Tokyo Anatomy: interview with Atelier Bow-Wow's Yoshiharu Tsukamoto

Yoshiharu Tsukamoto, along with his partner Momoyo Kaijima, is one half of the Tokyo-based Atelier Bow-wow.
Founded in 1992, Atelier Bow-wow is one the most unique practices of
its generation. With Japanese architecture once again taking center
stage through the work of Yoshio Taniguchi, Toyo Ito, SANAA, Kengo
Kuma, and others, it is refreshing to witness a practice confident
enough in itself to shun a particular style. Instead, Bow-Wow embraces
a kind of accidental urban vernacular, using their research/work to
chronicle the complex - and often unforgiving - logic of the city.
Acting as urban detectives, Bow-wow has catalogued the agility of
Tokyo's fabric to produce radical programmatic collisions (Made in Tokyo) and nuanced micro architectures (Pet Architecture).



These observations have figured heavily in their own work, as documented in recent publications Post-Bubble City and Graphic Anatomy.
Armed with the understanding of architecture's maneuverability in
Tokyo, Bow-wow posits a practice engaged in what they call "lively
space." This is a kind of space that is willingly infected with the
accidents of site and program rather than trying to control or
sterilize them.



Yoshiharu Tsukamoto recently completed teaching a studio at Harvard GSD and runs a lab at Tokyo Institute of Technology.



I caught up with Tsukamoto in Toronto at the TD Centre and later in Tokyo at Bow-Wow HQ to talk pets, public space, stairs, zoning, metabolists, and manga kissa. - Mason White

Part two of this conversation is available in Mark Magazine #8.