Itsuko Hasegawa stands virtually alone among Japanese archi
tects in her attempts to develop a critical practice. From her
earliest work, Hasegawa addressed the manner in which public
buildings are designed and programmed, eschewing bureaucratic
directives in favor of a public process. As she matured, other
themes also emerged, especially a concern for the environment
and for the disenfranchised: women, children, the elderly, the
disabled, and the homeless. Although some of these issues remain
incompletely realized in her work, their introduction into profes
sional discourse in Japan is significant.
Ironically, Hasegawa was educated by one of the nation’s
leading formalists, Kazuo Shinohara. In 1969, she entered his
graduate studio at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, and she
remained with him as his assistant until 1978. Many of Japan’s
critics note today that their understanding of the master pre
vented them from initially understanding Hasegawa’s approach.
Furthermore, Hasegawa often used building materials as a
tool to achieve her agenda, drawing attention to the materials
rather than their purpose. This is most apparent in her debut
project, the widely acclaimed Shonandai Culture Center, won
by competition in 1986 and built just outside Tokyo. Hasega
wa’s earlier projects were almost exclusively residential, and she
brought to Shonandai the same concern for client input and
attention to detail. The 14,315-square-meter complex (which
includes a children’s museum) remains highly accessible through
the use of tiles embedded with animals’ footprints, constellations
of mirrored fragments implanted in walls, and marbles scattered
across punched-metal ceilings.
Punched metal was also significant in framing her initial repu
tation. She first used it in the House at Kuwahara (1980), de
signed for a metals supplier, and the commodity quickly became
ubiquitous in the arsenal of Tokyo's trendiest designers. She followed this with explorations of various transparent and trans
lucent surfaces in the late 1980s, anticipating trends that would
emerge internationally ten years later by stretching fabric into
bulbous shapes, projecting light onto frosted glass, layering poly
carbonate skins, and choreographing reflected light.
Hasegawa’s position as an iconoclast may be rooted in differ
ence. She was one of only a handful of women architects in Japan and stood virtually alone in her international acclaim and
her alliance with the small cadre of architects shaping the profes
sion. Although she exploited this status, using her position as a
bully pulpit, a heavy schedule of lecturing and teaching abroad has also prevented her from engaging fully with the opportunities
of Japan’s construction process. As a result, her buildings lack
the refinement and attention to detail found in much of the work
from Japan. Although it may be that Hasegawa felt liberated by the deliberately rough detailing found in Shinohara’s architec
ture from the late 1980s, her own approach is less clearly com-
mitted to one position or the other, having areas of refinement
and delicacy juxtaposed with roughly executed components.
Hasegawa calls the materials and form of architecture “hard
ware” and feels that this side has been overemphasized to the
detriment of architectural “software.” In particular, her efforts
lie in developing a richly rendered set of sensory experiences,
apprehended by moving along multiple pathways. In publica
tions, her descriptions often attempt to deliver something that
photography cannor, calling attention to rising tides and flicker
ing light ot to the sound of the wind, the cool touch of water,
and the emergence of a view along a rising path.
For Hasegawa, architecture essentially acts as a constructed
form of landscape or, in her words, “a new nature.” With Toyo
Tk ass red he dee Jaren
cityscape as a form of nature, to be celebrated. She often refers
to her buildings as hills, and in her most recent large-scale work,
the Niigata City Performing Arts Center (1998), she established
the roof as a city park. Ata smaller scale, Hasegawa introduces the texture of landscape in her work by mixing soil into mortar
finishes or setting stones and shells in the surfaces of walkways
and pools.
This is not done arbitrarily. Hasegawa strives to awaken what she sees as the latent memories of nature possessed by each site,
embracing accidental or dormant qualities over rational exposi
tion. Botond Bognar quotes Hasegawa as saying that she wants
to “accept those things that had been rejected by the spirit of
rationalism—the translucent world of emotions and the supple
and comfortable space woven by nature—and to create a land-
scape filled with a new form of nature where devices enable one
to hear the strange music of the universe” (Bognar, 157). This
gives her work an instinctual character that is particularly un
common in public works, the bulk of her output.
Since completing the Shonandai Culture Center in 1990,
Hasegawa’s office also produced the Sumida Culture Factory
(1994), the Oshima Machi Picture Book Museum in Imizu
(1994), the Museum of Fruit (1995) in Yamanashi, the Himi
Seaside Botanical Garden (1996), and the previously mentioned
Niigata City Performing Arts Center—extraordinary output for
her tiny office. Hasegawa has also taken on several underfunded
typologies, designing public housing—the Takuma Housing
Project (1992), the Namekawa Housing Project (1998), and
Imai Newtown Housing (1998)—and two small, rural elementary schools—Busshouji Elementary (1994) and Kaiho Elementary (1996).
In her most recent discussions, it is clear that Hasegawa feels
frustrated in her attempts to reshape the character of Japan’s
public architecture, In particular, she has begun to question the
scale and underutilization of museums, performing arts centers,
and other large-scale facilities intended by government authori
ties as chic urban outposts, attempts to staunch population losses
from small communities to the more dynamic Tokyo. Hasegawa
has come to believe that these structures are rarely embraced
by the local community despite her best efforts to reshape the
buildings’ programming. Instead, she has begun to call for inte
grated efforts drawn from local traditions and the rhythm of
the community. If she is able to cajole local governments into
considering this approach, she will have considerable effect on
the life and texture of Japan’s smaller cities.
Dana BUNTROCK
Sennott R.S. Encyclopedia of twentieth century architecture, Vol.2. Fitzroy Dearborn., 2005. |
