David Stewart
Published: 1995
Total Pages: 0
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Shinohara, arguably Japan's most original architect, was born in 1925 and comes from a mathematical background. He was trained at Tokyo Institute of Technology, the national polytechnic university (resembling ETH in Zurich); he also taught in the Department of Engineering for some thirty years. One of the substantial figures of late twentieth-century design, he possesses the sensibility of both a Voysey and a Lautreamont. Well known for his residential work, Shinohara has more recently turned his hand to larger buildings, notably the Centennial Hall of Tokyo Institute of Technology, which serves as a club and meeting facility for the alumni and faculty. A work of imposing appearance, Centennial Hall has nonetheless mystified many Japanese observers, who see in it a giant robotic figure towering over the urban landscape. While notions of technology are certainly implied in the design -- the structure could not have been calculated without a computerized matrix of 3180 simultaneous equations-- nothing was farther from the architect's intention than a simple High-Tech emblem, or popular icon.On the contrary, this book portrays Centennial Hall as the culmination of three successive architectural concepts or styles, the product of Shinohara's career as a teacher and hands-on designer during the course of Japan's unbelievably rapid postwar growth. Thus Centennial Hall looks toward what Shinohara speaks of as a fourth space -- with reference to both the F 14 A Tomcat fighter plane and the Apollo 11 moon-landing craft. But just as this work was not intended to evoke comic-book style robots, neither does it seek to embody American-style technology for its own sake.