Hideo Kawamoto, "Diverging of Linguistic Expressions and Architectures"
Human perception is strongly dependent on the body and its movement and human feelings are indivisible from the body. To form and intensify the capability of human perception and feelings, it is both necessary and important to work and rework on the body and its movement. Architectures in general offer effective places and opportunities for such daily exertion on each body and then architectures operate also as a kind of body in a broad sense. Architectures designed in such a direction are called "Reversible Destiny Residences", like Mitaka Lofts.
As far as the human body is formed, at any rate, within the environment where anybody tells and hears mutually, a certain relation should have been formed between the body and a language. I call this relation "loose coupling." The task of linguistic expression is to support architectural operations as images. This is neither an operating manual of architectural procedures nor reason attached to them. Rather linguistic expression works toward completing dispersive images so that human cautions are urged on constructed matter.
The architectural design of Arakawa subsists in a kind of geometry constructed by bodily acts, whereas the linguistic expressions by Gins existed in autopoietic system theory.
[reference materials]
The Mystery of Ryoanji in Nagi
Chaos, Autopoiesis and/or Leonardo da Vinci/Arakawa
Hideo Kawamoto is Professor of Toyo University in Tokyo. His main research themes are philosophy of sciences and systems theory, esp. autopoietic theory. His papers include "The Mystery of Nagi’s Ryoanji : Arakawa and Gins and Autopoiesis," In :Interfaces Université de Paris 7 –Denis Diderot, 21/22, 2004, 5, 85-102; "Chaos, Autopoiesis and/or Leonardo da Vinci/Arakawa," Eco-Philosophy, Vol.6 (TIEPH) 2012,3,85-89.
Naohiko Mimura, "Flattening or Extending? : The Possibility of Reading Architectural Body"
The presenter is currently working on translating the book Architectural Body by Arakawa and Gins into Japanese. According to the plan, it should have been published already, but the work is far behind schedule. I will publish it by the end of this year.
However, a Japanese translation of Architectural Body was already published, in 2004 by Professor Kawamoto, my interlocutor. Why am I working on a new translation ?
In this presentation, I’d like to ask what significance my interpretation of Architectural Body has. To begin from the conclusion, my approach is a kind of flattening of Arakawa + Gins’s thoughts, but it is also a way of cultivating the potential of their thoughts for expansion. I would like to discuss with Professor Kawamoto the possibility of understanding the ideas of Arakawa and Gins.
Naohiko Mimura is Professor of Philosophy and Ethics at Kansai University, Japan. His core focus is the mind-body duality problem outlined in Husserl’s Phenomenology. He is particularly interested in the "Theory of Experiencing" and the "Process Model" proposed by Eugene Gendlin, founder of focusing-oriented psychotherapy. He currently leads the Studies of the Architectural Body Research Program, with the grant from Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, for archival research on Arakawa and Gins.