AA Visiting Students
レクチャー

Cross-Breed

Tokyo meanwhile reminds us that the rational is merely one system among others.
—Roland Barthes

Fuelled by the opportunities arising from relentlessly recurring disasters and the necessary cash of one of the world’s richest cities, Tokyo has developed a perhaps unrivalled diversity of building typologies. By the time the bubble years reach their peak in the late 1980s, Tokyo has become the ultimate sandbox: Architectural and even urban projects can be tried with the mindset of a child who is both happy and scared knowing that the masterworks might be gone tomorrow.

Unlike the often found top-down constraints based on formal concerns of the past, Tokyo, equipped with a much more pragmatic regulatory framework, provides fertile ground for the cross-breeding of newer, ever stronger types. Their unconcerned juxtaposition pushes the city forward in (mostly) virtuous cycles of evolution.