to move up and down
“Once the buildings collapsed, the meaning that used to organize urban space instantly vanished, and the elements of both structure and symbol were reduced to sheer materiality. Signs disappeared and all became substance. The composition of buildings, whose substance had been carefully hidden in order to smooth the flow of urban activities, was now revealed in its bare materiality. As objects fell from the hierarchy of significance they occupied in the construction, debris formed everywhere, amorphously battleground, devoid of meaning. Forced out of the loop of urban signification, the buildings faced us, stripped naked.”
(Arata Isozaki)
In 1995, the Great Hanshin Earthquake caused the collapse of 200,000 buildings in Kobe. Never one for knee-jerk optimism, Arata Isozaki, as commissioner of the Japan Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale the following year, decided to represent the state of contemporary Japanese architecture by showing ruins:
