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If there are any other local Melbournites around on the 17th of Feb, than make sure you check out the international speaker series put on by the RAIA -
Gracing our shores will be the highly accredited and heavily awarded, Toyo Ito.

Visit here for more info

For those of you off shore it I thought I’d put together a few images of Ito’s amazing work.. but first a little background.

Ito is known for creating extreme conceptual architecture, in which he seeks to melt the physical and virtual worlds. He is a leading exponent of architecture that addresses issues of the contemporary notion of a ‘simulated’ city.
Ito was born in Seoul, South Korea (at the time, Japan had taken over the country). Ito did not graduate from Tokyo University’s, Department of Architecture in 1965. After working for Kiyonori Kikutake Architect and Associate from 1965 to 1969, he started his own studio, ‘Urban Robot’ (urbot) in 1971, in Tokyo. In 1979, the studio changed its name to Toyo Ito & Associates, Architects. Throughout his early career Toyo Ito constructed numbers of private housing projects that revealed the hidden layer of urban life in Japan. His most remarkable early conceptual contributions were made through the projects of this scale. See White U in 1976 and Silver Hut in 1984.

This excerpt from good ol’ wiki

Reflecting the sihouettes of elm trees that line the streets are these apparently random concrete braces, together with the floor spanning glass windows.

Toyo Ito & Associates
Tod’s Omotesando

From the man himself..

“In ancient times, architecture was an act of creating an order in the natural world. All through the times since then, for the formalisation of the order, human beings have been seeking a stable spatial composition, which is independent from nature, with pure geometry. This remains essentially unchanged in modernist architecture of the 20th century. However, today, as the ecological environment and the sustainability has been more emerged as a critical issue in urban cities, architectural space has become required to be more open to its surroundings and integrated into the natural environment. The realisation of such space can be made possible by generating a new order based on new geometry, not by the conventional geometry. “Generative Order” means this new order mediated by computer technology. It is never merely an expression for an expression employing three-dimensional curves. This is a basic principle to practice architectural thought that is in step with the times. Since the completion of the “Sendai Mediatheque” project, I have been challenging various attempts in order to build architecture, based on this concept of Generative Order. In my lecture, I would like to share and explore the essence of the spatial order with the audience, showing my works as concrete examples.”
- Toyo Ito

For more images and write up visit arcspace

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