An urban proposal arises out of the detritus of the city in Isozaki’s drawing of an incubated city designed to self-destruct
arata isozaki folio architectural review
Arata Isozaki grew up during the Second World War in Japan. ‘The ruins that formed my childhood environment were produced by acts of sudden destruction’, he remembers. ‘Wandering among them instilled in me awareness of the phenomenon of obliteration, rather than a sense of the transience of things.’ In Incubation Process, which Isozaki drew in 1962, he imagined a new cannibalistic city, built in the ruins of Greek antiquity. He wrote that: ‘Future cities are themselves ruins. Our contemporary cities are destined to live only a fleeting moment, give up their energy and return to inert material. All of our proposals will be buried and once again the incubation mechanism is reconstituted. That will be our future’
Image courtesy of 2019 Digital Image: The Museum of Modern Art, New York / Scala, Florence
This piece is featured in the AR December 2019/January 2020 issue on New into Old and Preservation – click here to purchase your copy today
