INFLUENCES BETWEEN JAPAN AND THE WEST IN MODERN ARCHITECTURE
TWO CASE STUDIES ILLUSTRATING SPACE CONCEPTION, DETAILS AND PHILOSOPHY
CONCLUSION
Both the Barcelona Pavilion and the Fine Arts garden express an inter-paradigmatic condition. Generally speaking three cultural paradigms were determining thinking on space and cosmology in general.
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CLASSICAL PARADIGM The Greco-Roman culture was based on the optimistic view that idea and form are interconnected, that architecture expresses a content behind. The Greek term of eidos denoting both idea and form also implies an inseparable between idea and form. Though Plato was not entirely unanimous about the connection between these two realms, he admitted the link between the two. Although Greek philosophy was very rich with diametrically opposing views - Democritos' atoms move about eternally in infinite empty space, in kenon, "the void" - the mainstream was still siding up with material and the idea of horror vacui or refusing the idea of space as emptiness. The Aristotelian concept of space as topos (place) dictated the disposition of architecture and urban planning. |
MONOTHEIST PARADIGM The monotheistic Biblical paradigm - Jewish-Christian and the Islamic - cuts the connection between the idea (sacred) and the visible. God is basically invisible and non-representable. (In this respect some Christian denominations are closer to the Greco-Roman paradigm, but Iconoclasm and Protestantism shows that Christianity has had also anti-visual-incarnation moves.) According to the defenders of images, Christ's human birth had made possible his representations, which in some sense shared in the divinity of their prototype. The rejection of these images, therefore, automatically carried a repudiation of their cause. In Judaism and Islam this is excluded. The architectural consequences are twofold: Judaism is more anti-architectural - the destruction of the Temple is a shift of the main discourse from the visual to the textual. In Islam architecture is de-tectonised and textilised - the surface takes over. |
EASTERN PARADIGM Eastern, and even Japanese thought is very rich and complex, but one may discern a mainstream that considers emptiness and nothingness as the basic underlying principles of all phenomena. If so, architecture is not arché-techné, because nothing is behind; there is no content to be conveyed. This frees architecture from the obligation to represent basic contents, such as symmetry, hierarchy, antropomorphy, the main traits of Western architecture. As nothingness and emptiness is the basic content (or anti-content), the touchable, material cannot dominate, but space only, that is eo ipso closer to the idea of nothingness. The Japanese don't think in paradigms and they juxtapose the three paradigms without restraint. They don't contradiction in it, because - according to their conception - there is no diction anyhow. |
SIMILAR SURFACES
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Prof. RUDOLF KLEIN, Architect, Dr. Eng., Dr. Phil., Habil. Tel Aviv University, Faulty of Arts, School of Architecture and Department of Art History; Private address: H-1136 Budapest, R. Wallenberg 12. E-mail: r u k l e i n @ a t t g l o b a l . n e t and k l e i n r u d @ p o s t . t a u . a c . i lwebsite: w w w . t a u . a c .i l / ~ k l e I n r 2 / eFax: +44-870-137-9898 |
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