Liquidity in the forms of contemporary Japanese architecture. A look at the work of Junya Ishigami

Abstract

The architectural space of contemporaneity, specifically in the first decades of the 21st century, has sought strategies to approach the dynamics of the society that inhabits it, categorized by sociologist Zygmunt Bauman as liquid. The purpose of this article is to show how Junya Ishigami's architecture constitutes a tangible materialization of the idea of liquidity in architecture, becoming a reference to capture this condition in the habitable space. The achievement of this objective led the research to go beyond references that transit in philosophy, such as Bauman's bet on Liquid Modernity. These approaches find in the sociologist's postulates, the necessary foundation to explain the impermanence of architecture through liquidity. The architectural practices of postmodernity show the germinal phases of what today can be conceptualized as liquid architecture and space. These references and the detailed analysis of Ishigami's projects: Table, Venice Biennale Pavilion and KAIT, demonstrate that the contributions of his architecture through indeterminacy, fluidity, viscosity, transparency and tension, constitute the fundamental characteristics of a habitable liquid space.