Toyo Ito is a Japanese architect born in Seoul, South Korea, on the 1st of June, 1941. He attended The University of Tokyo where he majored in architecture and graduated in 1965. After his graduation in 1965, Ito then apprenticed with Kikutake Kiyonnori who were one of the leaders of the ‘Metabolist School’ — a Japanese architectural movement that promoted a futuristic approach to design. Ito was awarded one of the world’s most renowned architectural prizes — the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 2013. He is known for unconventional designs and modern approach to different architectural projects. He then established his own practice in 1971 and worked on suburban and other smaller-scaled projects.
Toyo Ito had revolved around his philosophy of ‘architectural response should consider the senses as well as physical needs’ and ‘all architecture is an extension of nature’. With this in mind, Ito’s works is not limited to having just an aesthetic property to it, but it involved various forms of ‘sense interaction’ — in which most are visually effective manipulations and included evoking imagery from the natural world. Many of Toyo Ito’s works are inspired by nature like the Sendai Mediatheque, which was completed 2001. Considered as Ito’s ‘master piece’, the Sendai Mediatheque is a multipurpose cultural centre in which the design was inspired by the notion of floating and seaweed. As the editor of ‘Toyo Ito: Forces of Nature’, Jessie Turnbull had said, ‘The Sendai Mediatheque was the building that cemented Ito’s international reputation’. His other works like Kao-hsiung National Stadium (2009, Taiwan), has a spiral shaped roof that had been inspired by a coiling snake, while the Metropolitan Opera House in T’ai-chung (Taiwan) had curved walls, cavernous spaces and a labyrinthine like network of tunnels, made to resembled an enormous sponge.
Through completing the Sendai Mediatheque, Ito realised that if you initially have a vague idea of what you want to do, don’t immediately discard the idea as it will eventually take a clear shape. In this case, it was ‘fluidity’. In the process of coming up with the idea and creating the Sendai Mediatheque, he realised he wanted to create something different to the 20th century order for architecture — which in simple terms is having ‘a geometry premised on grids’, as well as the usage of ‘pure geometry’ (i.e. using shapes like circles and squares). As Ito sees it, the ‘20th century order’ was all about cutting off everything in distinctive manners. However he wanted to create ‘relationships that connect things’ and unfortunately the architectural solution to this is extremely hard to find. It was through trial and error and his experience on making the Sendai Mediatheque that he discovered a few unprecedented ways to solve it.
The Sendai Mediatheque is comprised of three basic architectural elements — plates (floors), tubes (columns) and skin (exterior walls/façade). Its floors are honeycomb slabs — twin steel plates with ribbing spaced in between, which allows for a far broader span coverage than concrete. The columns are hollow bundles of steel pipes, each with its own tubular shape ranging from 2m to 9m in diameter. In order to create the sense of fluidity, these tubes are arranged to thread between floors at an angle and throughout the whole building, the placement of these structures are almost random with varying floor heights for each floor. These ‘almost random placements’ was utilised in order to show site specific uniqueness rather than industrial productivity and spatial uniformity as with Le Corbusier or Mies.
Further emphasis on Ito’s point of do not disregard vague ideas — originally envisioned running the ribs through the 50m squared honeycomb floor at regular 1m grid intervals, but as planning progressed it became clear that the distribution of force around the tubes and in the middle of floors differed too greatly so the ribs were made to radiate out from the tubes. By introducing the tubes, resulted in the floors being non-uniform, thus creating a ripple effect — which further emphasize the notion of fluidity. By having various skin surfacings and the different elements that are contributed, it establishes a distinctive overall presence of an architecture, nothing quite like its predecessors.
For this project, I have decided to focus and study Ito’s unique way of conveying fluidity within an architectural piece. I utilized aluminium rods in order to replicate his usage of hollow bundles of steel pipes and have also added a plastic sheet around the model in order to recreate the glass that sits on the perimeter of Sendai Mediatheque. While Ito had included the glass walls with the intention of reminding the public of being at an aquarium, my model had also included the sheet to highlight the notion of fluidity as shown by the columns. I’ve also attempted to play with the idea of fluidity through the usage of various heights between each level as well as the different lengths of the aluminium rods used. In order to recreate both Ito’s idea of randomness, as well as being inspired by our natural surroundings, I have cut seemingly ‘random’ circular holes in this particular order to resemble Swiss cheese.
Iteration Pictures:
Initially, I had created a beehive and wind inspired hexagonal building. Except after consulting the tutor, this was not the aim of this project. Thus this idea has been abandoned.
For my iterations, each material I had experimented with had both it’s positive and negative aspects. For my first iteration, I have used thicker cartridge paper to create the columns. It was quite sturdy — however it was also considered as ‘fragile’ as it was easily flattened, thus I decided not to use paper for my final model.
For my second iteration, I used matchsticks and paper in order to create a more stable base but the matchsticks did not stick very well and kept shifting even after gluing.
The third iteration was made with wire and paper. It started off quite well, however gluing the wire down to the paper proved to be a difficult task as the wires did not have a big enough surface area, while the method of sticking the wire through the paper was not a good idea as the holes eventually became wider and started slipping down the wires.
I decided to experiment with the combination of wire and foam. This iteration however, was not as successful as I had thought as the wires that were used had bent out of shape too easily and it did not stick onto the foam circle easily.
For the fifth iteration, I had used balsa wood and foam. Balsa wood proved to be both easier to stick on to the foam, as well as the result was that the model was quite sturdy. However, the balsa wood was a little hard to cut and was quite fragile (as it kept snapping).
For my last two iterations, I had experimented with the transparent polypropylene sheet. It proved to be a great material for replicating the glass that surrounds the Sendai Mediatheque. Trying to create a rounded cylindrical glass proved to be difficult as the sheet did not hold the rounded shape well. However it was a lot easier and convenient to recreate a rectangular glass as after scoring the sheet, it had bent into shape easily and had created a little more surface area for the glue to be spread on. Thus making it stick on easier.
Progress Pictures:
Reference List:
Toyo Ito 2008, Recent Project, A.D.A. EDITA, Tokyo
Sophie Soulié & Sophie Roulet 1991, Toyo Ito: Architecture of the Ephermeral, Publications du Moniteur, Paris
Gary Hume 2003, Toyo Ito: Sendai Mediatheque, Actar-D, Barcelona
Sherman Hollar 2013, Toyo Ito Japanese Architect, Biographical Article, Encyclopaedia Britannica, viewed 2 and 4 May 2018, <https://www.britannica.com/biography/Toyo-Ito>
Vanessa Quirk 2013, The Life and Work of Toyo Ito, 2013 Pritzker Laureate, Biographical Article, Arch Daily, viewed 2 and 4 May 2018, <https://www.archdaily.com/344746/the-life-and-work-of-toyo-ito-2013-pritzker-laureate>
Toyo Ito n.d., Toyo Ito & Associates, Architects, Biography, Arch Daily, viewed 3 May 2018, <http://www.toyo-ito.co.jp/WWW/Profile/pf_en.html>
Arch Daily n.d., Toyo Ito Associates,Articles, Arch Daily, viewed 3 May 2018, <https://www.archdaily.com/office/toyo-ito-associates>
Ben Hobson 2014, Toyo Ito wanted delicate textiles to ‘float in the air’ in his Milan showroom for Kinnasand, Article, Dezeen, viewed 4 May 2018, <https://www.dezeen.com/2014/07/30/movie-interview-toyo-ito-kinnasand-showroom-milan/>
Ben Hobson 2014, ‘I think of architecture as a piece of clothing to wrap around human beings,’ says Toyo Ito, Article, Dezeen, viewed 4 May 2018, <https://www.dezeen.com/2014/07/31/movie-interview-toyo-ito-architecture-clothing-wrap-around-human-beings/>
Sergey Makhno n.d., 10 Projects by Toyo Ito, Blog Post Article, viewed 5 May 2018, <https://mahno.com.ua/en/blog/post/toyoito>
Nicolás Valencia 2018, Who Has Won the Pritzker Prize?, News Article, viewed 6 May 2018, <https://www.archdaily.com/889628/who-has-won-the-pritzker-prize>
Joseph Flaherty 2013, Exploring the Divergent Architecture of 2013 Pritzker Prize Winner Toyo Ito, Article, Wired, viewed 7 May 2018, <https://www.wired.com/2013/03/pritzker-prize-winner-toyo-ito/>
Delta n.d., Kaohsiung World Stadium, Taiwan, Delta, viewed 9 May 2018 <http://www.solar-inverter.com/en-GB/226.htm>
Office Pinterest n.d., Sendai Mediatheque Façade, Pinterest, viewed 9 May 2018, <https://www.pinterest.com.au/pin/319614904782596243/?autologin=true>
Jessica Mairs 2016, Toyo Ito creates fluted walls of white concrete at Museo Internacional del Barroco, Dezeen, viewed 9 May 2018, <https://www.dezeen.com/2016/04/29/museo-internacional-del-barroco-toyo-ito-fluted-white-concrete-walls-baroque-art-museum-mexico/>
Arch Eyes n.d., Toyo Ito Profile, Biographical Article, Arch Eyes, viewed 10 May 2018 <http://archeyes.com/architects/toyo-ito-bibliography-architect-profile/>