Regularly described as a “philosopher of architecture,” Kazuo Shinohara is as well known for his writing as he is for his designs. Despite producing barely 50 buildings in almost as many years, each of his works has been exquisitely crafted to express a particular philosophical position. Rather than discussing these buildings in isolation, Shinohara presents them as models of how he believes architecture should respond to the modern world. Through his writing and teaching, Shinohara influenced an entire generation of post-World War II Japanese architects, including Toyo Ito, Itsuko Hasegawa, and Issei Sakamoto, who were known collectively in the 1970s as the “Shinohara school.”

Kazuo Shinohara was born in Shizuoka prefecture in Japan in 1925 and entered the Department of Architecture at the Tokyo Institute of Technology at the age of 22. Following graduation in 1953, Shinohara became an associate of the same institution, where he remained for the following 40 years, being appointed associate professor in 1962, professor in 1970, and professor emeritus in 1986. Shinohara completed a doctorate on spatial composition in traditional Japanese architecture in 1967. Ironically, it was after the completion of this research that he began to reject the ordered spaces of the Japanese vernacular that characterized so many of his early designs in favor of a more complex and technological approach to design.

Two themes, order and chaos, distinguish Shinohara’s early architectural works and writings from his later ones. The shift between these two extremes, from a preoccupation with order toward a fascination with disorder, took place between 1967 and 1970, although traces of Shinohara’s growing interest in chaos are apparent as early as 1964. Prior to 1967, Shinohara describes his designs, including such projects as the House in Kugayama (1954), the House in Chigasaki (1960), and the House in Komae (1960), as distinctly ordered and traditional. These projects, which are named after the locations in which they are sited, are characterized by largely symmetrical spatial compositions that are variants of historic Japanese house types.

Following these works, Shinohara began to refine his approach to geometry and structure to even greater levels of abstraction. This growth in design method is seen in the Umbrella House (1961), the House in White (1966), and the Suzusho House (1968), all of which feature simple geometric forms, white walls, and exposed-timber beams. Despite the success of these buildings, in the years that followed, Shinohara began to question the role played by the house in the city and the importance of order and symmetry. In the Incomplete House (1970) and the House in Itoshima (1976) on the Genkainada Sea, symmetry still governs the exterior of the dwelling, but inside the pure, hierarchical planning that distinguishes so many of his early works has been eroded. This shift is even more apparent in Shinohara’s Uehara House (1976) in Tokyo, which features a stark concrete exterior perforated with irregularly spaced geometric windows. This house, which is supported on a system of Y-shaped concrete columns, is asymmetrical in both plan and section and does not possess the same polished finish of many of his early works. The Uehara House is one of Shinohara’s first designs that expresses the dual desire to isolate the interior from the exterior and to recognize the complexity of modern life in the arrangement of spaces and forms. Shinohara describes these intermediate works as possessing a “savage” or “barbarous” quality that is a result not only of his use of raw concrete but also of his newly developed interest in the irregular geometry of nature.

For Shinohara, both the dream of utopia that preceded World War II and the influx of modern architecture in Japan that followed in its aftermath were doomed to failure because they did not take account of the need for complexity in urban space. It was only in modernism’s aftermath that people began to see that cities such as Tokyo possess a natural complexity that is intrinsic to its vitality. Shinohara describes the urban chaos of Tokyo as being paradigmatic of “the beauty of progressive anarchy,” a concept that for him relates to the sense of energy and disorder often encountered in urban spaces. The Ukiyo-e Museum (1982), Shinohara’s first nonresidential building, attempts to capture this chimerical urban beauty in its facades through an irregular composition of squares, triangles, and arcs. Internally, the museum is a mixture of contrasts, smooth floors are juxtaposed against rough concrete walls, and natural finishes compete with vibrant red and green window frames.

By 1987, Shinohara had begun to openly argue that “chaos is a basic condition of the city” and that if architecture is to respond to this chaos, it must adopt a new guise that is informed by both technology and the sciences of complexity. He maintains that architects must focus their attention on machines (particularly computers, the F-14 fighter plane, and the Apollo 11 lunar landing craft). Because modern machines are highly adaptable to complex environments, Shinohara proposes that they are suitable metaphors for design in an increasingly unpredictable world. Shinohara calls this approach to architecture, which he documented in his 1988 article “Chaos and Machine,” Modern-next. Although Shinohara has developed this philosophy of design in a number of projects, including the Hanegi Complex (1988) in Tokyo and the inverted triangle of the Police Station (1990) in Kumamoto, it is his Centennial Hall (1987) in Tokyo that has become iconic for the way in which it expresses his philosophy of design. Externally, the Centennial Hall is visually reminiscent of sections of an aircraft. The building is formed about a horizontal, metalclad, half cylinder that intersects two rectangular blocks at a point high above the street level. The half cylinder is the literal evocation of the machine of Modern-next. The static silver, gray, and white rectangular prisms provide connection between the ground and the sky. The elaborate interlocking of these forms renders the overall building volume difficult to read against the chaos of the surrounding city. For Shinohara, this is the only way that architecture can capture the essential vitality of the modern world.

MICHAEL J.OSTWALD

2 April 1925 Born in Shizuoka, Japan;

1945 Served in the Japanese Army, Japan and Korea ;

1953 Received a bachelor’s degree in engineering from the Institute of Technology, Tokyo ;

1953–62 Instructor , Tokyo Institute of Technology;

from 1954 In private practice, Tokyo ;

1962 established a studio at the Tokyo Institute of Technology ;

1967 earned a doctorate in engineering, the Institute of Technology, Tokyo;

1962–69 associate professor , Tokyo Institute of Technology;

1970–85 professor of architecture , Tokyo Institute of Technology;

1984 visiting professor of architecture, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut;

from 1986 and professor emeritus , Tokyo Institute of Technology;

1986 visiting professor of architecture, Technische Universität, Vienna ;

1988 Honorary fellow, American Institute of Architects ;

15 July 2006 Died.

Shinohara (1994) provides a thorough list of publications by and about Kazuo Shinohara. Shinohara’s design philosophy is outlined in detail in his 1988 paper, “Chaos and Machine.”

Shinohara, Kazuo, “Chaos and Machine,” Japan Architect 63, no. 5 (May 1988)

Shinohara, Kazuo, Kazuo Shinohara, Berlin: Ernst, 1994

Shinohara, Kazuo, and Akio Kurasaka, “Kazuo Shinohara,” Space Design no. 172 (January 1979)

Sinohara, Kazuo, and Hiroyuki Suzuki, “Architectural-Space Exploration,” Japan Architect 54, no. 3(263) (March 1979)

Sinohara, Kazuo, and Hisako Watanabe, “Chaos and Order, in the Change of Technology” Kenchiku Bunka 43, no. 504 (October 1988)

Stewart, David, Kazuo Shinohara: Centennial Hall, Tokyo, Stuttgart, Germany: Edition Axel Menges, 1995

Taki, Koji, “Oppositions: The Intrinsic Structure of Kazuo Shinohara’s Work,” Perspecta no. 20 (1983)

Tange, Kenzo, and Kazuo Shinohara, “After Modernism; A Dialogue between Kenzo Tange and Kazuo Shinohara,” Japan Architect 58, no. 11–12 (319–20) (November/December 1983)

Selected Publications

Residential Architecture, 1964

Theories on Residences, 1970

Kazuo Shinohara: 16 Houses and Architectural Theory, 1971

Theories on Residences II, 1975

Kazuo Shinohara II: 11 Houses and Architectural Theory, 1976

Kazuo Shinohara (with Yasumitsu Matsunaga), 1982

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