ABSTRACT
The year 2011 marked the occurrence of the Great East Japan Earthquake on March 11, the staging of the Mori Art Museum retrospective exhibition “Metabolism, The City of the Future” (Figure 8.1) and the passing of Metabolist architect Kikutake Kiyonori (December 26, 2011). The exhibition’s subtitle of “Dreams and Visions of Reconstruction in Postwar and Present Day Japan” sought to highlight the parallel between addressing the contexts of devastation following World War II and the 2011 earthquake and tsunami for the design proposals of Metabolism. The exhibition poster featured Kikutake’s vision of Ecopolis, a contemporary reimagining of his original 1958 Tower-Shaped Community proposal. For Kikutake, one of the chief protagonists of the Metabolist Group, the effort to sustain life through regenerative architecture originated from his formative years in his attempt to create an architecture resilient to frequent flooding from the Chikugo River adjacent to his hometown of Kurume, Kyushu. This chapter examines Kikutake’s lifelong pursuit of such an architecture, both floating above sea and land, as envisioned and realized at the critical point at the end of his life and rebirth through subsequent re-evaluation. Beyond the renewed interest in Metabolism in the twenty-first century through exhibitions and publications including Project Japan (2011), this chapter looks specifically at the metabolic evolution of Kikutake’s vision to create an architecture of resilience and change.
