The Architectural Competition

Winning Competition: ‘Death is not the end’

Within the scope of the class ‘Special Topics in Design and Architecture: Tokyo’, we had to produce an essay of our choosing. The essay had to show a culmination of the ideas we explored in class whilst introducing something new. Using The Arch Out Loud Open Ideas Competition, I looked at the competition landscape and the discursive nature of architectural visions interrogating the following questions:

Where is the competition situated in contemporary social discourse?

What do they say about Tokyo? What meanings do they give the city?

Are they discursive events? Are they knowledge producers?

Above all, I sought to highlight two unanswerable questions originally posed by Sorensen. Firstly, have plans played a role in shaping urban planning, architecture and governance? Secondly, do radical urban visions have potential to shape the city by inspiring action and imagining alternative futures? (Sorensen, 2017).

Architecture is not manifest solely in the built form, but is made and re-made through visions, plans and competitions which collect as discursive data of architectural history. The built form we see today is but a portion of the ideas that have become realised. Great plans such as Abercrombie’s Plan for London, Tange’s Plan for Tokyo Bay and the work of Archigram have reverberated and gained legacy beyond many tangible alternatives. Plans are not only seductive visually, they also offer a glance into prevalent forces and ideologies in society. They can be situated within a place and a time and as such, can be illustrative of how ideas circulate, travel and are re-interpreted. They can act as a history of design discourse. From a purely material perspective, these large creative data sets have a potential to show a lineage of current design thinking that exposes the shape, problems and aspirations of society. Competition narratives utilise the notion that architecture is a problem-solving tool, and that the site of the competition is a space for innovation where alternative futures can be experimented with.

Arch out Loud created a competition under the Open Ideas branch of its research entitled ‘Death and the City: Tokyo Vertical Cemetery’. The architectural research association has a history of proposing plans that interrogate controversial phenomenon such as the nuclear waste disposal site and mixed housing in Mumbai; arguing that these competitions ‘demand[ing] the constant rethinking of former ideologies.’ (Arch out Loud, 2015).

Seeking ‘to explore innovative solutions, find better alternatives to convention and invigorate the field of design’, the brief itself was to propose a vertical cemetery in Shinjuku that ‘explores the relationship between life and death within the city… and the cultural identity this can project within its environment’ (Arch out Loud, 2015). It is proposed under the premise that architecture can find alternative solutions whilst enriching cultural dialogue.

Utilising Smith’s ‘city as problem’ thesis (Smith,1978), the brief for Death and the City was set in response to ‘Meigi-Gashi’, highlighting the architectural competition as a tool for social critique (Larson, 1994). With rising land costs in Tokyo, private developers have used temple names to build cemetery plots next to houses, selling the graves for ten times the price of the land without taxes. A backlash has occurred with NIMBY residents critiquing the influx of graves. As people continue to flock to the city and the overall population rises, the problem is due to worsen. This addresses spatial constraints whilst simultaneously criticising the social-spatial phenomenon of Meigi-Gashi, highlighting how the architectural competition becomes a discursive event’ (Larson, 1994).

Impression for ‘Death is not the end'

Drawing for ‘Death is not the end’ 

The winning work ‘Death is not the end’ was created by Wei Li He, Wu Jing Ting Zeng, Zhi Ruo Ma, Kui Yu Gong of Priestman Architects. The vertical cemetery uses two-meter-diameter helium balloons as coffin storage spaces tied via optical fibres to a countdown winch underground. There is an upper viewing platform that connects via a spiral staircase to a commemorating space and reflecting pond. As the red balloons float up, matching the Tokyo Tower, it would recreate the skyline, becoming the tallest structure in Tokyo. Similar to the artwork of Kurt Perschke, these red balls create a spectacle that matches the pop culture of Tokyo.

Kurt Perschke's Work

As the balloon rises, a person is gradually being forgotten:

‘Whenever friends and families come to visit, the balloon pauses. If no visitor comes, the balloon keeps rising. Eventually, when the optical fibres reach the end, the balloon flies to the sky until blowing off in the atmosphere. While traveling back from the atmosphere, the inner layer of oxidizer coating will ignite the whole balloon in the sky. With the rain and the wind, the ashes travels back to the earth.’

The work questions ideas of attachment, memory, forgetting and value. The authors wanted the movement of balloons, appearing and disappearing to reflect the temporality of life. Here it speaks to Smith’s idea about ‘the city as process’ or ‘ephemeron’ (ukiyo) – affirming the Shinto concept of cyclical renewal and Buddhist’s impermanence (Smith, 1978). The balloons floating up into the sky are reminiscent of the Obon Lantern Festival whereby families send their ancestor’s spirits back to their resting place under the guidance of fire. This fire (Okuribi) is matched in the red-ness of the balloons. Okuribi marks the closing of the Obon Lantern Festival much like the balloons reaching the sky marks the final moment in the bodies journey.

These plans pursue an increasing connection between technology and space and our experience of it. This arguably builds and follows on from discourse surrounding Shinjuku Ruriko-in Byakurenge-do in Shinjuku, employing a technological fix to address issues of death and space. For approximately $100,000, individuals can have their loved ones cremated and their ashes stored in an example of a vertical cemetery. Using technology developed by Toyota Industries, electronic ID cards light up the urns of the dead for visitors to contemplate. 

Exterior of Shinjuku Ruriko-in Byakurenge-do, Shinjuku

Suisho-Den Room at Shinjuku Ruriko-in Byakurenge-do, Shinjuku

There is an increasing debate about the meaning and problem of excess and storage. This issue of excess is reflected both in architecture and space-body relations. Architecture possesses an abundance of excess material, through waste, plans and models. Yet through this competition, architecture attempts to address the excesses of life. 

References:

Arch out loud. www.archoutloud.com/-purpose.html

Arch out loud Report, http://www.archoutloud.com/tok-results.html

Larson., M, S (1994) Architectural Competitions as Discursive Events, Theory and Society, 23, 4: 469-504.

Smith, H, D (1978) Tokyo as an Idea: An Exploration of Japanese Urban Thought until 1945, The Journal of Japanese Studies, 4, 1, 45-80.

Sorensen, A (2017) Future Visions of Tokyo that Mattered: Utopian concepts and unanticipated outcomes, in Urban Asias: Essay on Futurity Past and Present, ed. T. Bunnell and D.P.S. Goh, Berlin: Jovis.