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My MA dissertation examined the presence - and proliferation - of actors that control and monitor public behaviour in our urban spaces. The project started life as a study of objects and signs I encountered around a one mile stretch of the A1 in nearby Islington, gathered into a 100 page publication.

Sample pages from the 100 page publication.

The publication catalogued its subjects' locations, along with a visual record - in most cases a close-up, contextual shot and the object/sign's POV - and a translation of its presence and meaning.

The project developed through workshops, studio experiments, discussion groups and presentations, which I recorded on my what we understand about the term 'public realm' and homed in on the presence and visual language of prohibitive objects and people (rather than written signs) in our urban landscape; culminating in a dissertation and short film.

The dissertation proposes that public spaces can be divided into categories and sub-categories, and it examines the level of 'transaction' within each as well as the presence of obstructions.
The gallery pages contain pictures of obstructions informally grouped by their intentions, or 'prescriptions' as Bruno Latour described them; as well as their primary material, ie, signs, plastic, tape, wood, glass, planting, stone or human in uniform. The images are placed closely together to prod at our visual experience of the urban environment, to reveal the invisibleness of obstructions, and their scope through variety and ubiquity.

Obstructions of King's Cross concentrates on a London area that has undergone rapid gentrification in recent years. It compares the presence of obstructions within the area's three distinct zones: its major transport hubs, privately-owned public spaces, and edges - where signs of its former deprivation can still be seen.

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My MA dissertation examined the presence - and proliferation - of actors that control and monitor public behaviour in our urban spaces. The project started life as a study of objects and signs I encountered around a one mile stretch of the A1 in nearby Islington, gathered into a 100 page publication.

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First published in 1972, Learning from Las Vegas is a book written by architects and writers, Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown , and co-authored by Steven Izenour . It inspired a whole generation of architectural practitioners and enthusiasts and sparked a discussion on modernism and postmodernism approaches for architecture upon its release. In this book, the authors studied the architecture of through the lens of modernism and analyzed why and how it is different from other cities around the world. The text also emphasizes on the practice of "symbolism over form" that influenced the design language of the city.

The book was not only groundbreaking for its time but is also considered to be one of the most important texts written about architectural theory to this day.

Context of the Book

In 1968, Denise Scott Brown and Robert Venturi, along with their teaching assistant Steven Izenour, took 13 students to Las Vegas as part of a research project they conducted at Yale School of Art and Architecture . The group of students included nine architecture students, two planning students, and two graphic design students. Together, they observed, documented, and analyzed the famous Las Vegas Commercial Strip and published their findings in this book. They aimed to understand and examine the architecture of Las Vegas, particularly that of the Commercial Strip and reassess the need for symbolism in architecture.

Anatomy of the Book

The revised edition of the book, published by MIT press in 1977, is divided into two parts and includes two prefaces written by Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown themself. However, the unabridged, 1972 first edition of the book also contained a third part that covered the architectural work of the firm, Venturi and Rauch.

The text in the book is suspended in between numerous images and illustrations of the landscape . The authors have also included a variety of maps, urban layouts, demographic charts, and activity patterns that help to provide a deeper understanding of the text. Original imagery from their trip, handwritten notes, and sketches are also featured in the book to complement their research.

Part I

Part -I of Learning from Las Vegas is titled "A Significance for A&P Parking Lots or Learning from Las Vegas" and is essentially an account of the authors' study of the architecture of the Las Vegas Commercial Strip. In it, Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown introduce the Strip and describe how modern architecture has influenced its environment. It brings to light the value of symbolism over form and discusses the "automotive culture" that influenced the architecture and design of the Las Vegas Strip.

Instead of buildings, symbols like bright signage and flashy lights dominated the space and decorated facades took precedence over the conventional behinds to aim towards the people driving on the highway.

Within the context of Las Vegas , Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, and Steven Izenour also present their opinion on the ideals of modernism that prevailed at the time and its rejection of ornamentation and expressive symbolism. This part of the text also includes mapping of the Strip and spatial and image analysis of the buildings on the highway.

Part II

Part two of the book called the "Ugly and Ordinary Architecture, or the Decorated Shed", is a comment on the group's observations and findings of the cinematic architecture in the first part. In it, Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, and Steven Izenour also analyze the two categories of building styles in Las Vegas: one termed as a "Duck", other as a "Decorated Shed".

The "duck" represents a building that uses its form and volume to express its program and meaning. Following a modernist approach to their architecture, these buildings seem rather ordinary and simple. A "decorated shed", on the other hand, relies on signage and imagery to convey its function. These buildings adapted ornamentation, visual references, and symbolism in their designs, much against the ideals of modern architecture.

With their writings and elaborate discussions in this book, the three authors helped to bring this trend of decoration and symbolism in architecture back into everyday conversation.

After being published in 1972, Learning from attracted a healthy controversy that divided its readers into two groups: "the Whites" who wrote against the book and "the Greys" who wrote in favor of it. While some people criticized the book and others spoke highly of it, its significant influence on the architectural community and cannot be dismissed.

However, within the backdrop of the Las Vegas Strip, the lack of modernist ideals for its architecture and the importance of symbols to communicate with the people still remains the main focus of the book, just as Denise Scott Brown says in the introduction, "Las Vegas is not the subject of the book, the symbolism of architectural form is."
References
An avid learner and reading enthusiast, Urja Jindal is a practicing Junior Architect who is currently exploring her interest in Architectural Journalism. She believes that people are the best audiences to the buildings around them and sees architecture as a medium that has the most power to change their environment.

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Book in Focus: Learning from Las Vegas by Robert Venturi, Steven Izenour, Denise Scott Brown

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First published in 1972, Learning from Las Vegas is a book written by architects and writers, Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown , and co-authored by Steven Izenour . It inspired a whole generation of architectural practitioners and enthusiasts and sparked a discussion on modernism and postmodernism approaches for architecture upon its release.

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Campo Marzio – Giovanni Battista Piranesi 1762

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Campo Marzio – Giovanni Battista Piranesi 1762

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Amélie - the Blind Man Scene | English Subtitles

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The Scaffie Hierarchy: How To With John Wilson

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My MA dissertation examined the presence - and proliferation - of actors that control and monitor public behaviour in our urban spaces. The project started life as a study of objects and signs I encountered around a one mile stretch of the A1 in nearby Islington, gathered into a 100 page publication.

Sample pages from the 100 page publication.

The publication catalogued its subjects' locations, along with a visual record - in most cases a close-up, contextual shot and the object/sign's POV - and a translation of its presence and meaning.

The project developed through workshops, studio experiments, discussion groups and presentations, which I recorded on my what we understand about the term 'public realm' and homed in on the presence and visual language of prohibitive objects and people (rather than written signs) in our urban landscape; culminating in a dissertation and short film.

The dissertation proposes that public spaces can be divided into categories and sub-categories, and it examines the level of 'transaction' within each as well as the presence of obstructions.
The gallery pages contain pictures of obstructions informally grouped by their intentions, or 'prescriptions' as Bruno Latour described them; as well as their primary material, ie, signs, plastic, tape, wood, glass, planting, stone or human in uniform. The images are placed closely together to prod at our visual experience of the urban environment, to reveal the invisibleness of obstructions, and their scope through variety and ubiquity.

Obstructions of King's Cross concentrates on a London area that has undergone rapid gentrification in recent years. It compares the presence of obstructions within the area's three distinct zones: its major transport hubs, privately-owned public spaces, and edges - where signs of its former deprivation can still be seen.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
My MA dissertation examined the presence - and proliferation - of actors that control and monitor public behaviour in our urban spaces. The project started life as a study of objects and signs I encountered around a one mile stretch of the A1 in nearby Islington, gathered into a 100 page publication.

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Georges Perec's An attempt at exhausting a place in paris

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METABOLISTS

The Metabolist movement emerged at the Tokyo meeting of the 1960 World Design Conference (an epilogue to the Congres Internationaux d'Architecture Moderne [CIAM, 1927-]), with the proposal that architecture should not only embrace new technologies and the enormous scales of the post-war period, but also develop living, self-generating systems that could adapt over time. Founded by a group of ambitious young architects intent on challenging the status quo and thus establishing their own presence among the international congress of leading architects, the movement's core group included the architects Kiyonori Kikutake, Fumihiko Maki, and Kisho Kurokawa, all of whom later enjoyed enduring international reputations. In addition, another architect, Masato Otaka, the critic Noboru Kawazoe, the graphic designer Kiyoshi Awazu, and the industrial designer Kenji Ekuan were also involved in the production of the bilingual manifesto published by the group.

Although the Metabolists were a small group, Metabolism as a movement included others, especially Kenzo Tange and his assistant Takashi Asada, who nurtured the founders through a sort of late-night salon. Tange's "City for 10 Million People" (1960), to be built along a series of looped roadways stretching across Tokyo Bay, was a direct response to his proteges' work. Arata Isozaki, working for Tange during the same period, was also identified with the movement, but he took a darker view, reflected in his sketches of brutal concrete towers rising from ruins.

The original Metabolists' relative lack of professional experience was reflected in their audaciously futuristic proposals. In the group's only publication, Metabolism 1960: The Proposals for New Urbanism, Kikutake's sketches were particularly prominent, taking up over a third the original text; his 1958 Sky House was the only built work included. Kikutake offered up sail-shaped cities floating on ferro-cement hulls, "plug-in" housing tacked on-to soaring towers by magnets, light fixtures freely connected to electrified steel walls, and commutes by submarine or helicopter. The Metabolists are often accused of lacking the sense of improbable delight found in the slightly later Archigram's works, but Kikutake's original essay shows the same wobbly, giddy thinking. Unfortunately, his essays' English translations are clunky and difficult to comprehend, and the humour he brought to the movement was poorly recognized abroad, replaced by dry restatements of the Metabolists' positions.

Although the group established an apparently united front, the founders held a diverse set of theoretic concerns that prevented them from advancing as a movement after their debut. Maki and Otaka were not concerned with a new technological framework or production issues, but rather with understanding and incorporating traditional spatial patterns into designs for the unprecedented scale of the new city. For Kurokawa, Metabolism began as an organizing device, emphasizing structure-which allowed him to build some of its most successful buildings a decade later.

The comparisons between Archigram and the Metabolists are superficially easy, but whereas Archigram continued to publish increasingly preposterous and charming proposals throughout the 1960s, the Metabolists used their newly established reputations to snag large-scale commissions and quickly became distracted from generating additional futuristic sketches. Kikutake offered only one new scheme after the initial manifesto, whereas Maki and Otaka essentially refined their initial thesis without offering additional detail or production strategies. Only Kurokawa developed new proposals; his finest was the 1961 "Helix City." The international press tended to ignore the Metabolists' built work; in 1967, the journal Architectural Design titled an editorial essay "Whatever Happened to the Metabolists?" and concluded that the group was "static, if not extinct." At this point, the group's production included a number of buildings that clearly grappled with the movement's ideals, including Kikutake's Administrative building for Izumo Shrine (1963) and his odd, bellows like Miyakonojo Civic Center (1966), Otaka's Hanaizumi Agricultural Cooperative Association Center (1965), Maki's Chiba University Auditorium (1963) and Rissho University (1967), and Kurokawa's Nitto Food Cannery (1964). Although the journal included thumbnail-sized photographs of a few built works, these were overwhelmed by the use of much larger illustrations dating from the original 1960 manifesto.

As the world withdrew its attention, the Metabolists were finding opportunities to build projects that most closely reflected their original intentions. Kurokawa produced the greatest range, from the Odakyu Drive-In Restaurant (1969) to the movement's most convincing commercial work, the Nakagin Capsule Building (1972), where shipping containers were modified for habitation and attached to core towers with only four bolts apiece. Several of Metabolism's key works from this period were for leisure facilities, a match that would seem on the surface appropriate; Kurokawa designed a lodge and a theme-based amusement complex, whereas Kikutake designed hotels for the domestic tourism industry. Although the leisure industry often most willingly embraces innovation, critics questioned the appropriateness of producing theoretic works for this market.

The 1970 Osaka Exposition appeared most in syne with a movement based on the idea of an architecture adaptable to change; many of the designers present in Metabolism's early days were involved, including Kikutake, Kurokawa, Tange, and Isozaki. Kikutake and Maki also had major commissions for the subsequent 1975 Okinawa Ocean Expo; Kikutake's Aquapolis, a remarkable pavilion floated just off shore, became a poignant symbol for the movement, unattainable and slowly rusting until it was scrapped at the end of the 20th century. However, The Osaka Exposition came a scant three years after the 1967 Montreal Expo and suffered by comparison. Category 1 expositions are usually spaced every six years, but an exception was made because of Asian locale, a first. However, the resulting pavilions did not receive the same lavish support as at Montreal, and critics found most lacking verve. There were exceptions, especially Tange's extraordinary Festival Plaza, and the Toshiba IHP and Takara Pavilions by Kurokawa. Yet the subdued international response contributed to the Metabolist movement's collapse.

This is not to say, however, that Metabolism's adherents were persuaded that the movement's theories were irrelevant. Tange, Kikutake, and Kurokawa have each returned to their Metabolist beginnings in designs produced in the 1980s and 1990s. And many of the challenges that Metabolists took on-overcrowding, tremendous traffic congestion, and the immobility of Japanese society-remain today, yet to be adequately addressed by the professional community.

Dana BUNTROCK

Sennott R.S. Encyclopedia of twentieth century architecture, Vol.2 (G-O). Fitzroy Dearborn., 2005.

1959, Sky House, Tokyo, JAPAN, Kiyonori Kikutake

1963, Administrative building for Izumo Shrine, Izumo, JAPAN, Kiyonori Kikutake

1963, Chiba University Auditorium, Chiba, JAPAN, Fumihiko Maki

1966, Miyakonojo Civic Center, Miyakonojo, JAPAN, Kiyonori Kikutake

1967-1968, Rissho University, Kumagaya, JAPAN, Fumihiko Maki

1972, the Nakagin Capsule Building, Tokyo, JAPAN, Kisho Kurokawa

ARCHITECTS

1959, Sky House, Tokyo, JAPAN, Kiyonori Kikutake

1963, Administrative building for Izumo Shrine, Izumo, JAPAN, Kiyonori Kikutake

1963, Chiba University Auditorium, Chiba, JAPAN, Fumihiko Maki

1966, Miyakonojo Civic Center, Miyakonojo, JAPAN, Kiyonori Kikutake

1967-1968, Rissho University, Kumagaya, JAPAN, Fumihiko Maki
1972, the Nakagin Capsule Building, Tokyo, JAPAN, Kisho Kurokawa

INTERNAL LINKS Ito, Toyo (Japan); Kurokawa, Kisho (Japan); Maki, Fumihiko (Japan); Tange, Kenzo (Japan) FUTHER READING

Kawazoe, N., Kikutake, K., and Kurokawa, K., Metabolism 196o. Proposals for New Urbanism, Tokyo 1960; Kurokawa, K., The Concept of Metabolism, Tokyo 1972.

Banham, Reyner, Megastructure: Urban Futures of the Recent Past,
London: Thames and Hudson, and New York: Harper and Row,
1976

Boyd, Robin, New Directions in Japanese Architecture, New York:
Braziller, and London: Studio Vista, 1968

Jérome, Mike, "Whatever Happened to the Metabolists?"
Architectural Design 37, no. 5 (May 1967)
Kawazoe, Noboru, "From Metabolism to Metapolis-Proposal for a
City of the Future," in Stadtstrukturen fiir Morgen, by Juscus
Dahinden, Stuttgart; Gerd Hatje, 1971; as Urban Structures for
the Future, wanslated by Gerald Onn, London: Pall Mall Press,
and New York: Praeger, 1972

Kurokawa, Kisho, Metabolism and Architecture, Boulder, Colorado:
'Westview Press, 1977

Maki, Fumihiko and Masato Otaka, "Some Thoughts on Collective
Form" in Structure in Art and Science, edited by Gryorgy Kepes,
New York: Braziller, 1965

Metabolism: The Proposals for a New Urbanism, Tokyo: Bitjutu
Syuppan Sha, 1960

Bilingual manifesto released by the Metabolists. The volume is very
rare, but its illustrations and essays often served as the basis for
subsequent discussions of the movement

"Metabolist Kiyonori Kikutake," Space Design, 10: 193 (October
1980)

Nitschke, Gunter, "The Metabolists of Japan," Architectural Design
34, no. 10 (October 1964)

Nitschke, Ginter, "The Metabolists," Architectural Design 37, no. 5
(May 1967)

Ross, Michael Franklin, Beyond Metabolism: The New Japanese
Architecture, New York: Architectural Records Books, 1978

Yatsuka, Hajime and Hideki Yoshimatsu, Metaborizumu:
SenKyuhyakurokujun Nendai, Nibon no Kenchiku Avan Gyarudo;
Metabolism: Japan's 1960 Architectural Avante-garde, Tokyo:
Inax Shuppan, 1997

THE ARCHITECTS COLLABORATIVE

METABOLISTS

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METABOLISTS The Metabolist movement emerged at the Tokyo meeting of the 1960 World Design Conference (an epilogue to the Congres Internationaux d'Architecture Moderne [CIAM, 1927-]), with the proposal that architecture should not only embrace new technologies and the enormous scales of the post-war period, but also develop living, self-generating systems that could adapt over time.

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Fantastic Voyage | #TBT Trailer | 20th Century FOX