event

Exhibition|Design and Disaster: Kon Wajiro's Modernologio

20

Sep

Exhibition curators: Kuroishi Izumi (Aoyama Gakuin University) and Jilly Traganou (Parsons The New School for Design) |
Macau coordination: Thomas Daniell (University of Saint Joseph)

DATES

OPENING HOURS

Mondays to Saturdays, 2:30pm–7pm

OPENING RECEPTION

20 September, 6:30pm

EVENING LECTURE

26 September, 6:30pm

VENUE

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

This exhibition presents drawings by Japanese architect Kon Wajiro (1888–1973), focusing on his observations of everyday life in Tokyo after the devastating 1923 earthquake. The work in the exhibition is primarily drawn from his book Modernologio and his surveys of “barracks” (makeshift structures for earthquake relief). Emphasizing Kon’s urban ethnography, as well as its significance as a design-based methodology for recording material change in post-disaster conditions, the drawings and photographs derive from observations of urban and domestic spaces in early-twentieth-century Tokyo, as well as from detailed recordings of people’s dress, body posture, and movement.

Originally held at the Arnold and Sheila Aronson Galleries, Sheila C. Johnson Design Center, Parsons The New School for Design, New York from 13–27 March 2014, this exhibition has been brought to Macau through the support of The Macau Foundation and the Faculty of Creative Industries at the University of Saint Joseph. The exhibition was made possible through the generous support of The Japan Foundation, New York; the School of Art and Design History and Theory at Parsons The New School for Design (New York); and the School of Cultural and Creative Studies of Aoyama Gakuin University (Tokyo). The exhibits belong to the Kon Wajiro Archive of Kogakuin University Library (Tokyo).