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“Chikei” by Norihiko Dan

Enjoy an Exhibition by a Well-known Japanese Architect and Urban Designer

January 29th, 2016
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HARMONIZING EARTH AND ARCHITECTURE. “Chikei” is a Japanese word that cannot be easily translated. It can be widely understood as ‘landform’ or ‘topography’ and as an interface between human beings and the earth. Norihiko Dan chose it for the title of his exhibition in Berlin, which opened on Thursday January 21st and will run until February 27th 2016. You can visit this extravagant exhibition in Architektur Galerie Berlin SATELLIT, Karl-Marx-Allee 98, Berlin.

On one hand “Chikei” is the ground that raises the life of people, plants and animals. But, on the other hand, the same ground is the ground on which architecture is built, in order to protect us from the other living creatures. The Japanese architect saw a great potential in it, which he described with the following words:

“Architecture and chikei share the quality of being both form and fundament. Chikei, recognized as a form, can also become the ground if our standpoint shifts. Similarly, architecture and chikei can merge seamlessly when they become soft and pliant in our conceptual process of design. It is all the more unfortunate that chikei is generally cleared and flattened out, and only then does the architectural story begin.”

The exhibition approaches its subject by using three components. Plateaus with various heights on the gallery floor help to transform the space into an abstract landscape, which is enriched by a series of large-format papers that Norihiko Dan shaped using a special folding technique. This work that is abstract and sensual at the same time is completed by models and pictures of current projects, which were designed to embody the synthesis of chikei and architecture.   

Norihiko Dan studied architecture at Tokyo University and won the Graduation Design Prize in 1979. He continued with his Masters at Yale University, School of Architecture and later founded his own firm, Norihiko Dan and Associates, in Tokyo in 1986. He  also established his studio in 1994. His latest important projects include the expansion of Taoyuan International Airport Terminal 1 in Taiwan in 2013, Sun Moon Lake Visitors Center in Taiwan in 2010 and the Hiyoshi Dam complex in Kyoto during 1999. A monograph on the architect's works was published in 2015 by Jovis Verlag, featuring contributions by Aaron Betsky and Fumihiko Maki.

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Marina Pejič, Berlin Global