4 May 1998
Date: Mon, 4 May 1998 18:02:27 +1200 (NZST) From: "Tim Adams" <t.adams@auckland.ac.nz> To: deleuze-guattari@lists.village.Virginia.EDU Subject: Guattari's essay on Takamatsu, 1st 1/2 Here's an (unpublished in English) essay by Guattari I translated withhelp from this list, with notes at the end. I asked if anyone was interested in giving me an English synopsis of it and Catherine Howell (thank you Catherine) came back with a nearly complete translation of the second half! I translated the rest then edited the whole for consistency. It is introduced by the French architect Christian Girard. I was interested in this essay because it's on the Japanese architect Shin Takamatsu but also because Guattari has much to say on the concept of faciality and how this might apply to architecture. I am currently writing an article for the next issue of _Interstices_ which has as its theme, faciality and architecture. If anyone can suggest improvements to our humble translation please let me know for I plan to quote from it extensively then include as an appendix to my masters thesis: _Molecular Architecture, Shin Takamatsu and Felix Guattari_. Unpublished translation by Tim Adams and Catherine Howell FÉLIX GUATTARI The Architectural Machines of Shin Takamatsu Chimères: 21, (Winter, 1994), pp.127-41 INTRODUCTION ARCHITECTURE AS PRODUCTION OF SUBJECTIVITIES Christian Girard The architect Shin Takamatsu's ARK dental clinic, built in 1983, is an enormous concrete locomotive planted in Kyoto, an introverted and powerful immobile machine. This building has disturbed the field of architecture just as much as the machinism of Le Corbusier did in its day. To interpret such an architecture with metaphors or confine it with all the other semiotico-lingusitic instruments is no more appropriate for deciphering Shin Takamatsu's creations than it was for those of Le Corbusier. The ARK clinic exceeds the problematic of sense, it functions instead as a vector of subjectivation of such an intensity that it puts into question the humanist presuppositions with which architecture as a discipline is still ballasted. Félix Guattari's interest in architecture comes as no surprise: consider, for instance, A Thousand Plateaus which includes the spatial dimension, under various topics, on practically every page. Guattari participated in the 1987 group project for the exhibition "Symbole France-Japon"1, where he met numerous architects including Shin Takamatsu, one of the most remarkable architects of the eighties, on whom he has written the following text.2 [p.128 starts here] This text illustrates, like a veritable monograph, "Architectural Enunciation" from Cartographies schizoanalytiques (Galiláe, 1989 [pp.291-301]) in which Guattari assigns architecture the task of having "to analyze certain specific functions of subjectivations" and gives it the role, "along with numerous other social and cultural operators, essential among multifaceted assemblages of enunciation, capable of analytically and pragmatically carrying out the contemporary productions of subjectivity." To appreciate the potential of Guattari's contribution to the criticism (and beyond that, to the thought) of architecture, a simple exercise would consist of comparing his text with that which has been written by others in France on Shin Takamatsu. Where one critic3 sees Shin Takamatsu as an architect of the extreme or an architect of obsession and fantasy, Guattari has fully identified these different components but prefers not to base what is essential in this architecture on these "archaic fantasies." His analysis in terms of "becomings" offers a more interesting and suitable approach. The "becoming machine" of Shin Takamatsu will be the key concept in this compelling analysis. The impact of Guattari's thought on architectural theory has already had some effect, although much less than that of Derridean deconstruction (which has already had its moment of glory with the Anglo-Saxon theoreticians of architecture), There are places where this impact is felt, first in the United States following the translation of A Thousand Plateaus, and then more recently and more modestly in France . The description of the "essential cogwheels of the processual and resingularising machines" of this Kyoto architect, with the important "effect of faciality" granted to his buildings, is a model of a kind. It possesses moreover some didactic virtues that will make this essay an introduction to a knowledge of architecture beyond the well-defined paths of the traditional aesthetic. In this way Guattari opens architects to the possibility of a new theoretical exchange with their practice, the exploration of which is just beginning. [end of Christian Girard's introduction] [p.129 and Guattari's essay start here] The history of contemporary Japanese architecture is one of a progressive disengagement from the International Style, with its rectangular white abstract-forms, its pilotis, its flat roofs, its plain facades or glass curtain-walls, and, of its reconversion by way of a resingularization. This history is punctuated by the upheaval brought about by two key figures: there names are Kenzo Tange and Arata Isozaki. [image 1: two drawings of the entrance elevation of ARK, Kyoto, 1983] [p.130 starts here] Kenzo Tange made a radical rupture with the simplistic aspects of international functionalism in the sixties by establishing a structuralist movement in Japanese architecture and urbanism. In counterpoint to this structuralism which emphasised the complexity of relational aspects proper to architectural spaces, there developed an adjacent movement called "metabolism" that sought to adapt the new industrialization of buildings to human needs, in particular the building of agglomerations of modular capsules. With a similar concern for taking into account individual and cultural societal specificities, the metabolists were also preoccupied with the composition of forms evocative of traditional Japanese structures or to join itself to them indirectly As well as Kenzo Tange there was his pupil Arata Isozaki who also sought to radically disengage Japanese architecture from any modernist classicism so as to clear the way towards a symbolist and mannerist creativity that sometimes became surrealist. The upheaval and economic vitality in Japanese society has today resulted in an exceptional effervescence of architectural production. Applying the label "New Wave" to the most inventive architects of the current generation is quite arbitrary given that their diversity is so vast. But it would be even more imprudent to group this generation under the banner of post-modernism because they have escaped the embarrassment of a superficial and eclectic opportunism that generally obtains to this qualification in the United States and Europe. Such labels seem also to go against the pluralism of these Japanese creatives, this I will call their processualism, that is to say the event precisely when it escapes the pre-established modelisations of schools or movements. Not only do they each strive to develop their own personalities but they each follow the evolution and mutations that traverse their own particular processes of creation. By constantly refusing all systematic labeling we may begin to locate some evolutionary becomings in these architects that they develop perfectly naturally by avoiding all, [p.131 starts here] functionalist justifications, exigencies of context, indeed even all cultural references of a humanist type. Sometimes they have been described as hermetic but such an opinion is ill informed, especially about Japan where, in our century, there has been such a resurgence of a will to singularisation. From the collection of contemporary Japanese architecture assembled by Botond Bognar1 one may pick out many diverse types of creative becomings that nonetheless also frequently intertwine. A "becoming child" (for example in Takefumi Aida, Kazuhiro Ishii and Minoru Takeyama) either through constructions intended for children or by drawing inspiration directly from a childlike vision. A "becoming vegetal" for example in Mayumi Miyawaki, who constructed his Blue Box in Tokyo to embrace the tops of some large trees, or in Kijo Rokkaku whose House of Three Roots has raw tree trunks and some of their roots emerging from out of a cement facade. Generally speaking, one will find wooden elements used as a symbol of nature in most of the new wave architects. A "becoming animal" is explicitly acknowledged by Team Zoo of Waseda University, Tokyo, who are influenced by Takmasa Yoshizaka, who for example, has constructed the Domo Celakanto building in the form of a mysterious sea monster. We should also mention a "becoming abstract" in Tadao Ando, who talks about a "catabolism of landscape", a "becoming Nirvana" in Aida, a politics of light and void in Toyo Ito, a "becoming non-object" in Hiromi Fujii and Shinohara, whose conceptualism would like to take architecture back to its degree zero, and Mozuna whose approach is to search for a principle of "anti-dwelling".... But concerning all this abundance of becoming one only needs to refer to Botond Bognar's excellent book. From now on we will consider nothing more than the extraordinary "becoming machine" of Shin Takamatsu who "devises ingenious and mysterious objects, dangerous reminders that things are not what they seem to be"2 Chris Fawcett adds that these objects are all located in the cities of West Japan, a fact that is not insignificant given [p.132 starts here] the reserved pride with which the people of the Kyoto region claim their specificity in the area of sensibility, and no doubt, in logic too. Shin Takamatsu is an architect from Kyoto, as he never fails to mention, insisting on the fact that he has been literally molded by the spirit of this city.3 There is however something that may seem paradoxical in this proclamation because the buildings of Shin Takamatsu are unquestionably the most provocative to the environment amongst those that appear in Japan today. Their decorative tubes and steel brooches, parallel bars, metallic adornments, chimneys, glass oculuses, their rectangular surfaces that shoot out from the facades like diving boards, the fact, noted by Paul Virilio, that he merges the furniture (meuble) with the building (immeuble)4, in short, the whole of their industrial and futurist aesthetic doesn't present any [image 2: eye-glass windows of IMANISHI, Osaka, 1988] [p.133 starts here] apparent relationship with the city of Kyoto, about which Shin Takamatsu takes pleasure in speaking highly of "its impassive sweetness". A number of critics are put off by such audacities, comparing, for example, the extraordinary ARK dental clinic (Kyoto, 1983) to a crematory oven! What kind of relation is it then that holds this creator and this urban context together? Let us recall that classically two positions confront us when posing this type of question, and that both are subject to interminable controversies. There are those who, in the manner of Le Corbusier, take the context into account to the extent that the arrangement of form summons the architectural object in a continuous relation with the urban fabric. And there are those who, in the manner of Mies van der Rohe, detach the work from the ambient environment in a way that will make the organisation of form depend solely on the qualities of a structural object.5 But perhaps the architecture of the Japanese new wave, and especially that of Shin Takamatsu, leads us to a third possible position, such that the work finds itself at once perfected as much as an aesthetic object6 as it is completely open to its context. This suggests to me the position of a Butoh dancer such as Min Tanaka when he completely folds in on his body and remains nevertheless hypersensitive to all perceptions emanating from the environment. But more simply it will suffice to remark here that we see such intrinsically structured objects every day and that they do not work with the exterior environment any less: these objects are none other than the multiple and diverse machines that sustain our entire modern existence. Another one of their characteristics is that their work develops, substituting one kind for another in the course of time, in a phylogenesis that calls to mind the development of living beings. And with that we remain on the topic of Shin Takamatsu because his one principle imperative is to refuse any idea of style, never to make the same thing twice, never to have the same battle with the city and not to fear the fuss that may be generated by his unique message.7 [p. 134 starts here] Shin Takamatsu assigns an important place to the concept of the scale, which he utilises in a complex manner in order to establish systems of correspondence between heterogenous dimensions; whether these consist of, for example, the elements of the architectural apparatus in their relation to the whole of a facade, or, of a building considered globally in relation to the rest of the city.8 Kyoto, whose light, air, wind, and system of thought are unique, and which Takamatsu apprehends as a fractal organism pulsating on every level in an extraordinary slow movement9, must therefore find itself secretly rejoined, recreated, reinvented through each component of its architectural machines. The reference here to Benoît Mandelbrot's fractal object seems particularly felicitous, because this type of object effectively implies the existence of internal symmetries, or in other words, forms that can be found at both macroscopic and microscopic scales.10 Each element of the architectural ensemble (interior or exterior, and whatever its size), every ray of light, each possible shot [prise de vue] must therefore contribute to the total effect. In traditional Japanese architecture one discovers precisely these systems of correspondence between macrocosm and microcosm, interior and exterior. In former times it was inconceivable to construct a religious or prestigious edifice independent of its garden or natural surroundings into which it was inserted. For Shin Takamatsu things are otherwise in the sense that he has to work in a supersaturated urban context. He therefore transfigures the ancient existential links between nature and culture by bringing forth another nature from the urban fabric, as if in reaction to his hypersophisticated creations. ARK, a Kyoto dental clinic, forms one of the most remarkable illustrations of his method. Shaped like some baroque locomotive, for the sole reason its location adjacent to a train line and station, its effect is to transform the environment into a sort of vegetal machinic landscape, as if by a wave of a magic wand. (p.135 starts here) The work engenders a contextual mutation through its orientation in a direction contrary to popular understanding, and by reason of its very singularity. Already Hiromi Fujii (another notable figure of the new wave) has defined architecture in terms of a machine for producing sense.11 But it seems to me that, in the case of Shin Takamatsu, one must go further and speak of a machine which produces subjective enunciation, or in other words, produces existential transferences. Here once again we rediscover a creative direction well and truly anchored in Japanese culture, it consists of passing from one register to another in order to set off an effect of decentring the subject. The highest abstraction can therefore be found in continuity with the most concrete, the most immediate. The stones of the Zen garden at the famous temple of Ryoan-ji in Kyoto, for example, can be simultaneously experienced as natural elements and as an abstract composition. One could cite numerous other examples of this technology of subjectivity in the traditions of floral art, the tea ceremony, martial arts, Sumo, Noh theatre, Bunraku, etc. Let us now attempt to isolate some of the essential cogwheels of the processual and resingularising machine that Shin Takamatsu implements with a view to reinventing Japanese subjectivity in its most traditional aspects as much as those concerning an exacerbated modernity.12 The essential movement operated by these immobile machines is that of a break, a separation which invites the emergence of new worlds of reference, which themselves in turn engender numerous existential territories and new collective agencies of enunciation. In order to obtain this effect of rupture and this placing in existential suspension, the most diverse means are employed: ruptures of symmetry, the fitting-together of decentred forms, horizontal or vertical slits, separation of the building into two superimposed parts in different styles, steep inclines opening onto a void, abyss-like openings; finally, and above all, the implantation of ocular structures on the facades and in the interior spaces. The objective remains the same in each case: to arrive at a point where the building becomes a nonhuman subject, one which is capable of working with segments of both individual and collective human subjectivities. Paradoxically, this "becoming machine" of subjectivity (p.136) can only be obtained through the crossing of a threshold, in the course of which an effect of faciality [visagéite] will seize the building in order to make it live, in an animal-animist, vegetal-cosmic manner. Now lets consider each of these machinic components: + Ruptures of symmetry Broadly speaking, Takamatsu's constructions feature an almost obsessive repetition of vertical lines (the Saifukuji Buddhist temple, Gifu, 1982, or the ARK dental clinic, Kyoto, 1983). However, these vertical lines are frequently crossed by diverse transversal elements. For example, by rays of luminous white light in the interior of the Dance Hall (Nagoya, 1985) or by the beams suggesting traditional constructions in Garden (Kyoto, 1984). On the exterior one finds them in the facade consisting of rectangular columns in Kitayama Ining 23 (Kyoto 1987), upon which are superposed V-shaped metal beams. In the recent project Migoto (project 1988, construction 1989), this v-form opens out into a bird's wing that then echos a long banister seen in profile, in the foreground. In the project Sub-1 (project 1987, construction 1990), the orthogonal symmetries are systematically derived from quarter circles, from semi-circles and from discontinuous segments. + The fitting-together [l'emboitement] of decentred forms. The most common combination is that of a cylinder and a cubic structure. The purest and most simple example is that of the Kido Clinic (Kyoto, 1978), where the fitting-together is perfect. But all possible variations are developed: adjacent cube and cylinder in the Konmakine House (Takarazuka, 1977); cylinder placed perpendicularly beside a rectangular structure in the Kobolo Lighting Showroom (Kyoto, 1978); a double facade, the exterior one angled and the interior one curved, as in the Nimura Dyeing Office (Kyoto, 1979); superimposition of an enormous cylinder onto a cubic structure (ARK, Kyoto, 1983). The fitting-together is accentuated here by the addition of a rounded triangular piece on the facade, joining the cylinder to the cube, this also happens in [p. 137 starts here] M. M. Higashi Gojo S-S (Kyoto, 1987), only here a cylindrical structure is truncated by a quadrangular form. + Horizontal and vertical slits. This technique is not only a question of destabilisating the dimensions and forms anticipated by ordinary perception but also of putting to work a sort of focus or attractor of subjectivity. The Yamamoto Atelier (Kyoto, 1978), and the Koboko Lighting Showroom ( Kyoto, 1978), both appear to have been perpendicularly split in two. Dating from the same period, the Komakine House (Takarazuka, l977) has its cylindrical vertical part split horizontally by an almost continuous window. In 1980 the slit evolves, doubling itself vertically in the Yamaguchi Photo Studio (Kyoto) and horizontally in Pharoah (Kyoto, 1984). It is tripled in the Crystal Palace project (1988), and even quadrupled in the Zeus project (project 1987, construction 1989) redoubling the two lateral slits. + Separation of the building into two superimposed parts in different styles. This more recent technique consists of destabilisating perception by the producing split effects. This is particularly significant in Yoshida House (Kyoto, 1982), where a dark-coloured ground level tends to blend into the context of an old street, while a massive white superstructure intrudes into the landscape. From 1986 on, this process is systematically explored. Origin III (Kyoto, 1986) even introduces a triple superposition of styles; the Maruto Building (Tokyo, 1987) and a succession of ten or more projects and constructions continue this complicated stylistic treatment. + Steep inclines opening onto a void. Other Japanese architects have used this technique besides Takamatsu, however, what characterises Takamatsu's application is its frequently arbitrary character. Thus while the high placement of a traditionally-inspired Japanese lantern presents no problem for the Takahashi House facade (Osaka, 1983), Pharoah (Kyoto, 1984) presents a properly vertiginous interior. Sometimes, as in House at Shugakin II (p.138) (Sakyo, Kyoto, 1985), a staircase doubles its image in a mirror, majestically placed so that it ends at a landing which appears to be an impasse. In the Syntax project, the whole building's profile forms an immense staircase ending in two gigantic wings. + Abyss-like openings. This is equally a function of an often utilised treatment of space, of which the oldest and most intensified goes back to 1978 with the Yamamoto Atelier (Kyoto, 1978). In 1989, the Yamagushi Photo Studio (Kyoto) is seemingly devoured by a great cubic buccal arrangement. + Ocular structures. Under the category of windows, openings or other forms, these features are assigned the role of converting the architectural composition into an object of partial enunciation. They perfect the facialisation [visagéification] (p.139) of Shin Takamatsu's facades. They are everywhere, whether in the form of a Cyclopean eye (Miyahara House, Kyoto, 1982); two superimposed eyes (Pharoah, Kyoto, 1984); two eyes side by side (Sasaki Confectionary Factory, Kyoto, 1981); two machinic eyes of different sizes, placed in relation to one another on different planes (ARK, Kyoto, 1983); two eyes merging to form an owl's head, making up the 'Killing Moon' symbol, a sort of signature for Takamatsu (Origin I, Kyoto, 1981); four horizontal eyes, placed symmetrically in relation to a winged figure similarly evoking the 'Killing Moon' (Matsui House, Kyoto, 1986); four quadrangular eyes, made up of four reflective cubes placed against a curved surface (Origin II, Kamigo, Kyoto, 1982); or a facade entirely covered with transversally crossed eyes (Taketsu cube II, Amagasaki, 1987). All possible variations are explored, but the crucial point is that in the rare cases where eyes are not explicitly figured, the effect of faciality is still reached by other means. The central question posed by this facialisation [visagéisation] of buildings concerns the relation between the psychological and aesthetic aspects of Shin Takamatsu's creative process. A compulsive dimension is hinted at, in the creative entrainment which arises with commencement of any new project. Takamatsu's architectural object is fundamentally decentred in relation to its planes of projection. It installs itself on the opposite side of coherent rationality, on the side of a pulsating, virulent core. It is from this unconscious space that Takamatsu elaborates the spatial singularities so disconcerting to ordinary expectations. The creator himself explains that he is always brought back to the same signature mark or point of departure, the semiotic mark of paper and ink which will differentiate itself through unexpected bifurcations, alterations and renewals; in order to acquire, little by little, the consistency of a process that depends only upon itself. Certainly, in accordance with the architectural 'schizes' described above, we still have to explore the constant pro- (p.140) pensity in Takamatsu's work to go beyond a kind of originary division, the obsessive fear of the vertigo of annihilation and a fascination with death. Whatever the importance of the archaic fantasies put into play here, to me it does not seem pertinent to insist on them forming the fundamental nature of this architectural approach. Precisely because the object only finds consistency having once crossed a certain threshold of autonomisation, and because it is in a position to recreate contextual relations from each individual part. This phenomenon is particularly significant in the case of the sumptuous Kirin Plaza (1987), built on a square by the side of a river in Osaka, with both square and river undergoing a virtual metamorphosis with the plaza's intrusion. Thus all throughout its driving rhythmic phase [phase pulsionnel], from the initial drawing up to the object's final implantation in the urban fabric, a series of mutations of the expressive material tends to detach the the deterritorialised urban object from the psyche which initiated it. In my opinion, it is this detachment and the objective self-sufficiency of the architectural machine which constitute the principal achievement of Shin Takamatsu's work. (For example, Takamatsu has frequently re-started projects from scratch when they had actually been completed and found completely satisfactory by their commissioners; because some secret flaw, felt only by its author, threatens its integrity as an autonomous object). One might thus distinguish three principal phases in the gestation of a work: -- the work of fantasy, which operates essentially through drawing; -- the work of delivery and detachment, which could almost be said to conjure up the architectural object through its relation to its fantasmatic roots; -- the work of placing its plastic forms in harmony with its external context and its internal functional ends. Moreover, the most troubling, and, it must be admitted, sometimes the most perilous aspect of Takamatsu's work -- especially in his first works of note -- resides in the asymmetry of effect between the exterior perception and the interior grasp of a single (p.140) building. One senses that the architect has sometimes been caught up in a process which is difficult to master as he struggles with the mystery of the interiority of his constructions. Occasionally one thinks that he ought to have stopped earlier, which is never the case with his exterior arrangements. Note, however, that this threat of procrastination is no longer found in his more recent works; the breathless pace of his current projects brings this fascination-to-abyss with the interior to a second plane (as in the case of Orpheus, Nishio, Aichi, 1987). One might equally propose that the future will have new dialectical rendez-vous in store for Takamatsu, that will bring new perspectives to this essential problematic of articulation between interior and exterior. [Notes for Girard's intro] 1 "Folding Screens", project for the show "Symbole France-Japon" organised by the INA (1987), the group: F. du Castel, Ch. Girard, F. Guattari, J. Kalman, H. Suzuki. 2 The "Europalia 89, Japan in Belgium" exhibition, Transfiguration catalogue (Bruxelles, Centre belge de la bande dessinŽe, anciens magasins Waucquez). F. Guattari: "Les machines architectural de Shin Takamatsu", p.99-107. 3 P. Goulet "L'homme en dehors", in X. Guillot, Shin Takamatsu Projets d'Architectures (1981-89), (Paris, Electra Moniteur, 1989), p.6-17. [Notes for Guattari's essay] 1 Contemporary Japanese Architecture, (New York, Van Nostrand Reinhold Company, 1985). 2 S. D. , issue entirely on Shin Takamatsu, (Tokyo, Kajima Institute Publishing, 1988), p.146. 3 S. D., op.cit., p. 57. 4 Text of introduction to Shin Takamatsu by Paul Virilio, on the occasion of his January, 1988 exhibition at the Centre Georges-Pompidou. 5 Cf. Guiseppe Samona's article "Composition architectural", Encyclopedia Universalis, volume II, p. 563. 6 In the sense that Mikhail Bakhtine gives to this expression in Esthétique et théorie du roman, (Paris, Gallimard, 1978). 7 S. D. ,op. cit., p. 61 and statements made in January 1988, op. cit. 8 S. D. ,op. cit., pp. 59 and 61 9 S. D. ,op. cit., p. 60. 10 Benoît Mandelbrot, Les objets fractals, (Paris, Flammarion, 1984). 11 The Architecture of Hiromi Fujii, edited by Kenneth Frampton, (New York, Rizzoli International Publication Inc, 1987). 12 Shin Takamatsu likes to affirm his filiation with Italian Futurism and for this purpose he has contrived a curious symbol that one finds under various guises from 1986, in a number of projects he has visualized and in a design called "Killing Moon", a theme inspired by a poem by Marinetti. [The End]