How can we design architecture in the age of simulation?
How can we create something real while things are
hardly real any more? How can we create a permanent space
if relative connections are constantly changing?
Ito says that the effect of fiction is supposed
to show to its best advantage in architecture
(with the help of video images, light ...)
and tries to realize this concept in his "Egg of the Winds",
his "model house" for a new life.

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Toyo Ito

ARCHITECTURE IN A SIMULATED CITY

Images of Tokyo photographed aerially like a map are projected on the floor. One is a flat and homogeneous scene taken from 300 meters above and graphically processed by computer. Another shows the back of young boys standing in a row and playing with game machines. The screen then abruptly changes to a scene on expressway as if taken from a video game. A scene disappears into the depth of the screen with the speed of Akira running on his motorcycle. By graphic processing, the screen is made completely flat without depth and the images become those of dramatic cartoons.

A floating floor of 10 m width and 28 m length is paved with opaque acrylic panels. A translucent acrylic screen of 5 m height undulates in the longitudinal direction. A liquid crystal screen is incorporated at a point which can be electrically controlled in transparency / translucency. Another side wall is finished with aluminium panels, and a translucent cloth hangs from the ceiling. They are all screens for images projected from 44 projectors. Eighteen projectors suspended from the ceiling project images on the acrylic floor while the remaining 26 units project overlapped images on the screen from behind acrylic or cloth shields.

Numerous images edited and accumulated in 12 laser discs predominantly show everyday scenes in Tokyo. Flocks of people crossing zebra-zones, businessmen talking on the platform while waiting for a train, a young man speaking over a public telephone, etc. These video images are collaged and incessantly changed on the 44 screens and the 44 screens display different images almost all the time but occasionally show the same images. Environmental music processed by a synthesizer fills the space from 16-channel speakers to add another dimension to the scene.

This is the space entitled Dreams exhibited in the third room of "Visions of Japan Show" held in London. Visitors at the Show were showered by the floating video images and soaked with the sounds. Their bodies floated on the river of the acrylic floor and swayed as if they were seasick. The Crown Prince of Japan, who opened the Show, said he wished to have had a cup or two of Sake before he came so that he could feel the space more vividly. Prince Charles, on the other hand, asked me whatever was expected shead of these images. When I answered there might be nothing ahead of these, he asked if I was an optimist. I said of course I was one.