White U, URBOT, House in Koganei
Makoto Ueda, Koji Ichikawa, Maki Onishi, and Yuki Hyakuda look back at Toyo Ito's early projects
The Find and Tell program promotes new readings of an archive, allowing multiple voices to reflect on the work and highlight its contemporary intellectual relevance. As part of this wider CCA program that is centred on materials residing in the CCA’s collection vaults, this iteration of the program focuses on the archive of Toyo Ito as it prepared to leave Tokyo at the end of 2023. Before the archive is opened to a larger international public, the first access was given to Japanese experts with close ties to the work. Ito’s archive is exposed here to three interpretations. The first is by architectural historian Koji Ichikawa, secondly, the architecture critic Makoto Ueda, who was the editor of Toshi Jūtaku and published Ito-san’s work early on, and finally, the architecture partnership formed by Maki Onishi and Yuki Hyakuda (o+h), who have collaborated with Ito in the past—each putting forward a set of arguments supported by a significant selection of material within the archive. Ito’s archive will be processed upon arrival at the CCA and made available for research, but these videos provide a sense of what the archive includes and what it might mean to activate it.
Koji Ichikawa
On the drawings of White U (early 1970s), a house Toyo Ito designed for his sister and her children
Makoto Ueda
On the drawings and collages of the Aluminium House (URBOT-001), Ito’s first design (1971) published in Toshi Jutaku, and the Useless Capsule House (URBOT-002)
Maki Onishi and Yuki Hyakuda (o+h)
On the drawings of House at Koganei (1979)
