An Appreciation of Necessity

Atelier Bow Wow’s “Made in Tokyo” was a very interesting read. The architecture firm took a step back to identify the buildings that make Tokyo feel like Tokyo, most of which ended up being “B-tier buildings”. Lovingly referred to as “Da-Me” architecture, or no good, initial judgements were cast aside and they began to appreciate what these various anonymous structures were bringing to the table:

“But if you look closely, there is just one strong point to them. In terms of observing the reality of Tokyo through building form, they seem to us to be better than anything designed by architects. We thought that these buildings are not explained by the city of Tokyo, but they do explain what Tokyo is.“ 

These B tier buildings, parking lots, batting cages, etc, buildings made as economically as possible, no culture and all building; these buildings created out of necessity with no real examination of their surroundings are what they would describe as “shameless”. But this shameless architecture has value. The same buildings that have so many opportunities for critique also shape and continue to shape the city of Tokyo. They’re the things that give it the identity that the architects can see and feel but can’t explain.

I was extremely interested with their ideas on the environmental unit and the on/off idea. However I don’t think I fully understand the point they were trying to make with it, whether that was a translation error or my own lack of comprehension I’m unsure. The jist of it is that the environmental unit can be broken down into three things: category, structure and use. They argued that architecture has all three of these things on, meaning that there’s only one way to make satisfying architecture. 

They propose analyzing it with some of those things be off or all off. This opens up the possibility of good architecture to 8 different avenues. They don’t fully flush out the three category approach though or really explain how the categories supposedly work. As previously mentioned, they said architecture was just “on” across the three categories, but that seems rather incorrect. Even though they never state the mitigating factors for the three categories, I would have to assume there is some architectural examples in Tokyo that don’t adhere to all three of their categories being turned on. Unsure of what to think of the reading in it’s entirety but they bring up very interesting points of discussion.