Architectural Healing: Toyo Ito Wins 2013 Pritzker Prize

Toyo Ito - photograph, Yoshiaki Tsutsui (click images for larger view)

71-year-old Japanese architect Toyo Ito was named Sunday as the 2013 recipient of the prestigious Pritzker  Architecture Prize.  This year's jury was again chaired by former Farnsworth House owner Lord Peter Palumbo, as well Chilean architect Alejandro Aravena, U.S. Supreme Court Justicer Stephen Breyer, architect and MIT professor Yung Ho Change, 2002 Pritzker winner Glenn Murcutt, Finnish architect Juhani Pallasmaa (who will be lecturing at IIT April 2nd) and Pritzker Architecture Prize Executive Director Martha Thorne.  The award will formally be presented at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston on May 29th.

Museum of Architecture, Omishima, photograph: Daici Ano

The Jury citation concludes  . . . 

Toyo Ito is a creator of timeless buildings, who at the same time boldly charts new paths. His architecture projects an air of optimism, lightness and joy, and is infused with both a sense of uniqueness and universality. For these reasons and for his synthesis of structure, space and form that creates inviting places, for his sensitivity to landscape, for infusing his designs with a spiritual dimension and for the poetics that transcend all his works, Toyo Ito is awarded the 2013 Pritzker Architecture Prize.

Ito began his career in the offices of Kiyonori Kikutake & Associates, one of the founders of the  Metabolist movement, which sought to rebuild post-war Japan by drawing on the principles of biological growth  to create an extensible cellular system of design and construction.  Ito founded his own firm in 1971, beginning with residences like the Aluminum House in the Kanagawa Prefecture.

Sendai Mediatheque, photograph: Nacasa and Partners Inc.

This led to more complex and ambitious projects such as the 2001 Sendai Mediatheque, supported on a series of open steel tubes.

Sendai Mediatheque, photograph: Tomio Ohashi

 On the exterior, each floor was its own unique finish.  Read Ada Louis Huxtable's eloquent take on the building here.

The next year, Ito collaborated with engineer/architect Cecil Balmond to create the target="_blank" 2002 Serpentine Gallery in London's Kensington Park as a structured made from an algorithm of multiple interlocking iterations of a rotated cube.

Serpentine Gallery Pavilion, 2002,

Ito's entry in the luxury brand bling building was a store for TOD's in Tokyo, whose intricate concrete cross-bracing was said to emulate the form of the elm trees along the street. 

TOD's Omotoesando Building, photograph: Nacasa and Partners Inc.

In July of 2011, in the wake of the devastating Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, Ito, in a  postscript in the Rem Koolhaas/Hans Ulrich Obrist book  Project Japan: Metabolists Talks wrote  . .  .

Since around the time I set up my own office in 1971, urban proposals such as those made by the Metabolists are rarely seen.  We are still in the mode of introversion and abstraction.  I think now is a good moment for us architects to break away from this mode and regain a viable relationship with nature.

Ito led the "Home for All" project to create a communal space for people who had lost their homes during the tsunami.   The concept won the Golden Lion for Best National Participation at the  2012 Venice Biennale. 

Organic Construction in the Garden of Lurie

click images for larger view (highly recommended)

Through this portal, some of the most amazing engineering in Chicago can be found.

Check out those fractals!

From Louis Sullivan, to Frank Lloyd Wright, to Cecil Balmond, Zaha, and beyond, architects periodically convince themselves they've arrived at the organic, at a grasp of the informal that breaks the bounds of the traditional construction, and rivals the fecundity of nature.

A look at a single flower betrays how short even our best designs fall. The most abject plant is a marvel of adaptation, form and function far beyond even our most sophisticated attempts.

In the end, it's not an emulation of natural form, but geometric abstraction - the circle and square, the right angle and the straight line - that stand most human in their aspect, encapsulating both the mastery of our intellect, and the tragic denial of the primacy of our existence as living entities arising out of nature.

 Set against this splendor, our proud towers seem paltry reductions.

What's next for Cecil Balmond? (Balmond branded shelving at the Container Store? Or?)

The Architectural Record's Tim McKeough reported today that legendary engineer/architect/designer/polymath Cecil Balmond is leaving ARUP, the global powerhouse where, as head of the Advanced Geometry Unit (AGU), he partnered with prominent architects to create some of the most spectacular structures of the last decade, including Rem Koolhaas's Seattle Public Library and CCTV Tower, Daniel Libeskind's Imperial War Museum North, and Toyo Ito's Serpentine Pavilion, to name just a few.  (ARUP is also being sued for $10 million by the Art Institute for flaws in their new Renzo Piano designed Modern Wing, but we'll talk about that another day.)

Balmond has already been striking out as architect as well as engineer, most notably in 2007 with a stunning bridge in Coimbra, Portugal.  Now he's setting up his own practice, which will include both structures and products.  Think Phillipe Stark for eggheads.  I love to imagine having - and being able to afford - a Cecil Balmond watch, which probably wouldn't be a watch at all as we've come to know them, and might just as likely rethink the concept of time as tell it.  Let him loose on the design of a bra and support of the female breast might never be the same.  Seriously, though, Balmond's work has always been about amazing, one-of-a-kind creations, and it should be fascinating to see if he can translate his talent to the demands of a mass-manufactured product, as well.

I was able to interview Balmond at the time of his mind-blowing exhibition, Solid Void, at the Graham Foundation a couple years back.  Check out my consideration (copiously illustrated) of the war between the heroic and the reasonable, and the work, writings and ideas of one of most influential thinkers of our time here.

Yeah, it's all good clean fun until the thing breaks loose from its moorings and starts stomping through the center of the city

Sculptor Anish Kapoor may have designed the iconic Cloud Gate for Millennium Park in Chicago, but even with all his time here the whole "less is more" thing clearly never quite took hold.

Above is Kapoor's latest creation. 377 feet tall - higher than the Statue of Liberty, pedestal and all. What it lacks in height, compared, inevitably, to the Eiffel Tower, it makes up for in audacity. A "continuous looping lattice of tubular steel," designed with the connivance of super-engineer and regular Kapoor collaborator Cecil Balmond, it's to be the symbol of the 2012 London Olympics. (Can we begin a pool now on whether it gets finished in time?) It will stand next to the Populous/Peter Cook Olympic stadium and close enough to Zaha Hadid's sweeping Aquatic Center to poke it in the eye. Kapoor said his work represents the dynamism of a city coming out a recession.

A steal (steel?) at $29,000,000, most of the funding - and the 1,400 tons of steel - will come from Lakshmi Mittal, founder/CEO of global steelmaker ArcelorMittal, whose personal net worth of somewhere around $19 billion should come in handy when the cost overruns come calling.

Branding is already in place. The creature's name? The ArcelorMittal Orbit. Attorneys for Mars Candy's Wrigley division are said to be launching a lawsuit against the developers both for trademark infringement and violating a patent awarded the company in 2001 for the process of "creating elongated, twisting structures through the interaction of chewing gum and masticating teeth." View towards the apex of The ArcelorMittal Orbit, where giant insects from outer space will be lured and made harmless. (all images courtesy ARUP)

700 brave souls an hour will be able to ascend to the observation deck, which will also include a restaurant, a walkway, and a special viewing ledge where on alternate Tuesdays at 11:00 a.m., as part of the campaign to reduce the city's budget deficit, visitors paying an additional £5 will have the opportunity to watch London mayor Boris Johnson's hair frolic in the high winds.

When asked for a reaction to the project, a spokesman for the Pigeon's Guild of Greater London Excepting Hammersmith and Fulham declined immediate comment, but admitted to being "intrigued by the possibilities". Despite the reputation of Balmond's firm ARUP for cutting-edge engineering, London bookmakers this morning were still posting 3-to-1 odds in favor of the Lord Nelson column beating the crap out of The Orbit should a direct confrontation transpire.