Thomas Daniell – The School of Ashes
10th February
14:30 CET-1
Zoom link: https://videoconf-colibri.zoom.us/j/98897873155
Title: The School of Ashes
Thomas Daniell
Sinopse:The Japanese word yakeato literally means “ashes” (or more poetically, “charred ruins”). Those people who witnessed the incendiary and atomic bombings during the final months of the Second World War as children, and became adults during the deprivations of the immediate postwar period, are known as the yakeato generation. In many cases, they were able to sublimate these traumas into a recognised artistic sensibility that is present across all genres, from a perverse nihilism among novelists to the disturbing and cathartic activities of performance artists. During the postwar decades, architecture was the field with the most conflicted relationship to yakeato, given its mandate to rebuild those charred ruins and prevent their recurrence. Architects from the yakeatogeneration frequently mention the war and its aftermath as an inspiration for their work – in fact, the founders of the Metabolist movement originally intended to call themselves the Yakeato-ha (School of Ashes) before settling on their more optimistic name. This talk will examine the relationships between the writings and buildings of the yakeato generation, and their resonance in Japan in the aftermath of the 2011 Fukushima nuclear meltdown.BioThomas Daniell is Professor of Architectural Theory and Criticism at Kyoto University, Japan. His books include FOBA: Buildings (Princeton Architectural Press, 2005), After the Crash: Architecture in Post-Bubble Japan (Princeton Architectural Press, 2008), Houses and Gardens of Kyoto (Tuttle, 2010; second edition 2018), Kiyoshi Sey Takeyama + Amorphe (Equal Books, 2011), Kansai 6 (Equal Books, 2011), and An Anatomy of Influence (AA Publications, 2018).