PRESS RELEASEJULY 5, 2013

No.917

Japan Pavilion for the 14th International Architecture Exhibition at the Venice Biennale (2014)

Kayoko Ota appointed Commissioner
The theme: “A Storehouse of Contemporary Architecture”
The Japan Foundation is proud to organize Japan's national participation at the 14th International Architecture
Exhibition of the Venice Biennale, held from 7 June through 23 November 2014. This time we are pleased toannounce the Commissioner and theme for the Japan Pavilion. Further details will be updated as they
become available.

Commissioner: Kayoko Ota (Exhibition Organizer / Editor)
For ten years (until 2012), Ota worked on exhibition planning and book editing at AMO, athink‐tank arm of Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA). She served as co‐curator
for the AMO exhibitions at the 2006 and 2010 Venice Architecture Biennale, and ascurator for Prada’s Waist Down exhibition from 2005 to 2009, a retrospective ofOMA‐AMO’s work titled Content in 2003 and 2004, and the Hong Kong & Shenzhen
Bi‐City Biennale of Urbanism / Architecture in 2009. Among the books she has edited are
Project Japan: Metabolism Talks… (Taschen 2011; Heibonsha, 2012), Post‐Occupancy(Editoriale Domus 2005), and Waist Down (DAP 2005). In 2004, she was named deputy
editor at the Italian magazine Domus. Until 1993, she served as joint director of theWorkshop for Architecture and Urbanism and joint editor of the magazine Telescope.

2014 Japan Pavilion Team
Commissioner: Kayoko Ota (Exhibition Organizer / Editor)
Director: Norihito Nakatani (Professor, Dept. of Architecture, Waseda University)
Executive Adviser: Hiroo Yamagata (Translator/Critic)
Keigo Kobayashi (Architect, Assistant Professor, Dept. of Architecture, Waseda University)
Jin Motohashi (Research Associate, Dept. of Architecture, Waseda University)【 Overall theme for all national pavilions: “Absorbing Modernity: 1914‐2014” 】
For the National Pavilions at the 14th Architecture Exhibition, Exhibition Director Rem Koolhaas made a specific request, asking ”therepresented countries to engage a single theme,” the idea being for the entire Exhibition to track “the evolution of nationalarchitectures in the last 100 years.” Accordingly, while adopting a distinctively Japanese perspective, the displays in the Japan Pavilion
will also be designed as powerful means of communication, coinciding with the new direction set out by the Director.

4-4-1 Yotsuya, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo 160-0004 Japan
www.jpf.go.jp

Commissioner’s statement
While taking up the common theme offered by the general director of the 2014 International Architecture Exhibition at the Venice Biennale – Absorbing
Modernity: 1914‐2014 –, the Japan Pavilion will attempt to weave a continuous history of the 100 years of the country’s architecture through a systematicresearch, which has actually rarely been done. We see this as an ideal opportunity to tell the story of unparalleled architectural development in Japan (acountry that underwent drastic modernization in an effort to catch up with the West), and to feature the finest buildings and strongest concepts that
arose as a result by a century’s worth of Japan’s absorbing or confronting with modernity.
The Japan Pavilion will be transformed into a “storehouse” filled with the testaments in various forms of the 100‐year history of Japanese architecture.
The building itself was designed by Takamasa Yoshizaka, who studied with Le Corbusier, and in 2014, it will be organized like an ancient Asian storehouse
along the lines of the Shosoin or a takayuka‐style (raised‐floor) building. In the case of the latter, daily life and production was carried out on the groundbelow the building, and harvested crops were carried up and preserved inside the structure. In the Japan Pavilion, the elevated exhibition space will serveas the storehouse and the space below it, equipped with pilotis, will function as a venue for dispatches and discussions that will generate the “present andfuture.”
Visitors will be able to view a wealth of scenes taken from a variety of objects (exhibits) over this 100‐year period. In addition to blueprints and models,the exhibition will include architects’ sketches and notebooks, letters, drawings of structures and equipment, furniture designed as part of a building,magazines and books that exerted a strong influence on architecture, photographs, pieces of demolished buildings, photographs and paintings depicting
imaginary views of buildings and cities, and documentary footage of construction work. This assemblage of varied and diverse things, together withdetails that tend to be omitted, will help locate architecture in a social context or in a broader perspective than before. (In order to realize this objective,
we plan to use this opportunity to bring together a variety of public and private archives of modern architecture that are currently scattered all overJapan.) Further, we hope to convert some of the most important historical statements into “voices,” which can be enjoyed aurally by visitors.
A selection of buildings that stand as the most important and essential examples of architecture will be selected from each era during the 100‐year period
and displayed in a select group of photographs and drawings on the four walls of the exhibition room. All of the objects piled on the floor will play anarrative role in relation to the buildings that are featured above them on the walls.
The first period under examination will be the ’70s. Japanese architects, who had by the 1960s largely absorbed modernism, began to take new directions
over the next decade. The illusion of finding a Utopia in the future had collapsed, and by setting their sights on the society around them, the architects
began to reexamine the significance of modernity and the historical perspective. The ’70s can in a sense be seen as the real start of the modern era. Werethese architects’ questions and proposals accepted or rejected? Have any of them continued on to the present? History is a journey for “now” – this trip
at the Japan Pavilion begins with this vicarious experience of the ’70s.
In 2014, for the first time ever, all of the national pavilions at the biennale have been invited to adopt and explore the same theme in the exhibition. On
this special occasion, I would also like to attempt for the first time to thoroughly convey the strength and historical depth of Japanese architecture.
––Kayoko OtaNotes to editors:
14th International Architecture Exhibition – la Biennale di Venezia
Theme: Fundamentals
Exhibition Director: Rem Koolhaas
Exhibition period: 7 June to 27 November 2014
Official website : http://www.labiennale.org/en/architecture/index.html
Japan Pavilion at the Giardini“A Storehouse of Contemporary Architecture”
Venue: The Japan Pavilion at the Giardini (designed by Takamasa Yoshizaka, completed in 1956)
Address: Padiglione Giapponese, Giardini della Biennale, Castello 1260, 30122 Venezia
Organized by The Japan Foundation
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4-4-1 Yotsuya Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo 160-0004

4-4-1 Yotsuya, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo 160-0004 Japan
www.jpf.go.jp