by hand

CITY FORM

“..layer by layer, the modern and present-day cities of Tokyo were built…..urban development took place around many scattered nuclei.” (Jinnai, 1995:5,15)

“Contemporary cities are most successful in those regions where the original “genetic” material has been respected, and a hierarchy of subsequent developments has been added on top of the original code.” (Salingaros, 2010b:41)

City of blossoms[1] (Kurokawa, 1991:chpt4). The urban framework of Tokyo was nurtured by a dependence on nature[2], a sensitive interaction which recognized the possibility of urban beauty sans heavy-handed human intervention. Trace the historical views of the city and you will rarely encounter (unlike European cities[3]) the suggestion that urban beauty should exclude nature and consist solely of artificial objects[4] (Jinnai, 1995:134-5). Wrapped in green and flowers, the doorways and back yards of Edo homes were lined with potted bonsai, and in summer morning glory and flowering gourd vines climbed facades nurturing a rich, imaginative conception of nature in fragments[5]. Urban forests like Meiji Shrine, too, exist not as holy places or dwellings for spirits, but as part of the living space of the city[6]. The urban interior of Tokyo traditionally interacted on intimate terms with the expansive natural landscape outside (see e.g. Hiroshige’s Meisho Edo Hyakkei (One hundred showplaces in Edo; Kurokawa, 1991:chpt4) and now conversely the lush human scale urban interiors interact with the vast city beyond (Jinnai, 1995:120) - a mediated, informal mixing (Smith, 1978:47). Latterly and concurrently the urban landscape of the city was/is created under a vision of metabolism and renewal which resulted in a seemingly homogenous carpet of ‘grains’ – free-willed, free-standing architectural structures without any readily apparent relation to their surroundings (Kitayama, 2010b:21) which on closer inspection appear chaotic, but are in fact the economic-rational product of Tokyo’s inherent (twenty-six-year) metabolic cycle of housing renewal (Tsukamoto, 2010:29) show scales. In Japan, where culture and mechanisms for large scale urban planning are relatively lacking, the point of transformation for the landscape is, then, the individual building, the plot/surrounds, and further, its use: the individual defines the large scale (Feireiss, 2000:5).

[1] Dense Edo – 688 people per hectare compared with 250 people in 1994 – shows the fostering of a subtle and refined sensitivity towards the seasons, plants and animals. In the Nagaya of Edo class structures (external, economic, intellectual, artistic) overlapped, resulting in a vital mix of ages, classes, and professions (Kurokawa 1991:chpt4).

[2] Compare building in the West, where nature was considered hostile and buildings were made of stone to keep it out, with Japan, where buildings made of wood evidenced the attempt to coexist with nature, embrace it and yield to time (Ashihara, 1989:121).

[3] However, early European cities did reveal the influence of land on towns, of rural pursuits on urbanism – not only in terms of the gardens that craftsmen cultivated, but also in the contours and layout of the city (Bookchin, 1974:106-7).

[4] But industrialization and the desire to own land in Japan has created a mythification of land in which suburbanization has proceeded at a greater scale than the West (Architecture circulating like consumer goods, an expensive hobby (Ohno, in Maki, 2000a:33, 34)). This caused people to stop confronting nature, resulting in chaos (Nagasaka, in Maki, 2000a:33).

[5] Kurokawa (1991:chpt4, chpt10)

[6] Kurokawa (1991:chpt10)