Colossal: Earlier this summer, Archi-Depot opened within Tokyo’s Shinagawa district, a warehouse museum dedicated to the storage and display of Japanese architectural models. Created by the company Warehouse TERRADA (previously), the cavernous space houses rows and rows of dramatically-lit miniature designs, many of which serve as the tiny precursors to some of the city’s top attractions such as the Tokyo Skytree, Tokyo International Airport, and the Asakusa Culture and Tourism Center.
3 comments:
When I first started reading this article I immediately started to think of the Thorne room in the Art Institute of Chicago. This exhibit showcases dozens of immaculate miniatures based off houses from many different time periods, often not much bigger than a shoebox and usually focused on a single room. The models that the museum in the article houses are different from those delicate models housed in Chicago because rather than focusing on a single room they seek to give an impression of a form that will become the building. Rather than replicating all of the molding detail their focus is on the shape, the larger form of the prospective building rather than on its details. I think that shows an interesting part about how we appreciate architecture throughout its life. In the planning stages much of the outside focus is on the grand form but this shifts slowly to the details as time goes on.
I really like the idea behind this museum, but I don’t think they executed it that well. Looking at the pictures in the article and on their website the whole place just looks like an empty room they filled with shelves. It looks more like a storage space than an actual museum or display area (if these pictures were in fact of their display area than I take every thing back). I do like the part about having QR codes that will provide additional information and ways to find out more about the building and the people who made it. My issues with how they present things aside I would love to see them open more branches in other countries. Models like these, and the work that goes into them, are things that can be appreciated even if someone doesn’t have any background in architecture or model making. I am curious to see how well this museum ends up working out, even though I think it’s the kind of thing that could appeal to almost anyone the way its laid out and the extra information they provide does seem to tip it towards an audience of people who work in architecture or other related fields.
I am amazed by how Japanese artists and makers "obsess" over miniature things -- from their capsule hotels to this architecture exhibition, they compress the scale of large objects but maintain (to a satisfying degree) the level of details. In this exhibit, however, I think too many details are lost in this process of compression. Architectures are extremely complicated objects with intricate engineering and design thinking behind each detail. Also, the beauty of a lot of architectures lies in their scale and the sense of space. When made as small as in this exhibit, the models perhaps are only able to showcase their high-level concept. The more interesting things -- details in their structure, the balance and coordination between functionality and aesthetics -- are hidden from human eyes. Therefore, I don't consider this exhibition to be a successful use of miniature models.
In fact, I think VR would be great for showcasing architectures. VR is unlimited by size and scale. A small machine on the eyes are enough to transcend the restriction of space and the law of physics. Walking around and "experiencing" different architectures would honesty be sooooo cool.
--Joyce Wang
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