At the Crossroads: Interwar Architecture in Japan

FOR OPERATIONAL REASONS THE EXHIBITION CANNOT BE VISITED ON 2–12 OCTOBER. THANK YOU FOR YOUR UNDERSTANDING.

The authors of the creative group Okolo present, in the social hall of the Semler Residence, an expanded version of the exhibition At the Crossroads: Interwar Architecture in Japan, which was first created earlier this year for the Winternitz Villa. The exhibition is based on Štěch's own research in Japan and detailed photographic documentation, combined with the graphic design and exhibition architecture of his colleagues Matěj Činčera and Jan Kloss.

The exhibition presents diverse examples of interwar Japanese modernist residential architecture, whose main theme was above all the interweaving of Japanese building and cultural traditions with new avant-garde impulses arriving from Europe and the USA. All the houses on display are very different examples of Japanese modernism, in which the imagined clash and synthesis of East and West appear in various ways.

This follows from the overall historical development of the country. The interwar period follows the earlier Meiji era (1868–1912), when the empire experienced rapid modernization under the support of Western powers. It was followed by the Taishō period (1912–1926) and then the long Shōwa era of Emperor Hirohito, who took the head of state in 1926 and reigned until 1989. The interwar period is generally characterized on the one hand by Japan's aggressive imperial politics and on the other by overall modernization and the initial westernization of society and institutions.

In architecture, the first modernist pioneers began designing modern houses under the influence of European and American modernism as early as the 1920s. They included architects such as Sutemi Horiguchi, Iwao Yamawaki, Koji Fujii, and Kameki and Nobuko Tsuchiura. The influence of major figures such as Frank Lloyd Wright from the USA or Henri Rapin from France was also important. The exhibition deliberately avoids the work of the Czech architects Jan Letzel and Antonín Raymond, whose significant activities in Japan are nevertheless somewhat better known here.

Several additional panels were created for the Semler Residence, extending the theme of residential architecture into the area of public and residential projects of early modernism and Art Deco.