The interdisciplinary “MA: Space-Time in Japan” exhibition, curated by renowned architect, Arata Isozaki, presented Japanese artistic culture through the unifying concept of MA found in painting, photography, theater, performance, music, sculpture, architecture and daily life in Japan. While the presentation of this concept defies simple explanation in translation, the explanation according to Western logic made explicit an implicit indigenous notion of order and orientation found in the simultaneity of time and space. First presented in Paris in 1978 at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, it then traveled to New York, Houston, Chicago, Stockholm and Helsinki. In the year 2000, the exhibition was finally held in Tokyo under the multiple titles "MA- Twenty Years on" and "IKI - Espace-Temps du Japan.”
Today in 2020, notions of time and space have been disrupted by COVID-19 with shifts to virtual communication and work on global-local levels, fundamentally questioning notions of MA: Space-Time and offering opportunities for its re-interpretation. How do physical local contexts connect with the global contexts based on time zones rather than actual travel and distances between Japan and the world? How does our current situation relate to MA: Space-Time in our day to day activities between these virtual and physical situations?
Beyond the physical world, the importance of space as a place to gather has been diminished and architects are being forced to re-examine it from new angles. With architecture as a starting point, the discussion will touch on space and time as the intersection of experience with implications for other fields as well.
On Tuesday, October 20, JAPAN HOUSE Los Angeles will hold a conversation rethinking about this important notion to understand Japanese culture. The discussion will be led by Hitoshi Abe (UCLA), Sharon Johnston and Mark Lee (Harvard University), and MC'd by Ken Tadashi Oshima (University of Washington).
This webinar will be recorded for archival purposes.
Speakers:
Ken Tadashi Oshima, MC
Professor, Department of Architecture at the University of Washington
Ken Tadashi Oshima is Professor in the Department of Architecture at the University of Washington, where he teaches in the areas of trans-national architectural history, theory, and design. He has also been a visiting professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and taught at Columbia University and the University of British Columbia.
He earned an A.B. degree, magna cum laude, in East Asian Studies and Visual & Environmental Studies from Harvard College, M. Arch. degree from U. C. Berkeley and Ph.D. in architectural history and theory from Columbia University. From 2003-5, he was a Robert and Lisa Sainsbury Fellow at the Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Arts and Cultures in London.
Dr. Oshima’s publications include Kiyonori Kikutake: Between Land and Sea (Lars Müller/Harvard GSD, 2015), Architecturalized Asia (University of Hawaii Press/Hong Kong University Press, 2013), GLOBAL ENDS: towards the beginning (Toto, 2012), International Architecture in Interwar Japan: Constructing Kokusai Kenchiku (University of Washington Press, 2009) and Arata Isozaki (Phaidon, 2009). He curated “Tectonic Visions Between Land and Sea: Works of Kiyonori Kikutake” (Harvard GSD, 2012), “SANAA: Beyond Borders”” (Henry Art Gallery 2007-8), and co-curator of “Crafting a Modern World: The Architecture and Design of Antonin and Noemi Raymond” (University of Pennsylvania, UC Santa Barbara, Kamakura Museum of Modern Art, 2006-7).
He served as President of the Society of Architectural Historians from 2016-18 and was an editor and contributor to Architecture + Urbanism for more than ten years, co-authoring the two-volume special issue, Visions of the Real: Modern Houses in the 20th Century (2000). His articles on the international context of architecture and urbanism in Japan have been published in The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Architectural Review, Architectural Theory Review, Kenchiku Bunka, Japan Architect, L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui, and the AA Files.
Hitoshi Abe, Speaker
Principal, Atelier Hitoshi Abe (AHA)
Hitoshi Abe is Principal at AHA (Atelier Hitoshi Design) an architectural design firm based in the U.S. and Japan. He is currently an advisor to Japan House Los Angeles, while also a Professor in the Department of Architecture and Urban Design and Director of the Terasaki Center for Japanese Studies, both at UCLA.
Sharon Johnston, Speaker
Founder/Partner, Johnston Marklee
Sharon Johnston, FAIA, is a partner of Johnston Marklee, based in Los Angeles. Sharon is Professor in Practice at the Harvard Graduate School of Design; has taught at Princeton University and the University of California, Los Angeles; and has held the Cullinan Chair at Rice University and the Frank Gehry International Chair at the University of Toronto.
Since its establishment in 1998, Johnston Marklee has been recognized nationally and internationally with over 40 major honors and awards. The firm was named the 2016 Oliver Fellows for Architecture & Design by United States Artists, and has been granted the American Architecture Award by the Chicago Athenaeum Museum on three occasions. The firm is a four-time recipient of the Progressive Architecture Award, a ten-time recipient of various A.I.A. honors, and in 2017 received the Award for Excellence in Public Engagement, granted by the Society of Architectural Historians. Together with partner Mark Lee, Sharon served as Co-Artistic Director for the 2017 Chicago Architecture Biennial.
Recent Johnston Marklee projects include the Menil Drawing Institute, which opened in November 2018; a renovation of the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, completed in September 2017; the design of the new Dropbox global headquarters in San Francisco, California, completed in August 2019; and the new UCLA Graduate Art Studios campus in Culver City, California, completed in September 2019.
The firm’s work resides in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Menil Collection, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Carnegie Museum of Art, and the Architecture Museum of TU Munich. A book on the work of the firm entitled House Is a House Is a House Is a House Is a House was published by Birkhauser in 2016, and monographs include 2G N. 67 (2014) and El Croquis N. 198 (2019).
Photo credit: Todd Cole
Mark Lee, Speaker
Founder/Partner, Johnston Marklee
Mark Lee is the chairman of the Department of Architecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and a principal and founding partner of the Los Angeles-based architecture firm Johnston Marklee.
Since its establishment in 1998, Johnston Marklee has been recognized nationally and internationally with over 40 major honors and awards. The firm was named the 2016 Oliver Fellows for Architecture & Design by United States Artists, and has been granted the American Architecture Award by the Chicago Athenaeum Museum on three occasions. The firm is a four-time recipient of the Progressive Architecture Award, a ten-time recipient of various A.I.A. honors, and in 2017 received the Award for Excellence in Public Engagement, granted by the Society of Architectural Historians. Together with partner Sharon Johnston, Mark served as Co-Artistic Director for the 2017 Chicago Architecture Biennial, and in the same year, Mark served as William Bernoudy Architect in Residence at the American Academy in Rome.
Recent Johnston Marklee projects include the Menil Drawing Institute, which opened in November 2018; a renovation of the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, completed in September 2017; the design of the new Dropbox global headquarters in San Francisco, California, completed in August 2019; and the new UCLA Graduate Art Studios campus in Culver City, California, completed in September 2019.
The firm’s work resides in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Menil Collection, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Carnegie Museum of Art, and the Architecture Museum of TU Munich. A book on the work of the firm entitled House Is a House Is a House Is a House Is a House was published by Birkhauser in 2016, and monographs include 2G N. 67 (2014) and El Croquis N. 198 (2019).
Photo credit: Todd Cole