Archinect is excited to announce a new partnership with PLANE—SITE, a Berlin-based creative agency working at the interface of urban form, cultural space and social life. Every three weeks, starting today, we will be sharing a video from the Time-Space-Existence project, a series of videos created by PLANE—SITE, commissioned by the Global Arts Affairs Foundation in conjunction with their exhibition at the Venice Biennale of Architecture. Each video, typically running 3-5 minutes in length, will feature a prominent architect discussing his/her work within the context of the project's theme. 

Time, space and existence. These three concepts sketch out the contours of the world around us — a fact especially true within architecture. Taking these words as its starting point, the GAA Foundation is set to curate its fourth collateral exhibition in the context of La Biennale di Venezia Architettura, entitled Time-Space-Existence and opening in May 2018. Featuring over 100 established and emerging architects, and unapologetically international in breadth, the exhibition provides a fascinating complement to a biennial traditionally drawn along national lines.

In celebration of the forthcoming exhibition, PLANE—SITE is launching a new series of videos, featuring protagonists from within the global architecture discourse. Through interview and montage, each of these short videos offers poetic and personal meditations on the exhibition’s themes, and connections to the architectural principles undergirding the designers’ practices. The first video from the series focuses on internationally renowned Japanese architect, Arata Isozaki (b. 1931). A pioneer of Metabolism, the avant-garde 1960s architectural movement that proposed fantastic urban landscapes synonymous to biological structures, Isozaki’s modernism continues to inspire architects to this day. Uniquely sensitive and distinctive, RIBA Gold Medal-winner Isozaki is best known for the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) in Los Angeles, the Oita Prefectural Library, and the Qatar National Convention Center.

In this short video, he discusses some of the ideas behind his work, and we catch a glimpse of his home in Karuizawa, Japan.

Recorded at Isozaki’s tranquil woodland studio, the video offers a glimpse into the architect’s daily life and working environment. Integral to Isozaki’s architectural legacy is the Japanese concept of ‘ma’, the space and time that lies in-between things, and the intervals that have so profoundly influenced his work. In the video, Isozaki also meditates on his practice and Japanese architectural identity as a whole. Known for rejecting a prescribed visual style, Isozaki approached each building in his portfolio as a solution for the project’s particular context. He addresses the breadth of Japanese architectural styles in the post-war and post-Metabolism era as a departure from traditionalism while maintaining a through-line of recognizable Japanese taste.