Atelier Bow Wow

A drawing of the city as a collection of architectural eccentricities.

Atelier Bow Wow viewed the city of Tokyo as a series of irregular buildings and documented their findings in axonometric form in the Pet Architecture Guidebook and Made in Tokyo. They attempt to recreate some behaviours and meetings that occur in the city in galleries and their buildings. Atelier Bow Wow focuses on the shape and size of a building, then construct the detail afterwards. They then add trees, cars and people to make the drawing look more realistic. They also had these elements to show how humans and nature interact with architecture. Each drawing also has annotations and titles to help the audience visualise the city the way Atelier Bow Wow view it. Atelier Bow Wow also use detail to attract attention to the little objects surrounding the buildings. Bow Wow explains this through-

“The monumental setting is about the placement of a building in city planning and thus would require a political judgment on history and culture. In the case of Tokyo, such a decision-making process may have been arguably stalled by the defeat in the last war. Technology, on the other hand, can easily acquire a monumental scale without much ado about the cultural and historical issue and all it requires is a political approval.” Atelier Bow Wow: Echo of Space, 2009, 119–20. Atelier Bow Wow A Primer, viewed on 23 April 2018.

Drawing and notation, 2018, Atelier Bow Wow, viewed 23 April 2018

I drew the central station in Sydney from an axonometric view, similar to Atelier Bow Wow’s Made in Tokyo series. I have incorporated trees and cars to add detail to central station. Atelier Bow Wow’s work is modernistic as they have series of works that progress in order.

“Modern architects have exploited the conventional element only in limited ways. If they have not totally rejected it as obsolete or banal, they have embraced it as symbolic of progressive industrial order.” Venturi: Complexity and Contradiction, 1966, 50. Atelier Bow-Wow A Primer, viewed on 23 April 2018.

References:

http://www.westspacejournal.org.au/article/atelier-bow-wow/ Atelier Bow-Wow, July 2011, viewed 23 April 2018.

UTS Online, Drawing and Notation, 2018, Atelier Bow-Wow, viewed 23 April 2018.

Atelier Bow-Wow, A Primer, Book, 2003, viewed 23 April 2018.