Today, we are on the brink of a crisis that threatens the loss of culture and tradition. The crisis is not just one of architecture. It is global in scale and involves all of humankind. Its effect is of course being felt by the architectural world to which we belong. Major changes have been taking place in the structure of society throughout the world for over ten years now. Those changes can be summed up in one word: globalism. We all sense this happening. We need to recognize that if things remain as they are, all local culture and tradition will sooner or later be lost. Today, we as architects have the responsibility to do something about this state of affairs. Unless we do something, the architectural profession will steadily lose its social significance and may eventually disappear altogether.
Cultures and traditions are by their very nature localized; each is identified with a particular region or people. They have been nurtured over many years in closed environments. Absorbing various stimuli and information imparted by people passing through from time to time, they undergo an internal process of maturation. It is in this way that distinctive cultures and traditions develop. The very concept of culture and tradition is at odds with globalism. Globalism makes possible the instantaneous transmission of virtually anything in the world to every corner of the world; it makes possible the communication of the same information to all places on the planet. Globalism destroys cultural and traditional distinctions that have developed in places in the absence of contact with the outside world and makes any culture or tradition available for immediate consumption to the rest of humanity. A culture and tradition that have been so consumed subsequently survive only in superficial form. In essence, they no longer exist.
I am not arguing that we take a conservative stance, shutting ourselves in within walls and refusing all communication with the outside world, but then, neither do I advocate eliminating all distinctions and standing by as all cultures and traditions are consumed. There is no future in either total isolation or consumption. Either way, identity will be weakened and ultimately will be as good as lost. The flow of time, accelerated by globalism, is now tens and hundreds of times faster than in any period in the past. Such walls as we may erect are easily breached; no corner of the planet will be left un touched. Earth itself will eventually become one. We must face up to that fact even as we attempt to overcome the loss of culture and tradition and maintain our respective identities. What we must do is to transcend culture, that is, to develop a transculture.

Sublimation; Imaginary Structure

The issue is this: to recognize the inevitability of globalism and put our efforts into constructing culture and tradition on a global scale. Here, I would like to discuss the nature of a particular social structure. I call such structures imaginary structures. As globalism advances, all walls will be breached and all information on earth will be instantaneously shared by everyone. Then gradually, information will undergo a process of intensification and purification. The process will be much like evolution through mutation. The structure of society is such that the more information is shared, the more selective people will become with respect to information. That is, dispersal will lead to intensification.
Until globalism extended its reach over the entire world, information differed from region to region. From the perspective of the world as a whole, therefore, there was decentralization of information. Today, through the effect of globalism, the same information is being spread throughout the world and local character is disappearing. However, the information people are selecting is steadily contracting in volume. Much of the information is not being selected, even if it is transmitted all over the world. It is as if earth as a whole were becoming one local region.
My point is that, though a large domain, earth is still nothing more than one planet. Culture and tradition developed in the past in local places; why should not a new culture and tradition develop in this, only marginally larger, local place called the earth? The question is, what sort of culture and tradition are we to construct on this planet? Whatever it is, it will be a culture for the most fundamental unit of humanity. Within that culture, elements that are far more diverse than those of any culture in the past will interrelate and interact. Things will emerge through a process of purification and undergo further interaction. This repeated process will give birth in the end to the next tradition.
I call the moment when, out of numerous dynamic interactions everything is suddenly purified into one thing, sublimation. In that moment, diverse elements and relationships become one indivisible thing. The process is one of, not mere addition, but purification. The result is not a mere aggregate; those elements and relationships change into an entirely separate thing. The process is not one of convergence into a single thing as in natural selection but rather the instantaneous satisfaction of all demands. The result is simple yet elegant, and seems to me, most natural. Entropy is seemingly decreased in that moment. This is a structure common to all human endeavors, not just art and culture. We need to understand its nature. We must take care, on the one hand, not to lose the culture and tradition we now possess, but on the other hand, not to become excessively conservative.

Indivisible, Fine Art

Civilization is often contrasted with culture. Since art is the skill needed to create culture and technology is the skill needed to create civilization, the contrast between culture and civilization may be recast as one between art and technology. We have become vaguely aware that the boundary between art and technology is disappearing. Of course a difference may continue to exist, but hard-and-fast distinctions will disappear. Things that used to be technology will slip unnoticed into the domain of art. That does not mean there will be things that are, for example, half technology and half art; i.e. things that are separable into their constituent parts. Instead, intensification will lead to the evolution of indivisible, purified things.
An example that may help to explain this condition is found in sports, which are often called the art of the twentieth century. The fine play, that is, the feat that far surpasses the standard performance, is the equivalent in sports of sublimation. It exists in all sports, from individual competitions such as judo to team competitions such as soccer. It follows no scenario. The players train regularly and practice each movement repeatedly. Then, at some moment, under some set of circumstances, someone suddenly makes a fine play. In that moment, all elements come together, their spatial and temporal character extinguished, to become a single, purified, indivisible thing- the fine play. Afterwards, others may ask how the player was able to accomplish what he did, but he will have no answer because everything was an instantaneous, unconscious and indivisible thing. In that moment, art and technique became one, producing what I would call fine art. (Needless to say, I am not using “fine art” here in the traditional sense of a visual art created for aesthetic purposes and judged for its beauty”.) Can we architects, as professionals who continually hone our skills and are able to deal simultaneously with both technology and art, cause that moment when art and technology, or culture and civilization, sublimate, to occur in society? If we can, then tradition can evolve as an integrated, indivisible thing, possessing both past and future.
How can we bring this unconscious event into the realm of the conscious? For that is what architects today must do. That is how the architectural profession can regain its social significance. To repeat, the issue we architects must confront in this age of globalism is the crisis occasioned by the loss of culture and tradition through limitless dispersal. Culture is local, and tradition is seamless. The question is how to construct and transmit the culture and tradition of the next generation for that local unit called the earth.

Starting Point; Natural Sense

We must begin by breaking down the experiences and education we have assimilated up to now. We must break down preconceived ideas. Only then can we return to our stating point, there to be reconstructed within a much larger framework. After sublimation comes what I call natural sense; that is, a sense of what is natural and inevitable, though without precedent. That is the hypothesis. When everything has become horizontal and high in potential, that which makes natural sense will suddenly emerge. It will seem natural and inevitable, once it has come into being, but for some reason it will not have existed until then. To experience that moment, it will be necessary to construct, not a top-down social structure in which one concept determines everything else, but relationships that are more horizontal, complex and dynamic; that is, a condition in which all elements (i.e. individual human beings and professions) are high in potential and interact horizontally in dynamic ways. Fine art is created when different professions interact in horizontal, dynamic ways while maintaining a relationship of tension with one another.
A profession is defined by the extent of its responsibility. Today, professions are increasingly overlapping, which means areas of responsibility are overlapping as well. The ability of each profession is high in potential. We must first dissolve the profession called architecture, raise the potential of individual parts of the profession, and overlap them. I myself would like to try to reconstruct contemporary architecture from the standpoint of structure. I consider myself to be, not an architect in the conventional sense, but an architect with a high potential in the field of structure. Structure is today the field that has most benefited from technological innovations. An architect with a high potential in structure is close to being an architect in the original sense; he is thus returning to his roots. Such an architect’s potential is tapped most fully when he interacts dynamically with an architect with a high potential in some other field. However, the master carpenter is probably the closest thing to the architect in the original sense. For the master carpenter, there is no clear distinction even between construction and design. I do not mean we should go back to the days when one person did everything. Our aim should be to emulate the master carpenter today as a team, with its members working in close collaboration.
In fact, technological innovations, particularly advances in computer technology, are making globalism itself possible. Progress has been remarkable in the last ten years or so. Computer technology has developed to the extent that it is no longer elaborate or specialized; it has become so pervasive that it can be used casually by almost anyone. As a result, what used to be the world of images has now become the world of reality. That is, the boundary between image and reality is being erased. The particular skills and abilities that members of each profession are expected to process are no longer so clear defined. Information possessed by different professions can interact; it is possible to redefine abilities. The most important conditions for sublimation - that is, conditions that make possible horizontal, dynamic interactions -have been met. The time has come for us to determine what potential should be raised and how we should contribute to society in our effort to turn image into reality through sublimation. If we fail in our effort, tradition will disappear from earth.

Consciousness; Original Figure

When natural sense is generated through sublimation, an indivisible image in the unconscious exercises judgment. That image represents our most primal ability. I call it original figure. I use the word ‘figure’ because it can refer to both form and content. The original figure is the indivisible, purposive self inside the unconscious. We know that it is there and has an objective, but we do not know its exact nature. All we can say about it is that it is capable of judgment. We must try to raise it to the level of consciousness to discover what it is. To raise the original figure to the level of consciousness is to increase the potential to sublimate culture and tradition.
The important point is how to raise that figure to the level of consciousness. It is in fact a thing so deep in our unconscious that none of us, myself included, is ever likely to reach it. What we know now about it is on such a shallow level that we may never reach the deeper level of the unconscious where it exists. We need to recognize that there will always be something beyond our consciousness. Although we can steadily expand the domain of our awareness by increasing consciousness, the original figure will continue to elude us.
Therefore, the only way we can continue to make progress is to let our individual identities continue to interact and thereby continue to renew themselves. We must create a team with high potential so as to continue to make progress and to continue interaction. To continue to reconstruct a vigorous, ever-evolving culture and tradition in this local place called earth is the architect’s responsibility and meaning in society. There is no future for the architect if he loses sight of this role in society.
Finally, I will briefly explain through my works what I am currently doing. My concern is to discover the guise in which natural sense becomes manifest. I am not doing anything particularly unusual in these works. The results are the cumulative effect of commonplace things that are allowed to interact repeatedly until the process of sublimation begins. The results may seem all different but are in fact connected. The most important thing is to continue to search patiently for the original figure. A number of works are presented in this special issue. It is my hope that readers will perceive the natural sense of each work and get a hint of the original figure common to each series.