METABOLISM, THE CITY OF THE FUTURE: Dreams and Visions of Reconstruction in Postwar and Present-Day Japan
17 September – 15 January, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo

The Mori Art Museum presents “Metabolism, the City of the Future”, the world’s first comprehensive exhibition of “Metabolism,” a representative movement in Japanese modern architectural history. Metabolism, which sprang up in the 1960s, remains the most widely known modern architecture movement to have emerged from Japan. As its biological name suggests, the Metabolism movement contends that buildings and cities should be designed in the same organic way that the material
substance of a natural organism propagates—deftly adapting to its environment by changing its form in rapid succession. The scale of the vision emerging from this movement is enormous: a floating island-city that stretches across Tokyo Bay, a city of skyscrapers connected by corridors suspended in the sky.

The Metabolism movement was developed during the period of reconstruction in which war-torn Japan worked to move toward its period of rapid economic growth in the wake of World War II. The architects involved engaged in heated debates over their conceptions of the ideal city and planned a great deal of experimental architecture and cities based on ideas of lifestyles and communities for a new era. Precisely as Japan is confronting great difficulties today, Metabolism is packed with valuable hints for architectural and urban development. This is the first exhibition in the world to provide such a comprehensive overview of the
movement. Comprising more than 500 exhibits, it offers the opportunity to reconsider the direction that should be taken by architecture and cities of the future.

For more information on the exhibition, you can visit the Mori Art Museum website.