14th La Biennale di Venezia International Architecture Exhibition | The Japan Pavilion Official Website

2014 14th
International Architecture Exhibition
La Biennale di Venezia

A Storehouse of Contemporary Architecture

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14th International Architecture Exhibition La Biennale di Venezia

Rem Koolhaas, who served as Director of the 14th International Architectural Exhibition, requested the National Pavilions to each research and raise issues on the theme of "Absorbing Modernity" in the context of the past 100 years. The Japan Pavilion team envisioned the pavilion as “A Storehouse of Contemporary Architecture,” likening the building’s architectural structure with its elevated exhibition space equipped with pilotis beneath to a traditional takayuka-style (raised floor) building, and within it presented a wide variety of materials that illustrated the relationship between modernization and architecture. Discussions and film screenings were held in the piloti space, thereby creating a visual connection between past and present through the opening in the center of the exhibition room.

The team regarded the 100-year history of Japanese architecture as “a process of permeation and conflict with modernizing society”, and organized the exhibition centering on the decade of the 1970s, when society as a whole was forced to change direction due to the oil crisis and environmental issues.

Particularly focusing on projects such as Osamu Ishiyama’s "Kaitakusha-no-ie" (The Farmer’s House), Toyo Ito’s "Domino House", Teruobu Fujimori’s "Architectural Detective Agency", Atelier Zo’s community center "Shinshukan", Tadao Ando’s "Row House in Sumiyoshi", Kazunari Sakamoto’s "Common House in Sanda", architectural fragments from the collection of Tsutomu Ichiki, and Hiroshi Hara’s "Umeda Sky Building", the exhibition presented the traces of conflict, contemplation, and creativity at the turning point of modernization through simultaneously introducing the independent research and experimental practices of these architects.

In addition to plans and models, a diverse array of documents and materials conveying the state of architecture and society were presented in the exhibition room, from notebooks, letters, furniture, pieces of demolished buildings, photographs and paintings, to magazines that supported the architectural world. The distribution of blueprint drawings of buildings carefully selected from the past 100 years was also a popular feature of the exhibition. In this way, the Japan Pavilion succeeded in presenting a large-scale critical overview of modern and contemporary Japanese architectural history at the Biennale, which indeed could not have been realized in Japan.