“What I speculate in my work is that new technologies will play an important part in how architects embrace new ideas. The advancement of seemingly unrelated sciences such as biochemical engineering, coupled with the growing consciousness of environmental issues, furthered by the development of mechanical design, must serve to inspire creativity”
Masahiko (Mas) Yendo’s work draws heavily from the perverse fascination with worn out machinery: industrial hardware, in Yendo’s world can be reused, reconfigured, converted into machines for individual inhabitation. Science fiction, space travel, and apocalyptic dystopia provide an inspiring imaginary for the japanese architect and theorist.
“Under the sway of abstract scientific theories, architecture has lost its connection to the concrete experience of space. Theoretical models derived from the natural sciences tend to overlook significant characteristics of the physical environment and their effects on human occupants. Often, technologies are imagined to fulfill human needs that remain, in fact, completely unsatisfied.”
“We must therefore think of a place as a qualitative, total, existential phenomenon. Existential space: this is the basic relationship between man and his environment.”
Much of Yendo’s vision is gritty and dark. It is that of the ecological disaster, of an hostile modern life, of alienation and consumerism.
“In metropolitan experience, this anxiety is intensified still further by the de-individualizing pressures of mass culture.
UL-9205 is a compact and autonomous Urban Survival Apparatus that shelters its occupant and provides him or her with physical and spiritual respite from the modern world. It is a Zero Anxiety space. UL-9205 harbors experiences that are intended to restore the occupant’s own individuality.”
Yet, human nature has allowed us to pull through in extreme times, thanks to a reserve of resourcefulness and inventiveness. Even Yendo’s individual living units harbor a sense of community, a hope for civilization longed for in a post-apocalyptic agenda.
Images from the projects:
“UL-9205” self-sustaining Urban Living Unit
“UL-9304” self-sustaining Urban Living Unit, with solar panel
“B1-9004” Hole in Water,” artificial reef structure
Various models
“UL-9005” Architectural Phenomenology Institute
Update to this post: Mas Yendo speaking of himself
Read more: DPR Barcelona at Arkinet
Via: Lebbeus Woods
wow, just amazing.
Just this evening I found out that Paulo Soleri died, Lebbeus Woods died, and then I discovered Mas Yendo. He strikes me as slightly cyberpunky which I triggered on immediately, I too think that old rusty machines have a kind of “abstract grace” to them, for lack of a better term. This is amazing stuff !
This brilliant and amazing architecture, is decades or even a century ahead of its time vis a vis Mas’s under standing of the dehumanization of current architecture that is created from a quantitive based mindset. The environment around us in which we live effects our out look, which then effects our habits and behaviors. If such architecture should ever be built and one occupy said place, I wonder how it would feel.
Terrifying and so very beautiful. Architecture of fantasy and fear. Thank you for your vision.