The Central Glass — Japan international competition
The competition asked for a concept proposal for a piece of urban space dedicated to the rest, calm, and recreation of Japanese citizens. The jury included Toyo Ito and Arata Isozaki.
The proposal: 'Removing the Ground'
Japan is in search of the openness it has lost in its own houses (because of the shortage of land). For the Japanese, the decisive factor is the land; or, put differently, it is the absence of land that has displaced friendly meetings and gatherings to places outside the dwelling itself.
Land as the resting-place — the appearing and occupied ceiling — and the conversion of the work itself into ground becomes possible only when architecture has come to ride upon itself. In effect, architecture is land, and land is architecture.
The 'removing of the ground' is a principle in nomadic thought and life: the tribe is in search of a world. If we view the world axonometrically, an infinity of horizon-lines and vanishing points becomes possible.
Spatial programme and site
Function follows currents — unstable currents — and circulation is shaped by those currents. The physical programme of the space can be performed by the surrounding strata. A space without centre, without ownership, intelligent in the face of varying social conditions — 'self-organising', so that its spatial organisation is wholly autonomous. The Japanese module is the proposed unit.
The proposed site is the sea itself, with the aim of rediscovering the sea. The shortage of housing-land in Japan brings up the question of 'removing the ground' (a deep glass floor): a transparent crystal floating in the sea that surrounds Japan.
Experience of the space
We often forget that the sea is not a view; it is the experience of eternity, and its force lies precisely in that — it is boundless, and can be looked upon from everywhere. Shadows, light reflections, and the image of the water are always being made anew. No two moments give the same sense of space.
A certain ambiguity, born of indeterminacy, prevails in the space — a space heading toward the dissolution of the boundary between inside and outside (an in-between space) that is always open to the wind, to light, to sound...
