#obrist

...up until the twentieth century, architecture was conceived with the human being at its center. Today, we have other points of reference, and we should see the human being as part of nature. The human scale should not longer be the only scale in architecture.

What is a Movement? A form of conspiracy? A shoal of fish changing direction in a single flash? A form of trapeze act? An unstable human pyramid? Or simply a crisis that erupts between geniuses to make it unthinkable to go in the old way?

Once there was a nation that went to war, but after they conquered a continent their own country was destroyed by atom bombs... then the victors imposed democracy on the vanquished. For a group of apprentice architects, artists, and designers, led by a visionary, the dire situation of their country was not an obstacle but an inspiration to plan and think... although they were very different characters, the architects worked closely together to realize their dreams, staunchly supported by a super-creative bureaucracy and an activist state... after 15 years of incubation, they surprised the world with a new architecture―Metabolism―that proposed a radical makeover of the entire land... Then newspapers, magazines, and TV turned the architects into heroes: thinkers and doers, thoroughly modern men… Through sheer hard work, discipline, and the integration of all forms of creativity, their country, Japan, became a shining example... when the oil crisis initiated the end of the West, the architects of Japan spread out over the world to define the contours of a post-Western aesthetic....

Storie di libri: Hans Ulrich OBRIST - INTERVISTE VOL 1