[Title] Para-modeling/Chimerical Scheme of Paramodellia
[Artist] paramodel
[Date] Feb 16 (Saturday) – May 6 (Monday, national holiday), 2013
Para Observations on Ginza’s Crystal Palace
The first Expo was held in London in 1851. References to the steel-framed, glass covered crystal palace (Glass Pavilion) that was erected on that site continue to this day, 150 years later. Even for those who are unfamiliar with architectural history, the symbolism and modernism imparted by the use of transparent glass as a building material still has a significance that excites, inspires and convinces those who are captivated by the word “crystal”.
For this exhibition, the two members of Paramodel drew inspiration from their unflagging fascination with Renzo Piano’s modern glass-block building: Nakano from the context of familiar territory in relation to Bruno Taut’s “The City Crown” and Hayashi from the visualized grid not just of the structural foundation as an architectural unit but also as a design.
Perpetually Chimerical Paragraphs on “Chimerical Scheme of P”
“No matter how far you may attempt to fly, you will never reach the final destination. Praise the stars of all the worlds. All that you see here is just the caprice of illusory light, the giant lantern of a marvelous world.”
Modern architect Bruno Taut published “Die Stadtkrone” (“The City Crown”) in 1919. This book became the precursor to “Alpine Architektur” (“Alpine Architecture”, 1919), a collection of drawings that depicted enormous shining edifices of crystal perched on Alpine peaks on a scale visible from outer space. From the window of where I used to live in Kyoto (although I use the word “I” for convenience sake, feel free to interpret this as a chimerical pronoun known as “paramodel”), I could see Katsura Imperial Villa, which, it is rumored, Taut unearthed from obscurity, pointing out its worth. Later I moved to a spot halfway up Mount Ikoma on the border between Osaka and Nara. Soon after moving, I learned that eighty years before Taut had come up with a plan for urban development on this mountain, the top of which was visible from my doorway. (Then as now there was an amusement park at the summit with an airplane ride that swung round a tall tower.) The urban design was commissioned by Daiki Railway Company [today’s Kinki Nippon Railway] and Taut was apparently overjoyed, exclaiming, “This indeed is the ‘City Crown’! This is one of the greatest themes I have ever been given.” But due to various complications, the project never went beyond the planning stage…
In “The City Crown”, Taut likened the popular classical style of city planning to “a torso without a head”. Drawing liberally from religious architecture, he aspired to a “City Crown”, a nonfunctional entity that would transcend religion, a symbolic grouping of buildings that would become a paradise, the home of the arts rooted in a pure social love of humanity At the top of this “crown” would rest a clear, shining “crystal house” that reflected this ideal. Here was Taut’s impulse set free; here were the imprints of his prophetic vision, the vision of a man possessed by an architectural concept that appeared at times nostalgic, and at times like wild excitement over, or a lingering dream of modernism and socialism, or even like a utopian fantasy. Even now, each time I see Ikoma, in all its glory, peeking over my veranda (my office is on the sixth floor of a high rise in the middle of East Osaka and I face due east towards the mountain peak when I work on my architectural drawings), these visions flit through my mind, like a haze of fractured light. How many people living at the mountain’s foot sense that fleeting presence at the summit in this age when information in binary digits speeds instantaneously through time and space. Every day I wish that I could grasp something, however little, of Taut’s vision of the “Crown” before it blurs and vanishes, that I could poetically extend it and carry on his impulse.
This time, Taut’s concept of a city crown of crystal buildings immediately came to mind as a way of approaching the glass block architecture of Renzo Piano’s Maison Hermès (rather than following the context of architectural or art history, just stick to the context of a more familiar territory). Surely it is not unreasonable to play with Taut’s concept in the midst of this cluster of glass block buildings located in the heart of Tokyo, one of the world’s greatest metropolises.
“The City Crown” introduces a wealth of images, including Jan van Eyck’s “Saint Barbara” at the beginning of the book and buildings from around the world with a particular focus on Hindu and Jain architecture. Two poems by Paul Scheerbert, a science fiction writer much loved by Taut, left a lasting impression on me: “New Life: The Revelation of Architecture”, which is quoted at the beginning of the book and “The Lifeless Shrine: An Architect’s Dream”, which is quoted at the end.
“The dead Earth revolves more slowly still… Tall angels come… They bend forward slowly as they fold their wings and bow their heads. Their feet float in the air above the Earth’s two poles. Soon all twelve, their curly blonde hair flowing, surround the planet, forming a brilliant ring of hair. Each holds a cathedral in his arms and these they take with both hands and set atop the soaring snow-clad peak… From the knapsacks on their backs, the angels withdraw hundreds of brilliant shining palaces. They adorn the snow-clad peak named “Earth” with palaces of many colors and make them shine strongly. Light radiates from their eyes, like the eyes of good children who have been shown a toy…Like the wings of a rare butterfly, a frozen bird of paradise, or light flashing from a diamond, the Earth becomes multihued. The palaces light up. Through clear glass windows, from all the countless castles, innumerable colorful lights pour forth into the purple snowy night…”
Giant angels bearing palaces in their hands flit back and forth, making the dead Earth shine in many colors. While perusing this poem in the library, a certain fantasy rose in my mind.
In a corner of an enormous city, an architect draws up a construction scheme for Gigantic Boy. The youth, embryo-like, breathes within a cocoon of clear glass-block buildings and upon his head he wears the sparkling, multihued, palace-shaped City Crown. The crystal crown grows larger, radiating a dazzling light and expanding in all directions as the mountainous body of the youth is formed. As it grows, the crown penetrates the membrane of the transparent cocoon, eventually encompassing the surrounding buildings and the city, and repeatedly forming an ever larger, more dazzling crown. The architect’s resplendent blueprint effortlessly transcends such physical units as the Earth or the stars and continues to evolve endlessly….
To wear the pure and marvelous crown requires literally a pure and marvelous character. Therefore, to this I add one more image from familiar territory as an intersecting axis: Shuntoku-maru, a youth whose legend has been passed down for centuries in the Yao area of East Osaka at the foot of Mount Ikoma. The name of Kintetsu Shuntoku-michi station is derived from this young man. There are many variations of the story but in most cases, Shuntoku-maru is disowned by his father due to false accusations, is reduced to begging and suffers some form of handicap. The Noh play “Yoroboshi” presents the loosest treatment of this legend. In this case, Shuntoku-maru is blind. Towards the end of the play, after stumbling about the stage, he looks towards the sun setting in the west and exclaims, “I can see! I can see! As far as can be. The blue mountains are in my heart!” With the eyes of his soul, he is able to see the Pure Land of paradise. (After which, he is reunited with his father who takes him home.) I have been studying the legends of this area for several years and for me, the intelligent, eternally lacking and incomplete Shuntoku-maru seems to be a symbol of the ultimate “boy” that we all, whether young or old, male or female, carry with us, a symbol of “eternal boyhood” free from care. As such, I could not think of anyone more fitting to wear the City Crown that encompasses giant Mount Ikoma than Shuntoku-maru, that phantom of the beautiful spirit which pervades the plain at its foot.
Incidentally, Bruno Taut describes his ideological proposal in “The City Crown” as follows:
“The ultimate is always quiet and empty. … it always remains empty and pure – it is “dead.” The ultimate task of architecture is to be quiet and absolutely turned away from all daily rituals for all time. Here the scale of practical demands becomes silent….. The city crown proposal in itself may be considered problematic. Perhaps with some justification – it may be that the solution of the city crown evolves differently. Nevertheless, enough will have happened, if [the architect] has given a modest effort to inspire the search in this direction. At best, this work should be a flag, an idea, or a theoretical suggestion, whose ultimate solution is comprised of many thousands of varied possibilities.”
So now we see. When his urban development plan on the mountaintop came to a standstill, Taut lamented thus: “So that is as far as this dream goes. My plan ended on paper.” Yet at a deeper level he was not really seeking results or the plan’s expression in reality. It is this inherent contradiction in architecture (one that becomes particularly conspicuous in the dreamlike design concepts Taut produced after “Alpine Architecture”), this impossibility of capturing ideals in material reality, that is actually the essence of architecture (just as it is the essence of art). How much more so is this contradiction the embodiment of human endeavor As Yoshida pointed out in Essays in Idleness , to strive for completion in all things is not good; the trick to living longer is to leave some things unfinished. Always, it is better for our actions to remain unfinished. If we reach completion, we shall see spread before us the ultimate and final architectural city, which, though beautiful, is essentially an inorganic “graveyard”.
If that is the case, then what should we try to accomplish in a goal-less world? In answer, I discovered the following words that resonate with all that has been discussed so far and that infinitely illumine all: words from the Baghvad Gita, that beautiful literary work which represents the crystallization of the wisdom of ancient India, which for thousands of years has given courage to countless people, which doubtlessly greatly influenced the majestic architectural concepts of the Hindus and the Jains, and which was referred to as the finest work in “The City Crown”.
“You have a right to perform your prescribed duty, but you are not entitled to the fruits of action. Never consider yourself the cause of the results of your activities, and never be attached to not doing your duty.”
Concerning the ultimate (“para” in Sanskrit) object of action, the Baghvad Gita states:
“Brahman… lies beyond the cause and effect of this material world. Everywhere are His hands and legs, His eyes, heads and faces, and He has ears everywhere. In this way the Supersoul exists, pervading everything. The Supersoul is the original source of all senses, yet He is without senses. He is unattached, although He is the maintainer of all living beings. He transcends the modes of nature, and at the same time He is the master of all the modes of material nature. The Supreme Truth exists outside and inside of all living beings, the moving and the nonmoving. Because He is subtle, He is beyond the power of the material senses to see or to know. Although far, far away, He is also near to all. He is the source of light in all luminous objects. He is beyond the darkness of matter and is unmanifested. He is knowledge, He is the object of knowledge, and He is the goal of knowledge. He is situated in everyone’s heart.”
The “para”, which Taut entrusted to the blueprint of a pure, clear “crown”, resembles something vague and nebulous, a certain presence, always evading our physical senses, not to be grasped by hands alone. The future of matter will always be paradoxically entwined with the impulse toward transparency, with the plan that leads towards naught. If so, then the spectacle of the construction site, the content of which is invisible yet ripe with latency, is the reality of the world being created, phantasmical yet full of tension. The most profound happenings are never materialized but rather destined to vanish the instant they are completed and become “it”, and all things being made continue forever to be “its” model. The light source of that “giant lantern of a marvelous world” will never be visible to the naked eye. Rather, “it” exists in the heart of all things. Just as the stumbling Shuntoku-maru demonstrated, this light can only be seen and rejoiced over with the eye of the soul.
Yes, every single one of us is always and forever a boy playing in a Paramodellia filled with spring sunlight.