THE PRITZKER PRIZE
2013 WINNER ARCHITECT TOYO
ITO
TAMA ART UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY - JAPAN
TAMA ART UNIVERSITY LIBRARY - JAPAN
This is a library for an art university located in the suburbs of
Tokyo. Passing through the main entrance gate, the site lies behind a front
garden with small and large trees, and stretches up a gentle slope.
The existing cafeteria was the sole place in the university shared
by both students and staff members across all disciplines, so the first impetus
for our design was to question how an institution as specialised as a library
could provide an open commonality for all.
Our first idea was for a wide open gallery on the ground level that
would serve as an active thoroughfare for people crossing the campus, even
without intending to go to the library.
To let the flows and views of these people freely penetrate the
building, we began to think of a structure of randomly placed arches which
would create the sensation as if the sloping floor and the front garden’s
scenery were continuing within the building.
The characteristic arches are made out of steel plates covered with
concrete. In plan these arches are arranged along curved lines which cross at
several points. With these intersections, we were able to keep the arches
extremely slender at the bottom and still support the heavy live loads of the
floor above.
THE PRITZKER PRIZE 2013 WINNER ARCHITECT TOYO ITO
The intersections of the rows of arches help to articulate softly separated zones within this one space. Shelves and study desks of various shapes, glass partitions that
function as bulletin boards, etc., give these zones a sense of both individual character and visual as well as spatial continuity.
On the sloped ground level, a movie-browser like a bar counter and a large glass table for the latest issues of magazines invite students to spend their time waiting for the bus in the library.
The spatial diversity one experiences when walking through the arches different in span and height changes seamlessly from a cloister-like space filled with natural light, to the impression of a tunnel that cannot be penetrated visually.
The new library is a place where everyone can discover their style of “interacting" with books and film media as if they were walking through a forest or in a cave; a new place of arcade-like spaces where soft mutual relations form by simply passing through; a focal centre where a new sense of creativity begins to spread throughout the art university’s campus.
Tama Art University Library’s design by Toyo Ito photographs had taken by Iwan Baan.
A
EL CROQUIS TOYO ITO 2001 – 2005 BEYOND MODERNISM
21 buildings and design proposals are examined in detail,
accompanied by sketches, diagrams, scale models and full page images of
completed buildings, including; ”Sendai Mediatheque” and ”TOD’S Omotesando Building”
following the previous issue “El Croquis 71, Toyo Ito” launched in 1995 .
Conversation: “A Conversation with Toyo Ito” - Taki Koji x
Toyo Ito
You may reach to have information on all the Toyo Ito’s
books which had already
published to click above link.
TOYO ITO
Toyo Ito was born on
June 1, 1941 in Keijo (Seoul), Korea (Japanese). His father was a business man
with a special interest in the early ceramic ware of the Yi Dynasty of Korea
and Japanese style paintings. He also was a sports fan of baseball and golf. In
1943, Ito, his mother, and his two elder sisters moved back to Japan. Two years
later, his father returned to Japan as well, and they all lived in his father’s
hometown of Shimosuwa-machi in Nagano Prefecture. His father died in 1953, when
he was 12. After that the rest of family operated a miso (bean paste) making
factory. At present, all but one sister who is three years older than Ito, have
died.
Ito established his
own architecture office in 1971, and the following year he married. His wife
died in 2010. They had one daughter who is now 40 and is editing Vogue
Nippon.
In his youth, Ito
admits to not having a great interest in architecture. There were several early
influences however. His grandfather was a lumber dealer, and his father liked
to draw plans for his friends’ houses. When Ito was a freshman in high school,
his mother asked the early Modernist architect, Yoshinobu Ashihara, who had just
returned to Japan from the U.S. where he worked at Marcel Breuer’s office, to
design their home in Tokyo.
He was in the third
grade of junior high school when he moved to Tokyo and went to Hibiya High
School. At the time, he never dreamed he would become an architect—his passion
was baseball. It was while attending the University of Tokyo that architecture
became his main interest. For his undergraduate diploma design, he submitted a
proposal for the reconstruction of Ueno Park, which won the top prize of the
University of Tokyo.
Toyo Ito began
working in the firm of Kiyonori Kikutake & Associates after he graduated
from Tokyo University’s Department of Architecture in 1965. By 1971, he was
ready to start his own studio in Tokyo, and named it Urban Robot (Urbot). In
1979, he changed the name to Toyo Ito & Associates, Architects.
He has received
numerous international awards, including in 2010, the 22nd Praemium Imperiale
in Honor of Prince Takamatsu; in 2006, The Royal Institute of British
Architects’ Royal Gold Medal; and in 2002, the Golden Lion for Lifetime
Achievement for the 8th Venice Biennale International Exhibition. All of his
honors are listed in the fact summary of this media kit. He has been a guest
professor at the University of Tokyo, Columbia University, the University of
California, Los Angeles, Kyoto University, Tama Art University, and in the
spring semester of 2012, he hosted an overseas studio for Harvard’s Graduate
School of Design, the first in Asia.
His works have been
the subject of museum exhibitions in England, Denmark, the United States,
France, Italy, Chile, Taiwan, Belgium, and numerous cities in Japan.
Publications by and about him have appeared in all of those countries and more.
He holds Honorary Fellowships in the American Institute of Architects, Royal
Institute of British Architects, the Architecture Institute of Japan, the Tokyo
Society of Architects and Building Engineers, and the American Academy of Arts
and Sciences.
One of his first
projects in 1971 was a home in a suburb of Tokyo. Called “Aluminum House,” the
structure consisted of wooden frame completely covered in aluminum. Most of his
early works were residences. In 1976, he produced a home for his sister, who
had recently lost her husband. The house was called “White U” and generated a
great deal of interest in Ito’s works. It was demolished in 1997. Of most of
his work in the 1980’s, Ito explains that he was seeking to erase conventional
meaning from his works through minimalist tactics, developing lightness in
architecture that resembles air and wind.
He calls the Sendai
Mediatheque, completed in 2001 in Sendai City, Miyagi, Japan, one of the high
points of his career. In the Phaidon book, Toyo Ito, he explains, “The
Mediatheque differs from conventional public buildings in many ways. While the
building principally functions as a library and art gallery, the administration
has actively worked to relax divisions between diverse programs, removing fixed
barriers between various media to progressively evoke an image of how cultural
facilities should be from now on. This openness is the direct result of its
simple structure, consisting of flat concrete slabs (which are honey-comb steel
plates with concrete) penetrated by 13 tubes. Walls on each floor are kept to
an absolute minimum, allowing the various functions to be freely distributed
throughout the open areas between the tubes.“
In delivering the
Kenneth Kassler lecture at Princeton University in 2009, Ito explained his
general thoughts on architecture:
“The natural world
is extremely complicated and variable, and its systems are fluid – it is built
on a fluid world. In contrast to this, architecture has always tried to
establish a more stable system. To be very simplistic, one could say that the
system of the grid was established in the twentieth century. This system became
popular throughout the world, as it allowed a huge amount of architecture to be
built in a short period of time.
However, it also
made the world’s cities homogenous. One might even say that it made the people
living and working there homogenous too. In response to that, over the last ten
years, by modifying the grid slightly I have been attempting to find a way of
creating relationships that bring buildings closer to their surroundings and
environment.” Ito amends that last thought to “their natural environment.”
In the fashionable
Omotesando area of Tokyo, Ito designed a building in 2004 for TOD’S, an Italian
shoe and handbag company, in which trees provided a source of inspiration. The
Ito office provides its own description of the project:
“Trees are natural
objects that stand by themselves, and their shape has an inherent structural
rationality. The pattern of overlapping tree silhouettes also generates a
rational flow of forces. Having adapted the branched tree diagram, the higher
up the building, the thinner and more numerous the branches become, with a
higher ration of openings. Similarly, the building unfolds as interior spaces
with slightly different atmospheres relating to the various intended uses.
Rejecting the
obvious distinctions between walls and opening, lines and planes, two- and
three dimensions, transparency and opaqueness, this building is characterized
by a distinctive type of abstractness. The tree silhouette creates a new image
with a constant tension generated between the building’s symbolic concreteness
and its abstractness. For this project, we (Ito and his staff) intended to
create a building that through its architectural newness expresses both the
vivid presence of a fashion brand and strength in the cityscape that will
withstand the passage of time.”
After designing
critically-acclaimed buildings like Sendai Mediatheque, Ito became an architect
of international importance during the early-2000s leading to projects
throughout Asia, Europe, North America and South America. Ito designed the Main
Stadium for the 2009 World Games in Kaohsiung and the under-construction
Taichung Metropolitan Opera House, both in Taiwan. In Europe, Ito and his firm
renovated the façade of the Suites Avenue Apartments with striking stainless
steel waves and, in 2002, designed the celebrated temporary Serpentine Pavilion
Gallery in London’s Hyde Park. Other projects during this time include the
White O residence in Marbella, Chile and the never-built University of
California, Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive in California.
Perhaps most
important to Ito, however, are the projects in his home country, made more
pressing by the earthquake and tsunami of March 11, 2011. The disaster spurred
Ito and a group of other Japanese architects to develop the concept of
“Home-for-All” communal space for survivors. As Ito says in Toyo Ito -
Forces of Nature published by Princeton Architectural Press:
“The relief centers
offer no privacy and scarcely enough room to stretch out and sleep, while the
hastily tacked up temporary housing units are little more than rows of empty
shells: grim living conditions either way. Yet even under such conditions,
people try to smile and make do…. They gather to share and communicate in
extreme circumstances – a moving vision of community at its most basic.
Likewise, what we see here are very origins of architecture, the minimal
shaping of communal spaces.
An architect is
someone who can make such spaces for meager meals show a little more humanity,
make them a little more beautiful, a little more comfortable.”
For Ito, the
fundamental tenets of modern architecture were called into question by
“Home-for-All.” He adds, “In the modern period, architecture has been rated
highest for its originality. As a result, the most primal themes—why a building
is made and for whom—have been forgotten. A disaster zone, where everything is
lost offers the opportunity for us to take a fresh look, from the ground up, at
what architecture really is. ‘Home-for-all’ may consist of small buildings, but
it calls to the fore the vital question of what form architecture should take
in the modern era—even calling into question the most primal themes, the very
meaning of architecture.”
The Pritzker Jury
commented on Ito’s direct expression of his sense of social responsibility
citing his work on “Home-for-All.”
Recently, Ito has
also thought of his legacy, as apparent by the museum of architecture that
bears his name on the small island of Omishima in the Seto Inland Sea. Also
designed by Ito, the museum opened in 2011 and showcases his past projects as
well as serving as a workshop for young architects. Two buildings comprise the
complex, the main building “Steel Hut” and the nearby “Silver Hut,” which is a
recreation of the architect’s former home in Tokyo, built in 1984.
http://www.pritzkerprize.com/2013/biography
