Commissioner’s statement
While taking up the common theme offered by the general director of the 2014 InternationalArchitecture 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 systematic research, 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 tofeature the finest buildings and strongest concepts that arose as a result by a century’s worthof 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 byTakamasa Yoshizaka, who studied with Le Corbusier, and in 2014, it will be organized like anancient 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 ground below
the building, and harvested crops were carried up and preserved inside the structure. In theJapan Pavilion, the elevated exhibition space will serve as the storehouse and the space below it,
equipped with pilotis, will function as a venue for dispatches and discussions that will generate
the “present and future.”
Visitors will be able to view a wealth of scenes taken from a variety of objects (exhibits) overthis 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 aspart of a building, magazines and books that exerted a strong influence on architecture,
photographs, pieces of demolished buildings, photographs and paintings depicting imaginary viewsof buildings and cities, and documentary footage of construction work. This assemblage of variedand diverse things, together with details that tend to be omitted, will help locate architecture in asocial 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 over Japan.) 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 ofphotographs and drawings on the four walls of the exhibition room. All of the objects piled on thefloor will play a narrative role in relation to the buildings that are featured above them on thewalls.

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 offinding a Utopia in the future had collapsed, and by setting their sights on the society aroundthem, the architects began to reexamine the significance of modernity and the historicalperspective. The ’70s can in a sense be seen as the real start of the modern era. Were thesearchitects’ questions and proposals accepted or rejected? Have any of them continued on tothe present? History is a journey for “now” – this trip at the Japan Pavilion begins with thisvicarious experience of the ’70s.
In 2014, for the first time ever, all of the national pavilions at the biennale have been invited toadopt and explore the same theme in the exhibition. On this special occasion, I would also like toattempt for the first time to thoroughly convey the strength and historical depth of Japanesearchitecture.
Kayoko Ota