The embassy of Japan in Lithuania, Architects‘ Association of Lithuania and Japan Foundation would like to invite you to the exhibition „Struggling Cities: from Japanese Urban Projects in the 1960s“. This exhibition has been traveling around the World since 2010 and will be coming to Lithuania after visiting New Zealand. The exhibition will take place from April 12 until May 31 at Architects‘ Association of Lithuania (Kalvarijų st. 1, Vilnius).
Japanese architecture in particular has attracted growing international attention in recent years. Many Japanese architects are active in various parts of the world and bilingual architectural journals published in Japan enjoy wide circulation abroad. Under the broad theme of architecture and the city, this exhibition takes a fresh look at proposals on the city that were put forward by Japanese architects in the 1960s, when Japan saw a flourishing of ideas and activities in that arena.
In the 1960s Tokyo became a megacity, its population was growing rapidly. Newspapers were filled with articles about the problems caused by modernization: traffic congestion, pollution, housing shortages and sinking ground. In order to find a way out of these critical situations and to renovate the city, Japan mobilized industrial productivity during a high growth period of its economy. In response to this increase in momentum, architects announced quite ambitious urban projects through mass media.
The exhibition, which is coordinated by Naohiko Hino, reveals ambitious ideas, addressing various problems engendered by urbanization at that time, by such famous Japanese architects as Kisho Kurokawa, Masato Ohtaka, Fumihiko Maki, Noboru Kawazoe, Arata Isozaki and others. Various experimental ideas on the city are presented by using a combination of diverse media—from architectural scale models to photographs and slides, along with animations and other audiovisuals.
We hope that visitors to the exhibition will gain a sense of the connections between past and present – how the search for a new vision of the city – a search that gained momentum in Japan half a century ago – has unfolded over time, and how those earlier efforts relate to today’s architecture and urban environments. It is also hoped that, by touring various places around the world, the exhibition will provide an opportunity to re-examine the issue of urbanization while grasping the current challenges and future directions of our ever-burgeoning cities in terms of specific relevance to each host location.
We kindly invite you to visit the exhibition and learn more about the urban projects in the 1960s and compare them with today‘s reality.
The exhibition is sponsored by Japan Foundation, which is actively developing international cultural exchange and cooperating with more than 130 countries in the World. The goal of the Foundation is to popularize Japanese culture via traditional and contemporary Japanese art exhibitions, as well as and enhance the understanding of Japanese culture through visual arts.