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Figure 1: Hanazono Wrapped #1,2012.

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Stuart Munro

Amalgamated ecologies:A

connected landscape, welldressed and clinically dead

Design Ecologies

Volume 2 Number 2

2012 Intellect Ltd Ideation. English language. doi: 10.1386/des.2.2.154_7

[] They cut the power? How could they cut the power? Theyre animals.(Cameron 1986)

Victor Frankesntein thought otherwise. Instead of battling to keep out a band of James Cameronsmarauding xenomorphs, the crippling impulse to define the terrain of natural and artificial materialwas channeled into the reanimation of cobbled together pieces of disparate corpses. But where didthey come from and what do they make once combined? Sentient Relics, as this issue of DesignEcologies is called, is less a murder mystery and more a detective novel. The fear uncovered in thiscollection of essays is not the result of revealing dead corpses but a product of queried identity, reim-agining and a new understanding of the places we call natural and artificial and the means by whichwe classify them, measure them and ultimately construct with them. The relics are sentient and awareand possess the ability to transform landscapes and influence the spaces and architectural possibilities

DES 2 (2) pp. 154167 Intellect Limited 2012

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that blossom with exotic charm. How that happens owes much to the reading of these landscapes andhow they manufacturer their own architectural possibilities amongst technology be it hard or soft.After all technology is simply that quotient of change needed to reveal and subsequently, as I willexplain, amalgamate.

In the end technology can add as much to confusion as it does efficiency. Automation is a practicalapplication but the consequences of applying technology whatever they maybe are quite frankly farmore interesting. All the creases and little folds are ironed out through the streamlining of processesseen as long-winded or prone to imperfection. Tim Matts and Aidan Tynans Eco-Clinic presents theconstruction of a material mechanism to make sense of natural and artificial confusion. This makesme realize perhaps we all too often design and make things that only reinforce the problems they setout to challenge. A stroke suffered by former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak caused his physi-cians to consider more carefully his physical state and what it means to be deceased. Described by theequipment monitoring him as clinically dead, physicians thought otherwise. The reason given for thisvacillating state was having too much technology. An over-abundance of stuff that measures andmonitors, regulates and predicts can give rise to general confusion in itself as much as the doctorsdeciphering and translating results.

The back and forth left everyone wondering about the health of the former president andwhat it means to be clinically dead. Of all things, defining death seems like something thatshould be fairly obvious and uncomplicated, says Leslie Whetstine, a bioethicist at WalshUniversity in Ohio. It can be quite difficult, though, not because of a lack of technology, butbecause we simply have so much of it.

(Sifferlin 2012)

The stoic material of architecture stands opposed to massive change, and this territory is marked as asort of landscape in trouble, one that requires architecture to be aware and able to re-stablize shouldthe unimaginable happen and the landscape tumble. The tsunami and earthquake of 2011 in Japan

prompted an array of proposals designed to aid those displaced along Japans eastern edge regionTohoku with such suggestions as to raise kilometres of coastline by as much as fifteen metres or moreto avoid future tsunami. The action taken by most of those affected was to move to higher ground.What remains in places such as Minamisanriku in Miyagi prefecture, North-Eastern Japan is an emptyflat land; a veritable wasteland now marked by the footprints of old houses and a latticework oftarmac where roads remain.

So if landscapes are echoes of past events such as these, perhaps landscape is the real territory ofarchitecture. Perry Kulper rightly suggested that landscape moves between embodied, semiotic andindifferent forms of communication (Kulper, 2013), which would seem to confirm that simply

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Figure 3: Hanazono Wrapped #3, 2012.

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resituating and building with solidity does not address problems facing the turbulent territory ofJapanese architecture, for example. How can we affect meaningful change if we are not really surewhen or by what means change occurs? We need to look at other places for possible answers or ques-tions to fathom and diagnose the true nature of the territory we are about to encounter. The fear

expressed by Space Marine Hudson as he and his fellow marines descend through the fog of newlyprocessed atmosphere no longer seems meaningless but real, the outcome of their predicament verypredictable. We need to determine though the nature of the relics that are aware of their surroundingsconstantly adapting and manipulated but recourse as a consequence of awareness as the world aroundthem forces them to resituate. This is a cerebral architecture of awareness, aware of us as much asitself and the landscape generated.

Franken-Yohji

Cerebral landscapes were at the heart of adaptation of Mary Shelleys Frankenstein at London NationalTheatre in 2011. I happened to see around the same time as reading a book by Yohji Yamamoto,

recounting his years in Tokyo and Paris as first an apprentice in this mothers pattern cutting shop andthen as a tailor and designer of womens wear in Paris and then later again Tokyo. The two piecessomehow overlapped mapping out for me an amalgamation of thoughts and relationships betweenpeople and places, bodies and contexts. Cities, material and making that involved the body, and adark gothic noir, became framed in very unspecific ways.

Architecture is a weirdly complex expression of this resituation. Lebbeus Woods described thepoint of architecture as the attempt to make sense of the world. The physical terrors witnessed byinterruption on landscapes of war or natural disaster somehow go unnoticed on a great deal of archi-tectural intervention. Those that acknowledge their own futility in uncertain surroundings do so withtheir own mortality in check and that understanding that they will not exist forever. Just like thelifespan of contemporary architecture, they express the sped-up process of building, demolition and

renewal, a reflection of modern cities, no more so than in Tokyo itself.So what of Mary Shelley and Yamamoto? What ofFrankenstein andMy Dear Bomb (YamamotoYohji and Mitsuda Ai, 2010) If an architectural experience is describable by more than the physicalconfines described and they are then how can ideas not fixed by solid material be used to buildand be employed to design with as well? What are these immaterial-materials? Shelley andYamamoto are acutely aware that they do very specific things and describe more than simply theirtrade. The real sentient relic is this immaterial material. Though their origin is difficult to determine,it may have something to do with navigating subjective landscapes as a territory to build within, asa type of inner space with an inner freedom. This Kantian territory of both terror and violence

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echoes the intensive and extensive spaces of Delleuze and Guattaris smooth and striated ecology.This sublime territory of terror and violence, as Timothy Morton describes, gives a nice aestheticframe to maintain distance from the real violence and terror expressed. Gotham-like with their ownvariety of fools and degenerates, these disparate worlds one Victorian and the other fashioned

and temporary place emphasis on the experience of construction and transformation as if realbuildings were really being built.Yamamotos description of Tokyo describes his resistance to the world around them, described

with a terror of the body he clothes. Frankenstein is the manipulation of the old body and creation ofthe new. Awkwardness and distance, a difficulty with relationships and Victorian expectation ofmarriage mean Frankenstein is as much about escape as it is about the creation of a new friend, abrother or a new self. It all goes horribly wrong of course and the cursed creature eventually exilesitself as well as Frankenstein into a frozen wasteland. Yamamoto declares that instead of tackling theissue of environmental disaster he chooses to escape to a world of pure vanity and identity crisis,much like our friend Dr Frankenstein.

I admire its purity, unclouded by conscience, remorse of delusions of morality.

(Scott 1979)

My own trip to see Frankenstein at the National was as informed by Yamomotos description of Parisand Tokyo as much as it was images of films and the music I was watching and listening to aroundthe same time. Methods of working and making all figure in the understanding we have of the worldaround us. How that filters back into our greater fabrication really depends on how we choose to bindthe important features we are drawn to. Technology is, for the most part, the glue but like everythingelse it is prone to illicit a response all of its own making and in so doing adds something else to themix. In the production of the Frankenstein play, two actors were used for the role of Victor Frankensteinand the Creature. They would swap roles the night before; sometimes leaving the decision as to whoplays who, a few hours before going on. The added theatre would surely confuse most but add

urgency for others, most likely the remaining cast. The audience on the other hand would be left wait-ing, wondering what they would bear witness to being born and summarily obliterated. The space ofexpectation could not have been anymore palpable. Meanwhile, Paris and Tokyo would be describedas places to escape from and return to. At all times the urgency of ecological crisis would be lurking inYamamotos own shadow, eventually returning to the body and his site of construction.

Frankenstein is a tale that at its heart is the basis for many more tales of manipulation; of thenatural in favour of the artificial and a quest for perfection in a place where imperfection is a trade-mark of reality. Yamamoto on the other hand forgoes the terror at the heart of Shelleys gothic noirand replaces it with sadness. He explores the utilitarian found in photographs of mid-century American

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mill workers in overalls and laboured fabric. Yet there is sadness to what is represented. So what ofthese two distant cousins? Are they at all in any way related? The idea of thinking about design as apurely product-driven process is redundant and arbitrary. At the heart of these two threads is anexpression of manipulation. The landscape of each is contorted and abstract and has as, a starting

point, a very strong sense of place; the body.InMy Dear Bomb, Yamamoto recalls his youth, tethered to his mother out of dutiful obligationand bound by his mothers gentle request for him to never leave her alone, both undoubtedly grow-ing old together. His mother worked as a seamstress in a part of\ Tokyo called Kabukicho, a placenow as it was then, full of raw flesh and windowless hotels. Tokyo is a city of towns, all microcli-mates and each one as equally pervasive as the other. These towns drift away, anchored to the spotby a landmark or shrine. In Kabukichos case it was a theatre that never was. Its replacement: aculture of cabaret that over time evolved into hostess bars, nightclubs, love hotels and massageparlours. Yamamoto recounts his evening wandering the back streets of Kabukicho and beyond,befriending women as, in his own words, casual distractions. The inconsistency of these microcli-mates, how each part of the whole lacks sense either common or empathic, were fragments of hisupbringing as much as the city, the abandonment he experiences as a young boy, his father gone to

join the army fighting in the pacific.His industrial landscape is haute couture that wraps a bodily silhouette with the city and its pre-

history an amalgamated form of both beauty and destruction. Towards the end of the play,Frankensteins creature is asked what is he good at, to which he replies amalgamation (Boyle andDear 2011). Over several minutes he recounts Platos Republic and Miltons Paradise Lost, drawinghis partner in conversation ever closer only to admit to have finally learnt the most powerful of all ofmans ways, the ability to lie. Pulled apart and contorted, the stage comes together and is pulled apartagain. Giant shards of rooms are extracted from beneath the stage. A storm-damaged interior replacesthe Victorian drawing room above. A foreshortening of perspective tilts and shifts window frames,tables and chairs as if to accentuate the distorted mind of Victor Frankenstein. The set revolves tobecome a remote fishermans lodge to construct his creatures bride, covertly agreeing to construct

and then destroy the female form after revealing the creatures nexus; the ability to love. After thedeath of his own bride at the hands of the creature, the circular stage then splits in two, half of whichdescend to form the precipice from which Frankenstein finally confronts the creature. We sit throughthese coruscating stage sets and their ensuing crisis unravels before us. Yamamoto observes:

Human beings, whether young or old, have an innate desire to be understood; they buildthings and they speak in order for their presence to be known. In this sense my work mightbe considered the epitome of some gaudy attempt to attract attention. My thoughts that dayas I explore the streets of Rome, however, were of a different sort. Phrased in terms of a

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reaction to the growing environmental crisis, I felt that screaming out for ecological solutionsand volunteer work would not nearly be as effective as the complete disposal of all man madeedifices, all cobbled together explanations, and all the mountains of garbage. Or, to take itone step further, it seemed the best thing one could do for the sake of the Earth would be

to die on the spot. They pour toxic waste into the rivers, humans will only pay attention toit on the day dead fish rise to the surface. I felt something akin to the desperation of thatmoment, and it prompted me to place myself in a Vanity Fair world where I made thingsthat were anything but necessary. When I began to make clothing my single thought was tohave women wear what was thought of as mens clothing. In those days Japanese womenwore, as a matter of fact of course, imported, feminine clothing, and I simply hate that fact.

(Yamamoto and Mitsuda 2010: 92)

His desire to acknowledge the world, as a silhouette in bodily form rather than a protest or remon-stration is interesting. He understands we globally produce more than we either want or need andthat in the search to understand himself and maybe ourselves, the nape of the neck is as fundamentalto the world as acknowledging the tons of toxic waste that float suspended in landfill and coral reef.

His extreme response is a question of scale not vanity. What are we, where do we come from andwhere are we necessarily going? He wants to give form and character to the imported characterlessshape cast by clothes and ideas. If the creature is anything then it is looking for something similar, aform and identity through its accelerated learning.

Proposals for creating a place that maintains a sort of stable status quo for immaterial materialsmay bring forth a greater discovery but it may well introduce further welcome chaos into the conver-sation by suggestions more than questions. In an already content-rich environment of conceptualarchitecture this idea of what that might be may remain elusive, inconclusive or simply be recorded asan open verdict, a space that is clinically dead but capable of cognition.

Empathic materials

Mark Wests amalgamation of Reagan-era America with graphite and tensile concrete much likeKulpers observation that his territory, the landscape and the architecture involved, not framing it, arespatial resignations are perhaps more empathic architectures, perhaps variants of an Eco-Clinic. Gaps,erased moments from surfaces of paper and actual construction with a minimum of material perform-ing the maximum bending moment are designed minus the characters populating them. It is out oftheir hands quite literally. Kulpers observatories muse places that look out into the environment theyposit recounting relationships between architecture and landscape. As he says life might exist between

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closed systems and open, shared and active environments (Kulper 2013). His architecture/landscapesystem offers values that negotiate states between the domesticated and the wild and from the meta-physical to the political, moving between embodied, semiotic and indifferent forms of communica-tion. It isLandscape into architecture, a John Cage score crossed with a time-lapse photograph

(Kulper 2013).These sentient relics are bits of empathic stuff, built on relationships between worlds whileexploring their backwaters. Maybe they are conclusive and not exactly definitive as architecture, butthey respond rather than dismiss the land they exist within. They challenge the role that architec-ture presents as being more than merely physical and inert but empathic. Both Yamamoto andFrankenstein recognize this and so too the architects within this issue. It is all about how carefullythey amalgamate.

Proximity did not equal connection. Yeah, but the weird thrust of that night made every-thing seem connected. It was like a dream state. Gretchen/Celia and the knife-scar womenkiss and his world resituates.

(Ellroy 2009: 102)

References

Boyle, Danny and Dear, Nick (2011), Frankenstein (play), London, UK: The National Theatre.

Cameron, James (1986),Aliens (motion picture), USA/UK: Twentieth Century Fox.

Ellroy, James (2009), Bloods a Rover, USA: Alfred A.Knopf.

Morton, Timothy (2011), Sublime objects, Speculations, Vol.1 Issue II, pp. 20727.

Scott, Ridley (1979),Alien (motion picture), USA/UK: Twentieth Century Fox.

Sifferlin, Alexandria (2012), Clinically Dead? How many kinds of dead are there?, Time

Magazine, 20 June, http://healthland.time.com/2012/06/20/clinically-dead-how-many-kinds-of-dead-are-there/#ixzz2HDA5Mu1U. Accessed 18 January 2013.

Woods, Lebbeus, http://lebbeuswoods.wordpress.com/2010/08/12/the-experimental/. Accessed25 December 2012.

Yamamoto, Yohji and Mitsuda, Ai (2010),My Dear Bomb, the Netherlands: Ludion.

Architecture. Possible Here? Home-for-all, Gallery Ma, Tokyo, http://www.toto.co.jp/gallerma/ex130118/index.htm. Accessed 21 January 2013.

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Suggested citation

Munro, S. (2012), Amalgamated ecologies:A connected landscape, well dressed and clinically dead,Design Ecologies 2: 2, pp. 154167, doi: 10.1386/des.2.2.154_1

Contributor details

I live and work in Tokyo as a designer and writer, previously working with Vaughan Oliver, DavidConnor and Tomato. I am also a commissioned writer for The Japan Times newspaper and Tokyo-Art-Beat, an online bi-lingual Art & Design guide. In 2012 I was selected from over 8000 entries tohave film included in the feature documentary Japan In A Day, produced by Ridley Scott and ScottFree Productions.

Contact: 3-36-5 #401 Kami Ikebukuro Toshima-ku Tokyo 170-0012 Japan.Web: http://[email protected]

Stuart Munro has asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to beidentified as the author of this work in the format that was submitted to Intellect Ltd.

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