PORTFOLIO : the images of julie verstraete.

KICHIJOJI’S FANTASY FUTUREjulie verstraete and stephanie vandergoten

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2.4 ARCHITECTURE IN MANGA AND ANIME 20

2.4.1 Linking architecture and manga.The comic and its cinematic pendant often became a way for pre-senting utopian and fantastic city concepts. Since the 1980s Japa-nese sci-fi comics have featured architectural concepts created two decades earlier by the Metabolists, one of the most influential ar-chitect groups worldwide, which in the 1960s adopted the trend of megastructures. In manga, the utopian concepts of cities and ur-ban megastructures adapted from the Metabolists are intended to provide the reader with spatial orientation, but simultaneously they create an atmospheric backdrop for the story. Individual concep-tual ideas by Isozaki, Kikutake, Tanghe or Kurokawa are not only reproduced in manga and anime; some comics even include refined versions of them. The city concept in the comic becomes a more detailed model of a city than the architect’s original plan of model.

The end and new beginnings are important aspects of the (religious) Japanese lifestyle. The concept of de-struction exerts an extreme fascination in the Japanese. Japan is the only nation to have experienced the impact of an atomic bomb and all the after-effects. This trauma can be acted out in manga and anime.Therefore the apocalypse is a very popular theme in manga, next to the elegiac and the carnivalesque. In many manga the urban apocalypse has two differing narrative phases. In the first there is a development towards the impending end, they remain very close to present-day reality. The post-apocalyptic narrative phase takes as its topic reconstruction and recovery.

It is of special importance for the mangaka and naturally for the manga reader, which social form asserts itself and how it is expressed in the new city, the new architecture and of course how this new start is depicted in graphic and narrative terms. Many stories only become complete through the visualization of architecture as designed space. In the comic, architectural backgrounds not only act as illustration but in many instances they carry the action. The mangaka often employ popular architectural images as symbols for the definition of specific urban, cultural, and above all, social structures. Urban struc-tures adopted from reality become iconographic motifs for the social backdrop of the comic story.

20 The paragraphs of this chapter are based on the exhibition ‘Neo Tokyo3. Architecture in manga and anime’ in the Deutches Architek-turmuseum in Frankfurt which I visited in February 2008 and on the following book.JUNG K., LUTHER D., CACHOLA SCHMAL P. Neo Tokyo 3. Architecture in manga and anime. Frankfurt am Main, Deutches Architek-turmuseum, 2008, 41p.

Above: Marine City 1968 - Kiyonore KikutakeRight: Galaxy 999

Galaxy 999

MANGA IN ARCHITECTURE

JULIE VERSTRAETE

JULIE VERSTRAETEVAGEVUURSTRAAT 16

9270 LAARNEBELGIUM

juli.verstraete@gmail.com

JAPAN/BELGIUM

5

INTRODUCTION

Our European future in living is involved in an interesting node of different, sometimes contradictory aspects. There is the image of an ideal way of living (own home, garden and child) together with the presence of shrinking cities, causing a spreading and a shrinking gesture at the same time. In Japan high density living is already highly developed and, even with the present shrinking cities we could suspect this evolution in Europe, it will become a necessity. If we keep on working in the concept of a big sprawl, our horizontal way of living will become complete non-quality. From this point of view, it seemed interesting to study how Japanese ideas and experience can influence and further our ‘building desire’.

I found a quote of Anna Font in her manifesto ‘Although the word housing encloses a range of different problems, architecture must deal with them as a whole.’ that let us think about housing as the driving factor of cities:

‘The problem of housing is not being a cultural reference. Housing is not the most important factor of urban growth, though it will account for the largest amount of built volume. The new city icons are museums, parks, office buildings but never a housing development. Maybe we had to wonder, isn’t it more correct to define a city’s identity as a way of living than a civic center?’

In this field of research many questions can rise: in what sense or in which ways will or could culture and lifestyle be a barrier or more a driving factor?In which layers of the population can these ideas penetrate more than in others? When we compare youngsters in Japan to youngsters in Europe, there will be differences in be-tween and it will also be even more different than the comparison between elder people in Japan and in Europe. We can study the values they want to hold on to and to what extent they are on equal or different wavelengths?

Next to these realistic and concrete ideas there is the huge manga and anime culture in Japan, with the highest concentrations in Tokyo and Osaka. Manga and anime are based on ancient Japanese traditions, this goes together with the adoption of the latest trends in multimedia and art. Manga has an enormous social and economic importance in Japan, but it also works actively on the field of architecture. The comic and its cinematic pendant became a way for presenting utopian and fantastic city concepts. Since the 1980s, Japanese comics in-tegrated architectural concepts created two decades earlier by the metabolists (Tanghe, Kurokawa, Isozaki, Kikutake …). They were one of the most influential architect groups worldwide, which in the 1960s invented the trend of megastructures. Often, the city con-cept in the comic becomes a more detailed model of a city than the architect’s original plan or model.The most common theme in manga is the idea of ‘apocalypse’. Tokyo has already been rebuilt 3 times (after the big earthquake in 1923, after the Second World War and for the Olympic Games of 1964) and is still in constant changing (the permanent thing about Tokyo is its constant changing…). It became a very important aspect of the Japanese culture and lifestyle: the destruction of the world and the hope for reconstruction in a divine circle.In this way, cities in manga are often a dystopia but I think we can see the evolved ideas of the metabolists as an inspiration. And study to what extent these comics are related to real live so that it becomes possible to relate it to the ideas about real future living I mentioned before.

In my opinion this interaction between the real and imaginary, which often seems so real in Tokyo (not only on the field of architecture), is very interesting and has probably the most successful outcome when you immerse yourself into the Japanese world.

KOBan: nesting from underneath.

Center for arts & Culture under the Keihin express railway tracks. - Hinode Studio.Yokohama Graduate School of architecture, Yoshihiko Iida Studio + Salhaus.

Billboard structures: present on almost every Japanese building.

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