'Tabula Scripta Tokyo' is an exhibition and an architectural intervention designed by HOH Architecten for the Shibaura House in Tokyo.
In a city of constant change and rapid transformation like Tokyo, where buildings no older than 40 years are rapidly being replaced by new ones, the exhibition highlights the process of working with existing buildings and places. It presents the built environment as a „written page” on which the practitioner’s role is to continue writing. The use of the current building stock can play an essential role towards achieving the radical sustainable transitions we require in our time. At the invitation of the Japan-Netherlands Architecture and Cultural Association (JNACA) and the Shibaura House, HOH Architecten showcase a selection of distinctive works and design methods of the studio that exemplify means of working with what is there.
On the publicly accessible ground floor, printed on large canvases of transparent voile that hang freely in the space, a selection of projects are shown as a complex yet coherent collection of layers. Layers of time, in which the different construction periods are shown, prior to the layer added by the studio. Layers of 'before' and 'after', in which the intervention and the need for change become clear. Layers of perception, in which different ways of experiencing a building as drawn by its users are visible. Visitors can move freely through the space and inhabit the liminal spaces between the different layers and appropriate the projects as their own.
The 1:1 intervention on the facade of the Shibaura House is an expression of seeing the existing built environment as a source of inspiration for change. The Shibaura House was designed in 2011 by Kazuyo Sejima for a cultural entrepreneur, Masaru Ito, whose father used to run a printing house at the same location. The photo of the headquarters of the printing house, printed on canvases taller than 8m, was installed in the same position it previously occupied. The image clashes with the facade of the current building, creating a dialogue between past and present.
The intervention is on the one hand an ode to the city of change, but at the same time it also questions the constant cycles of construction and demolition that define the building culture of Japan. The exhibition was made possible by a contribution from the Creative Industries Fund NL and the Dutch Embassy in Japan.
