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RADAR
FEATURES
COMMENT
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| | RADARBOOKS
| BY-PRODUCT-TOKYO |
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Nigel Bertram, Shane Murray, Marika Neustupny. RMIT University Press, 2003. $27.50.
By-Product-Tokyo is an outcome of a
research project instigated by Shane Murray,
lead by Marika Neustupny and Nigel Bertram,
and involving ten students from RMIT. It
offers an intriguing set of observations on the
city of Tokyo and raises pertinent questions
regarding the relationship between
architecture and other disciplines,
architecture’s role within the city, and the
limits of urbanism’s tendency towards
totalizing concepts of the city – which are
arguably futile for understanding a city like
Tokyo. As an alternative, this volume presents
a series of “urban ecosystems”, analyzed
with particular regard for the insubstantial,
the temporary and the mobile.
By-Product-Tokyo observes and records
empirical relationships and looks to the byproduct
– “the lack of fit between concepts
and situations” – rather than explaining the
city through architecture or formal processes
of planning. Three key by-product categories
– improvisation/temporary fit, overlap/messy
fit, convenience/neat fit – are described by
Neustupny and Bertram and elaborated upon
by the students. Their investigations and
analysis of particular situations lead to ten
further themes, such as “permanently
makeshift”, “bottleneck and shortcuts” and
“unfilled gaps and holes”. These “functioning
particularities” are described by isometrics,
photos and maps. The distinctly static and
architectural method of presenting what is
normally posited outside of architecture –
occupations, signage, appropriations –
successfully highlights the conditions of flux,
relations between things, and more generally
the idea of the urban ecosystem with various
phenomena being relative and contingent
rather than closed and self-referential.
By-Product-Tokyo also acknowledges the
“active inhabitation” practiced by the
occupants who exploit this lack of fit to
appropriate and customize the city so that it
is more responsive to their needs – a mutual
imbrication of inhabitant and structures/
events that provides freedom over
prescription. Understood in these terms the
contemporary city of Tokyo is vital, dynamic
and inclusive.
The book is, in part, an extension of
research that has been undertaken in
association with the Tokyo Institute of
Technology since the early 1990s. Previous
publications, which are companions to this
one, are Made in Tokyo and Pet Architecture
Guide Book by Atelier Bow Wow and Tokyo
Institute of Technology Tsukamoto
Architectural Laboratory. By-Product-Tokyo
differs from these earlier projects by
celebrating the insubstantial, the temporary
and the mobile and by acknowledging the
power of the city’s practitioners. Further it
exploits the fresh eye of the outsider –
students of architecture from Melbourne – to
note what is foreign, unfamiliar and thus
particular to Tokyo. By-Product-Tokyo does
not provide architectural and urban
propositions but situates itself adjacent to
design. From this position it effectively
challenges the limits of disciplinary
categories and the banal appropriation of the
city to explain and legitimize the architectural
design process.
KERSTIN THOMPSON
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| HIGH HOPES: THE INSTITUTES OF ARCHITECTURE OF WESTERN AUSTRALIA |
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Duncan Richards. RAIA, 2003. $25.
This book serves partly as a rejoinder to J. M.
Freeland’s 1971 national study, The Making
of a Profession. Focussed upon WA, Duncan
Richards’ book is inevitably both more narrow
and more comprehensive. It also redresses
the imbalance of what he claims is Freeland’s
“belief in the primacy of a ‘centralist vision’”,
or the concentration upon the more populous
eastern states. This book also amends some
of Freeland’s errors and omissions and
elaborates upon the contributions made by
WA (such as the code of ethics) to the
operation of today’s federal Institute.
Commissioned by the RAIA (WA), the book
aims to appeal to both the initiated and the
interested layperson. And certainly its
conversational style and methodical chapter
structure will not deter either, although the
paperback binding, the scarcity of
illustrations and the lack of index are at times
frustrating. Doubtless financially dictated,
these items are worth sacrificing for the
book’s existence.
This “straightforward chronological
account” has chapters each covering loosely
themed decades from 1890. Each begins
with an historical overview that precedes a
thorough description of “Institute Affairs” and
concludes with a “Summary of the Decade”,
which reiterates key points and remembers
deceased influential Institute personalities.
While concerned not with architecture per se,
but with the intentions of the architect
members of the Institutes, the book does
provide a record of buildings, material and
technological developments and architectural
issues of local and national concern – all
alongside a charting of important social,
political and economic events.
Punctuated by World Wars, Depression
and the architectural watersheds of
Modernism and Postmodernism, the
emergence and eventual merging of the two
Institutes of Architecture in WA – the
transition from independent state body
(RIAWA) closely aligned with the RIBA to an
organized chapter of the federal body
(RAIAWA) – is meticulously chronicled. The
decadal chapter structure appropriately
reflects the repetitiveness of Institute routines
and activities and, as well, highlights the
perpetuation of a number of prominent
concerns, including registration,
competitions, architectural education, and
relations with the Public Works Department.
Many of these issues, along with those of
educating the public (that is, promoting
architecture) and the undervaluing of
architects by the community, are still with us.
KATE HISLOP
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| GREENING SYDNEY |
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Chris Johnson. Government Architect Publications, 2003. $25.
Produced to initiate a new discussion on
Sydney’s urban landscape, Greening Sydney
opens with a recap of historic attempts to
create garden cities, and quickly moves into
an exposition of green topics – green
urbanity, green buildings, green roofs, green
walls, green atriums – interspersed with Mark
Gerada’s lively, green-enhanced sketches.
Johnson uses “greening” metaphorically
to represent a wide range of strategies that
seek to create a better balance between the
built and natural environments. While not
aspiring to be prescriptive or to offer detailed
solutions, the publication includes several
useful lists of suggestions, such as planting
palettes for streetscapes and office interiors,
principles for improving harbour landscape
outcomes, and Johnson’s own “greenprint” for eight ways to green Sydney.
The book features some thirty snapshot
profiles of Sydney-based and international
“champions” of the green urban environment,
written in a personal, conversational tone.
These include architects, landscape
architects, scientists, ecologists, product
suppliers, planners, environmental engineers,
and developers working at various scales and
across the science-art-technology spectrum.
(Only two women feature in these vignettes.)
The diversity of disciplines represented
confirms the array of expertise that is
required to produce green urban outcomes.
Johnson notes in the book’s preface, “As
NSW Government Architect, I believe it is an
important part of my role to contribute to
public discussion on environment issues” and “drive pilot projects that instigate
change”. Indeed, he has taken this aspect of
his public role very seriously and has been
energetic in stirring public debate on a
number of controversial issues during his
time in this position.
In Greening Sydney we have a quickpaced
introduction to a wide range of green
issues and some of the individuals whose
ideas and research will help construct a new
urban ecology. Each individual is passionate
about their particular field of endeavour, and
each is committed to working with plants,
landscape, infrastructure, and/or building
design to produce more sustainable built and
natural environments. But with the boundless
conviction of a recent green convert, Johnson
himself surpasses them all in what amounts
to a personal manifesto for a greener Sydney.
LINDA CORKERY
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Copyright © 2010 Architecture Media Pty Ltd
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