The Unspoken. Something hidden. A non-comprehensive look. Not knowing the whole of a story makes us lucubrate on what could happen. A cloud covers part of the scene and the only thing we can do is imagine.
Today we’re taking a walk into foggy landscapes. My name is Federico and welcome to Representations of Architecture #32.
Insights
In 1958 Kiyonori Kikutake produced this drawing for his own house: The Sky House. Four flat pillars kept the house up in the air allowing him to attach underneath his Move-netts. Until 1963 the maximum height for japanese buildings was 31 meters, so the Sky House rose among similar-height houses. Kikutake chose to depict it in a classical japanese way: as it was a landscape yamato-e kakemono. Some moderate clouds allow us to see part of the sorrounding area, the vegetation is florid and a tiny cat in the right side of the house stares at us .
The interesting thing about the landscape yamato-e is that they were proto-perspectives. The house is depicted in oblique projection but there is also a horizon line somewhere behind the clouds.
After 25 years Kikutake is asked to draw his house again for a collection of drawings. He choses to employ the same view of the 1958 version but meanwhile something happened. Tall faceless buildings close the view of the house. We can just imagine what’s behind these concrete courtains. This time there is no cat, but a couple of dogs instead.
As you can see from the image below the house is today submerged inside a city composed of high-rise anonymous buildings.
In 1970 Kikutake was (together with fellow metabolists Fumihiko Maki and Noboru Kawazoe) the judge of the Shinkenchiku Residential Design Competition. The SRDC is a yearly call for young and acclaimed architects. Every year there is a different theme and new judges. On the pages of Shinkenchiku (The Japan Architect) are then published the winners: usually interesting and daring drawings. It’s the case of Hiroshi Yokohama and Tomotsune Honda, that for the 1970 competition (with the theme House as a Life-Production Vessel) decided to employ a bird’s eye view screening part of the scene with clouds. A bold choice, that allowed them to not draw the totality of the scene while giving a classic look to the drawing. Unfortunately they ended up just in the Honorable Mentions.
Very beautiful links
Let’s stick to the magazine The Japan Architect retrieving a series of essays by art historian Ching-Yu Chang. We are talking about Japanese Spatial Conception, a eleven-part series published from April 1984 to March 1985. Inside it, Chang tries to explain why the Japaneses have a different spatial conception. He addresses topics such as beauty, time, geomancy, religion and many more.
Since I had all the parts of the series scanned for my thesis I decided to assemble them and produce a pdf. In this way is possible to read the complete series back-to-back. You can read it from issuu at this link. If you want the high-res version just reply to this mail and I’ll be happy to share it with you.
About the clouds Chang doesn’t give us a definite name, he just says:
“In many Japanese paintings there is often a clouded area without detail, unfinished as compared to the rest of the picture. This requires the observer to complete the painting with his own imagination before visualizing the entire painting.”
In JAANUS this kind of clouds are listed as Kasumi, that in english means Haze. JAANUS gives this definition:
“Mist depicted in various types of *yamato-e やまと絵 usually spreading horizontally in bands. Kasumi appears not only as a pictorial element but has definite functional purposes. In landscape painting, kasumi can divide the foreground, middle ground and background to create depth. In narrative painting, particularly in *emaki 絵巻, kasumi can suggest changes of scene and passage of time.”
Concerning their role in landscape painting, Agostino De Rosa, italian researcher from IUAV, in his “L’Infinito Svelato allo Sguardo” produces a drawing trying to let us understand the cloud’s function.
De Rosa calls this techinque Un-En (literally Clouds and Smoke). In the drawing it is shown how the clouds actually allowed the artist to change the perspective plan giving depth to the scene while still employing an oblique projection.
But how this kind of representational device is used nowadays? Eu Jin Lim, architect, artist and friend of the newsletter sent me his last project less than a month ago (top of the nsl). It is called Journey - In the Shadows of the City and it is a collaboration between him and welsh artist Maggie James.
The qualitative graphite by Eu Jin is once again the protagonist. With light shading he is able to depict a soft Kuala Lampur. Actually just a portion of it, since the rest is hidden behind the clouds. See the process behind the drawing (and Maggie James’ drawing) at this link.
Sayan Skandarajah tried to depict what was hidden behind the clouds of a famous folded screen (Byōbu) depicting the old capital Kyoto: the Rakuchu Rakugai zu. He “inhabited the space of the clouds” with speculations on what could hide underneath.
When I saw his incredible drawings I thought about a sentence Roland Barthes says in his Empire of Signs:
“ The West dampens everything with meaning, in the manner of an authoritarian religion that imposes baptism on the entire population."
Barthes in the book is referring to the interpretation of japanese haikus by western critics but his thought can be easily applied to this situation. Trying to unveil what is purposely hidden is something extremely western. We can’t just cope with the fact that there isn’t an univocal meaning. Sometimes things are just as they are. Our role is just to observe them.
Sweet IG pages
Eu Jin Lim was the second Takeover guest of this newsletter. Retrieve his super-interesting takover HERE.
The aftermentioned Sayan Skandarajah didn’t stop producing images. Scroll his profile to discover the interesting projects he’s involved in.
Misc
And now something completely different:
In the turbulent sea of shit that is Netflix sometimes there are products that manage to come out to the surface. It’s the case of the last comedy special by american comedian Aziz Ansari. He deals with themes as: Content, Vaccines, Money, Social Networks, Technology and post-pandemic life that is “a little bit shittier”. All of that in less than 30 minutes!
Ansari directed also a series called Master of None, one of the few Netflix Originals that is not a too-long/vacuous/algorithm-generated/hype-based completely shitty product.
Other Netflix Originals that doesn’t give you the sensation of totally wasting your time while watching them:
Love (3 Seasons, Complete)
Mindhunter (2 Seasons, Cancelled)
BoJack Horseman (6 Seasons, Complete)
The Crown (4 Seasons, ongoing)
Unhortodox (Limited series, Complete)
Any other tips?
Oscar nominations were released some days ago. It seems that there isn’t a presenter yet. Presenting the Academy Awards is seen as a risky career movment so everyone is running away.
There is a comedian that is not afraid of mediatic backlash: Ricky Gervais. Take 10 minutes and watch him presenting the 2020 Golden Globes. Genius 🍺.
That’s it for this newsletter kids.
See you next week with a virtual world takeover.
Cheers,
Federico