Just Looking

Just Looking: “The Origins of the Street Observation Society”, is the title of an article in AA Files 64, written by Thomas Daniell, that traces the birth and evolution of ROJO, a group of architects who conducted detailed architectural and social studies of the spaces and objects of everyday life in 1980s Japan.

Its name was drawn from rojō kansatsugaku, which loosely translates as “roadway observational studies”, and in his text Daniell starts by looking at its two main protagonists: “idiosyncratic architectural historian Terunobu Fujimori and avant-garde artist Gempei Akasegawa”. At the time, Akasegawa was already a popular figure for his establishment of the Thomasson Observational Center and Fujimori, who is now possibly more famous for his architecture than anything else, was known primarily for his diligent historical field work conducted under the aegis of the Architecture Detectives League.

Daniell draws a connection between ROJO’s work and Wajiro Kon and Kenkichi Yoshida’s much earlier Modernologio-Kōgengaku (1930), while tracing its origins and influences as far back as the improvisational haiku poetry culture of the Edo period (1603–1868) and up to Atelier Bow Wow’s publication of Made in Tokyo in 2001. It is this fascinating web of multiple intersecting cultural practices and trajectories, each rooted in a rich architectural, material and poetic history, that will be the subject of our enquiry.

“With [an] attention to the infinitesimal subtleties of Japanese material culture, part sociology and part archaeology, the ROJO method is essentially a curation of the urban environment, a mode of selection. A readymade is, after all, less a ‘found object’ than it is a chosen…In their relentless observing, selecting, naming and displaying, Fujimori and ROJO remind us of the inexhaustible richness of the everyday world, hidden in plain sight, and the pleasures to be gained from just looking.” Thomas Daniell, AA Files 64

In this course we will look at different strands and modes of Japanese street observation, from early Modernology and Hyperart to the contemporary work of Atelier Bow Wow. Detours will also be made to consider Richard Wentworth’s “Making Do and Getting By” and other inspirations along the way. Together we will read, discuss and interpret both primary texts and secondary sources, then put our reflections into practice by observing and documenting the city for ourselves. The aim is to learn and appreciate a way of seeing developed in Japan, and to apply it to our immediate surroundings in Munich.

Both Teilmodule will be held back-to-back and work in tandem. The first will address the study and analysis of texts and secondary material, and the second will concern the research and documentation of existing conditions: a curation of the urban environment, and a mode of selection through images, drawing, reading and writing.

This course will be held in English

First meeting and introduction:
Wednesday, 09.10.24, 10:00 am, room 212