*This piece is an introductory excerpt of an essay that will be coming out soon from a major American publication. We would like to take this opportunity to release it in the bilingual format of the Bureau newsletter for our glocal readers. The full essay and conclusion will have a big twist, so stay tuned for the publication date!
Organicism as a series of aesthetics or theorization of styles and formalism is historically a predominantly Western discourse. This essay is not positioned within that context. Rather, a new datum will be established for evaluation, and for understanding the epistemological difference which organicism evokes from a different perspective. It is hoped that the argument is not to be construed as a form of cultural exceptionalism, but as an exception within a perceivably matured and saturated Eurocentric discourse. As destabilizing as it may be to take the idea of organicism, and the critique thereof, out of its "traditional" home in European modernity, and bring it into the forefront of the contemporary world, a new body of knowledge, or perhaps a framework for a practice may be excavated by different perspectives buried in the global world. This is a reportage from a stranger living in a strange land; an American living in a far-east island nation, that is Japan.
The notion of “organic” did not exist in the lexicon of architectural imagination, much less in 19th-century Japan. There were instances of “organic” subjects appearing in philosophical discussions of early translations of Hegel's Phänomenologie des Geistes, in which “das Organische'' was extensively scrutinized by philosophers like Kiyoshi Miki.[i] The real watershed moment when “organic” as an architectural thought arrived in Japan was with Frank Lloyd Wright, who had established a global reputation with the Prairie House series. With him followed the importation of the concept of “organic architecture.” Wright’s projects manifested integrity and unity with nature[ii], as well as “bringing out and polishing the beauty of the simple materials in making the building.”[iii] Prior to his commissions in Japan – celebrated Imperial Hotel of Tokyo (1912-22) and Jiyu Gakuen School Myonichikan (1921) to name a few – it is said that Wright praised a number of traditional Japanese art and architecture as “organic”, albeit through his own principled lenses: fair representation of material, free flow of space, artistic and aesthetic integrity of objects, and environmental considerations.[iv] Again, it is interesting to note that even Wright characterized Japanese architecture neither as formally of organic in character nor as a stylistic design process. Paradoxically, or opportunistically, Wright’s proclamation of “unity with nature” offers a hint for us to avoid conflation of ideas. The term nature is more appropriate in exploring this topic within the context of Japan, and recognizing its architecture as different from Western paradigms.
At the most fundamental level, the relationship to nature in Japan was to be understood as neither a superstructural position governing stylistic and design decisions nor an infrastructural position governing and structuring updated design theories. While indeed operating as a kind of inspiration and a-priori, it has never manifested as a method, a circulus methodicus, so to speak. nature, in Japan, simply exists. It was for a long time accepted as an ineffable, ever evasive reality that withdraws from all human experience, never to be fully comprehended or appreciated. The ineffability of nature and reverence towards its inherent unapproachability, can be one of the causations of prevalent polytheistic animism. This alternate regime of thought affects everything from molecular all the way up to urban level. The subsequent advent of Buddhism added a conceptual layer of impermanence, as epitomized in the opening lines of the early 13th Century Hōjōki[v], in which both the architecture that comprises the capital city and its inhabitants are like "the bubbles that float in the pools, now vanishing, now forming, not of long duration." Thus, the Japanese cities can be understood as ephemerons, “...similarly a place of mediation between man and nature. This is rooted in the indigenous sense of a continuum of man and nature, and was sustained by the informal mixing of settled and unsettled areas in the actual form of the medieval capital: no wall existed to provide either real or symbolic separation of man and nature. In the aesthetic of the urban aristocracy, an ambiguity of nature and artifice was highly prized.”[vi] Ironically, Ancient Kyoto did initially have protective walls based on its ideal model of Ancient Chinese walled capitals of Luoyang or Chang'an, which was allowed, intentionally or tacitly, to fall into disrepair and disintegrate, literally embodying the impermanence of all things.
This engendered a development of urbanity antithetical to a kind of demarcated, walled cities typical of European and Asian continental traditions. Ocean was a vast, tempestuous moat and archipelagic state benefited from this natural geological barrier. Symptomatic of the Galapagos Island condition of isolation and selective osmosis, the relationship to nature evolved into an altogether different cosmology. Thus, to reemphasize this point within the context of Japan, the world, and thereby architecture, is understood in terms of object relation to nature; not if an object can encapsulate or embody a certain quality found in nature, whether it be based on formative processes or morphological extraction.
To be continued…
Author: Kaz Yoneda
Editor: Hinako Izuhara
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Thank you for your time and kind attention.
Until next time!