architecture

architecture of the street

binary

city

community

neighborhood

street

symbiosis

nationality

Japanese

occupation / innovator as

architect

innovator in the field of

metabolism

businessperson

political activist

Thinker

is the idea that tokyo's streets aren't chaotic unless you're expecting a center. Tokyo's streets are more like snakes than fruit.

There is no descriptiveness to the propositions of putting a building where there was none, of opening up a space for some unknown activity where none had existed before. One could say that Kurokawa likes to order off menu but then who doesn't these days' Kurokawa theorizes the city as seen as the Japanese street as an alternative to the western city plaza, what he calls 'the architecture of the street.' The street's growth resembles a snake rather than a fruit. Streets wind and twist. They don't have a pit. Kurokawa reminds us that Tokyo's streets aren't chaotic at all unless you look for them with the expectation of a center.

is the endless repetition of yes and no which produces an extremely practical scientific method.

By the endless repetition of the choice betweeen yes and no an extremely practical scientific method is born, the purpose of which is to reach the truth, if in a gradual, piecemeal fashion. Rationalism is firmly based on this fundamental dualism' (Kurokawa 1988:24).

is western urge to divide all of existence into either yes or no, interior or exterior, mind or body, the warmth that lies at the border between the two extremes is lost, sacrificed to rationality.

In Western culture, particularly in the currents of modern thought that are based on rationalism, it is considered important to clearly differentiate between any two distinct phenomena. But by dividing all of existence into either yes or no, interior or exterior, mind or body, the warmth that lies at the boder between the two extremes is lost, sacrificed to rationality' (Kurokawa 1988:19)

, in Japan, until recently, acted like a river, separating or encircling communities, focusing communally on the common trade of the areas.

Kurokawa is keen to point out that for many centuries Japanese cities were in fact organized on a street system. For instance, he notes, (by reference to Kazuhiko Yamori's Toshizu no Rekishi orHistory ofCity Plans) that a change occurred in the late ninth and tenth centuries: from a system in which the streets were 'like rivers separating or encircling communities' to one in which they became the communal focus for people on both sides of the street who were employed in common trades (hence names such as Konya-machi or dyers' district and Kamiya-machi or paper merchants' district). Only in recent times, according to Kurokawa, has that purported street focus been lost-with new 1962laws which introduced a system ofdistricts and wards (Kurokawa, 1994, pp. 160 -161).

is on our radar. Try again later or consider contributing!

Kisho Kurokawa

Authors(0)

Kisho KurokawaThinkers

Kisho Kurokawa