The three panels to be exhibited this time are the original panels for the International Competition of Centre Georges Pompidou (then Plateau Beaubourg Center) in Paris.This proposal was chosen to be in the last two final proposals among the first 740. The final decision was made by President Pompidou, and the Renzo Piano + Richard Rogers proposal was chosen.
I was invited as an international jury member for the Grand Arch International Competition, a competition part of the Paris Grand Projet for the commemoration of the bicentennial of the French Revolution. 500 proposals were drawn, but out of the final two proposals, President Mitterand chose the final proposal. This shows that the French way of the final proposal being chosen by the President, the client, still exists.
Among the jury members for this competition, my rival in the Centre Georges Pompidou Competition, Richard Rogers was also present, but by this time I have become the best of friends with Richard Rogers and Renzo Piano.
For the International Nominated Competition of the New Kansai International Airport, I acted as the committee chairman execute, while Richard Rogers was one of the jury members. The final proposal chosen was the one of long-time rival Renzo Piano.
The Centre Georges Pompidou Competition took place in 1970, roughly 10 years after the start of the Metabolism Movement (a movement pursuing the metabolism and recycle in architecture).
The Metabolism Group's methodology to comprehend architecture and cities as dynamic process, was not by all means common to every member of the group.
It was then that I had the dramatic encounter with the members of Team X (ten) who had overturned the CIAM and had started a new international movement for architecture and cities.
The leaders, Louis Kahn, Aldo van Eyck, and Peter Smithon, had invited members of the younger generation, such as James Stirling, Christopher Alexander, Hans Hollein, Giancarlo de Carlo, and Charles Jencks, besides myself. My friendship with these members have continued for 35 years since then.
Times were changing. Modern architecture, which had proceeded under the slogan of the Machine Principle, had obviously reached a dead-end.
I had predicted that in the future, the Principle of Life will be the leading philosophy instead of the Principle of Life.
It is needless to say that the key concept "Metabolism" is one of the most fundamental concepts in the Principle of Life. "Metamorphosis" and "Symbiosis" are also fundamental concepts in the Principle of Life.
In other words, the 35 years I have led as an architect has always been a pursuit of the Principle of Life.
The first concept in my proposal for the Centre Georges Pompidou was to dismantle architecture and understand it as an accumulation of spatial units. The basic concept of this system is the metabolism of architecture, where parts can be changed and recycled. The grid steel structure frame and the use of the capsule are extremely similar to those in the Renzo Piano Proposal.
Secondly, the concept of "Information Column". Here an art museum was considered a museum of information, and all information termini were to be set in each of the columns.
Originally, the word "Information-oriented Society" was created in a talk between anthropologist Tadao Umesao and myself in 1961. In his "Information Monetary Theory", Umesao defined the value of information equivalent to a monetary.
In my book "Urban Design" which was published in the 1960s, I defined architecture and cities as the flow of information. I then wrote about the future of Japan, islands of information, in the 1970s.
The idea to consider a column as not only a structure but also as a flow of information came from my premonition for an information-era. The concept "Information" is also a major concept for the Principle of Life.
Thirdly, the concept of symbiosis with nature. The nature mentioned here is manmade nature, a third territory between manmade architecture and original nature. On the roof of the art museum, a manmade green hill (urban hill) was provided. This roof garden is connected diagonally to another site forming a hill of steps. It is also connected visually by an outdoor aerial escalator. In Renzo Piano's proposal, there was a direct lookout escalator on the side of the building, which is also quite similar to my proposal.
As for the site connected diagonally, it was to be a small art park, and by connecting it to the roof garden, I considered outdoor sculpture exhibit among many other art activities for the citizens possible.
Fourth, the symbiosis with history. While the enforced plan practically ignored the surrounding historical environment, in my proposal I limited the height of the art museum to the height of the surrounding buildings. Also by creating a descending urban hill, I attempted to create an architecture that is in confrontation and symbiosis at the same time.
How can one architectural work be created in symbiosis with the surrounding existing city? The enormous urban scale which appears as an oblique roof garden is a device to mutate a scale called architecture to a scale called city, similar to the function of a plaza in European cities.
This so-called space "manmade hill" is an efficient way to exist in symbiosis with the historical city while regenerating the city at the same time.
This was later adopted into my works as the concept "urban hill".
The architecture expressed in this project, which was a gathering of units, was nothing but an assembly by itself. But with the new mediation of an oblique roof garden, new creation became possible. This is the Metamorphosis from an assembly of units to architecture.
A project similar to this project plan is the National Ethnological Museum which I later planned. This building is also an assembly of exhibition units with a courtyard. By using a patio in the center (it is called "Relic of the Future") as the mediation, it makes a Metamorphosis from only an assembly to architecture.
When looking at the change from the age of machine to the age of life from a different perspective, I consider it a change from a Bourbakian system to a non-Bourbakian system. "Bourbaki" is a group of researchers, named by French mathematician Andre Weil. It advocates that there is only one truth, and it could be proved by the concept of the "self-end system". In opposition to this, a non-Bourbakian system advocates that the truth exist in the plural form, and the whole is realized by the self-generation of independent parts. It is also called complex science, immune science, new science, etc. These non-Bourbakian systems include ambiguous, multivocal territories. The non-Bourbakian systems are similar to the order that the Philosophy of Symbiosis aims in that they actively accept the noise and ambiguity that the pragmatic dualism neglects.
The non-Bourbakian System is a "problematique" system, which is completely different from the method proving the truth "the theorem, the axiom) analytically by the "self-end system".
David Peat advocated that in the world of elementary particles, the human spirit and body (substance) exchange energy and information, and interprets them to be one same world. (The synchronicity between spirit and body).
In Prigogine's "Dissipative Structure", he discusses disorder, instability, diversity, anti-equilibrium, and non-linear relationship, and time, and proves that a small input is the result of a great worldly change.
In the natural world, phenomena such as sway, current, and whirlpool take place, and complicated, irregular forms such as coastline and mountain range exist. These phenomena and shapes were neglected in the world of pragmatic dualism as something non-scientific, something which cannot be calculated mathematically.
It is Mandelbrot who made the analysis of these complex natural phenomena possible by non-linear realm and fractal geometry.
David Bohm's "Implicated Order" also advocates a new direction, which is the order of the whole created by independent parts.
The idea to include wholeness inside each part is equivalent to Koestler's holon.
In the field of biology, Darwin's evolutionary theory is beginning to be revised, and the new interpretation "serial symbiosis theory" by American biologist Margulis is becoming a major theory.
These non-Bourbakian systems strongly support the Metabolism theory of architecture and cities, which advocates the creation of the whole by the accumulation of deconstructed, dissipated parts.
The concept for Centre Georges Pompidou runs through my works to this day.
The first floor of the National Ethnological Museum is repository, the second used for exhibition, and the third floor for research. These three-leveled exhibition blocks act as cellular units, so in case of extension works each function can grow in a well-balanced way. After its completion twenty years ago, one exhibition block is added every three years, while the scale of the building made a twofold increase. Also, the "information column" concept I proposed for the Centre Georges Pompidou competition is realized as "Video-take" (information terminus).
The New Kuala Lumpur International Airport under construction in Malaysia is the biggest hub airport in Asia. It has the roof structure of a construction of cellular units, a combination of HP Shell Structure, to be adaptable to future changes.
As a result, my proposal for Centre Georges Pompidou ended unrealized, but the concepts used in this proposal have been continuously used in my following projects as stock.
When I was a student, I became fascinated with Italian Futurist architect Sant'Elia. This is partly due to the way he led his life, how he planned numerous future cities. But to me, architecture is a philosophy, a declaration, an image. To an architect, it is not so important the realization of that image, but if the world could be changed by this philosophy or image.
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