Early learners would on occasions ask about the styles of architecture. They wonder about the different ways buildings can be shaped and are curious about their appearances: the why, the how come etc. These days the question of style is no longer discussed at the academy. It is probably prohibitive to talk about such superficial topics since the discussion seems to gravitate toward the politics of social justice and advancement in technology. And because of this trend, the question of style, asked by the high school students becomes that much more refreshing.
I don’t have much of a response on this topic except to tell them that a style is like one’s voice. Everyone has their own, and it will change through time naturally. For those who work hard at it, like singers and stage actors, their voices could be extended, embellished, and on occasions transformed through passion and prolonged practices. Kengo Kuma’s transformative ‘styles’ seem to be one of these examples.
On the occasion of the 2020(1) Tokyo Olympics, it was a pleasure to see images of Kuma’s earlier projects while dabbling with theories of post-modernism. Completed in 1991, the M2 building was originally designed as a showcase building for a car dealership. It was finished right at the inflection point of the PoMo movement.
I have been curious about this building for a while. If we follow the works in the likes of Isozaki, Ban, Ito, Ando, Maki, or Tange, there seems to be a gradual change in the way their buildings transform. Despite their formal differences and change, there is an underlying continuity. Not so in the case of Kuma. The M2 building was a rupture, a tsunami in the sea. It was designed just a few years before his ATAMI hotel, which became what he is known for today. Putting together the two projects within an architect’s decade is quite miraculous.
I have never seen the M2 building, only pictures of the main facade. So when a former student took the effort of photographing both the backside, inside, and underside of the building, I asked if I could share it. Ivy said she was greeted by the staff and they kindly showed her various spaces inside the building.
In Kuma’s Anti-Object, he described his M2 detour as a way of reflecting the various contours of Tokyo upon his return from his visiting scholar at Columbia University. That the M2 building was an attempt to encapsulate all of the fragmentations exhibited in the city.
So we take his words for it.
Fast forward thirty years. The former car dealership building is now a funeral parlor! How fascinating. As announced by the PoMo protagonists Rossi: “form persists and comes to preside over a built work in a world where functions continually become modified” such reading has certainly found a perfect alibi in the M2 building.
Thanks to Ivy Ip.
