Itsuko Hasegawa

During the period of 1970s~ mid 1980s architecture was concerned primarily with form and resulted in being an isolated discipline. Itsuko Hasegawa began to talk about the relationship between architecture and society in a manner which was quite new for her (Shonandai Cultural Center). Here, rather than taking on problems of house she began taking on problems of programs. Main ideas:

• Defining communicty participation in architecture
• Developing a method of making public architecture
• Issues of locality: Shonandai is public architecture, a community center for a particular place = building maintains a specific connections to its locale as opposed to a universally public project

Other works, Fruit Museum, Oshima Picture Book Museum,- though nominally public, are also inextricably tied to their particular locations.

Philosophy:

• Architecture form always has an explicable rationality that is present in it; but it also has a gap- "human soul" or leben- it is the essential inconsistency between logic and leben, in which city and the world is made. If we can understand this inconsistency, we can make new kinds of form.
• Analysis beyond the form of the building- contents of architecture: city and society could no longer be contained within a conventional fixed framework- establishing "crossover" possibilities.

Exhibitions:

Architecture as Second Nature

Architecture as Another Nature

Architecture as Latent Nature

References:

Dobney, S. [Itsuko Hasegawa].