Two Visions of Living Architecture: Japanese Metabolism of the 1960s and the Techno-biological experiments of Neri Oxman
Disciplines
Architecture
Abstract (300 words maximum)
Architecture shares many qualities of living organisms at its core. It reacts to its environment, evolves over time, and in some cases, grows. Many architects have manifested this connection between architecture and living organisms in practice, as there exists a myriad of examples of biomorphic and biophilic design. However, some revolutionary thinkers and designers have interpreted these biological inspirations in radical ways in response to the eco-sociopolitical contexts of not just their time, but also proposing the next evolutionary step in architecture, and living organisms' coexistence with it. The Japanese metabolism movement served as a response to the Second World War and reflected new ways of thinking about architecture in urban environments in terms of structure, organization, and most notably, growth. The Japanese Metabolists' manifesto titled, “Metabolism 1960: Proposals for New Urbanism” featured innovative architectonic solutions that combined megatructuralism with principles of organic growth. Neri Oxman is a modern-day Israeli-American architectural designer whose work primarily focuses on the research and implementation of biological materials in fabrication, creating works through growth rather than assembly. Through experimentation, she has created revolutionary designs that reinterpret biological processes, reactions, and adaptations into architecture, which serve as an evolutionary approach to how we inhabit a world that has been ecologically impacted due to anthropic intervention in negative ways. These two design outlooks, metabolism and materialism, both look at the natural world’s processes as a way to respond to the impacts people have made on the planet and society, but in radically different ways. Metabolism focuses on order, and materialism focuses on physical matter, however, both are rooted in ideas of what it means to have sustainable architecture and the concept of growth and its application. This paper explores and compares diverging concepts of biological architectural inspirations and their impacts on architectural thinking, design, and building.
Ehsan
Academic department under which the project should be listed
CACM - Architecture
Primary Investigator (PI) Name
Ehsan Sheikholharam Mashhadi
Two Visions of Living Architecture: Japanese Metabolism of the 1960s and the Techno-biological experiments of Neri Oxman
Architecture shares many qualities of living organisms at its core. It reacts to its environment, evolves over time, and in some cases, grows. Many architects have manifested this connection between architecture and living organisms in practice, as there exists a myriad of examples of biomorphic and biophilic design. However, some revolutionary thinkers and designers have interpreted these biological inspirations in radical ways in response to the eco-sociopolitical contexts of not just their time, but also proposing the next evolutionary step in architecture, and living organisms' coexistence with it. The Japanese metabolism movement served as a response to the Second World War and reflected new ways of thinking about architecture in urban environments in terms of structure, organization, and most notably, growth. The Japanese Metabolists' manifesto titled, “Metabolism 1960: Proposals for New Urbanism” featured innovative architectonic solutions that combined megatructuralism with principles of organic growth. Neri Oxman is a modern-day Israeli-American architectural designer whose work primarily focuses on the research and implementation of biological materials in fabrication, creating works through growth rather than assembly. Through experimentation, she has created revolutionary designs that reinterpret biological processes, reactions, and adaptations into architecture, which serve as an evolutionary approach to how we inhabit a world that has been ecologically impacted due to anthropic intervention in negative ways. These two design outlooks, metabolism and materialism, both look at the natural world’s processes as a way to respond to the impacts people have made on the planet and society, but in radically different ways. Metabolism focuses on order, and materialism focuses on physical matter, however, both are rooted in ideas of what it means to have sustainable architecture and the concept of growth and its application. This paper explores and compares diverging concepts of biological architectural inspirations and their impacts on architectural thinking, design, and building.
Ehsan