luxurious reception as "having a taste of what Zaha is like." Poor souls.
Zaha is Zaha because she spent decades on her craft, not because of starchitect reception.
So for those young architects, I hope they are not blinded by delusional self-importance concocted by a schema that sees architecture as lightly as Swarovsky crystals or Wal-Mart plastics.
Ordos 100 is a double-edged sword in every sense of words.
Either it is a great success and it will be a breeding ground of new epoch of Architecture,
or an epochal mirage of past architectural dementia.
I predict that as a product of Disneyfication of Architecture, this project would end up like a flavor-of-the-month Coney Island theme park.
What is left of it in five decades would be a monumental carcasses of ruins.
Our antecedents would look at this, scoff, and grin at repetition of human predictability.
Oh what an amazing ruins it will be!

Intro

This is a simple blog just for me to voice my thoughts on architecture and personal life as it unfolds.

To me, architecture is not a mere profession but a way of life.

If anything, I hope these rants and voices may help me record my questions, observations, ideas, hopes, and despairs.