After the success of the exhibition in Venice during the Architecture biennale, Onomatopoeia Architecture will take place at the Bundeskunsthalle in Bonn, Germany, from March 8 to September 1, 2024.
To describe his architecture without mediations and theoretical superstructures, Kengo Kuma imagines thirteen onomatopoeias whose repeated, rather comical and somewhat “manga-like” sound translates certain key words, such as: solid and void, fluidity, softness, sound symbolism, water, folds, perception, light and air, pression, interstice, particles, materiality and void, layered space in planes, horizontal and flat, membranes, symbolic gesture, sensory process, fineness/thinness, wave, elasticity.
Para para, sara sara, guru guru, pata pata, giza giza, zara zara, tsun tsun, suke suke, moja moja, funya funya, pera pera, fuwa fuwa, zure zure.
All these sensations seem to fit perfectly with Palazzo Franchetti and Venice, in its continuous ephemeral and vital perception, perhaps resembling the “atmospheric” version depicted by Turner rather than the one painted by Canaletto, Guardi, or Longhi. Or the Venice that features in the wonderful photos by Fulvio Roiter,3 who loved to cite Steiglitz: “a maximum of detail for a minimum of simplification,” just like the architecture in this exhibition. The sensation of the ephemeral and reflected beauty of this ideally impossible city on the water takes us back to the Japanese concept of mono no aware (fragility and eva-nescence), which resonates in the impermanence and essence of materiality according to Kengo Kuma.
Simon Vogel, 2024 © Kunst- und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland GmbH
https://lnkd.in/eNk3uuQ5