New Forms Taschen 119

ern artists to touch fundamenta! elements that are still very much part of everyday life in this area of the United States.

Naturally, not all libraries take on the huge dimensions and mythological ambi-tions of the Bibliotheque nationale de France or the Phoenix Public Library. Much morę modest structures do exist, as is the case for example of the Towell Temporary Library on the UCLA Brentwood campus by Hodgetts + Fung, already mentioned above. Here a lightweight architeaure, which is naturally easier to conceive in a benevolent dimate such as that of Los Angeles, houses a light-filled and highly functional library space.

Although not in such an obvious way as museums or libraries, schools have also provided occasions for architecture to further its development in recent years. The new Arts Center of the Michel de Montaigne University in Bordeaux, France (1993-94), is a case in point. Designed by the Italian architect Massimiliano Fuksas, it is intended to bring together different disciplines, such as theater, musie sculpture, radio and cinema. A long, narrow building, cut in half lengthwise and pierced by two large vertical shafts, it is clad in a skin of light green oxidized copper. The radio studio is positioned on the roof and is clad in wood. Fuksas feels that contemporary architecture is morę and morę influenced by art. He cites the Italian painter Lucio Fontana as a personal favorite, but it is elear that the sculptural presence of his Bordeaux art school owes much to sculpture as well. The gathering of different artistic disciplines in this structure obviously pleads in favor of his own belief that architecture itself is now in a position to reclaim its true identity as an art form. A skilled practitioner with extensive experience in the construction of low-cost housing, Fuksas is far from a dilettante, and his concept and the explanation he gives for it here should be considered as significant of wider trends in architecture.

Three teaching facilities built in Tokyo in the past ten years exploit different approaches to the problems of the relationship between education and architecture. The most remarkable and important of these is undoubtedly Kazuo Shinohara's Tokyo Institute of Technology, Centennial Hall, located in the Meguro area of the Japanese Capital. Completed in 1987, it indeed corresponds to the architect's description which was of a 'machinę floating in the air." Calling on the Japanese architectural tradition of undef ined spaces, Shinohara created a 20 m high space to be used for exhibitions or other university functions. With bare concrete walls and exposed piping, electrical lines and air conditioning ducts, this area has an industrial aspect, which is due in good part to the Iow construction budget. Above, the building is bisected by its most obvious feature, a slanted semi-cylindrical volume, which houses a restaurant. Apparently disordered, the Centennial Hall corresponds at once to Shinohara's thoughts about the underlying order of the Japanese metro-polis and to his examination of machines like the Lunar Landing Module (LEM) or the American F-14 fighter piane. The 'terrifying efficiency" of these machines means, as far as Shinohara is concerned, that it is not necessarily a straightforward geometrie composition that best corresponds to the function and appearance of a building. Making reference to recent scientif ic 'chaos theory," the seventy year old Shinohara, who has had considerable influence on younger Japanese architects like Toyo Ito and Itsuko Hasegawa, predicts that the forms of the futurę of architeaure will have morę to do with new perceptions of efficiency than they will with outdated concepts of esthetic harmony.

Esthetic harmony is certainly far from the mind of Makoto Watanabe, a forty-five year old architea, whose 1990 Aoyama Technical College building in Tokyo looks like something out of Japanese cartoons. Seeking an 'organie" architeaure in other crystalline designs, Watanabe here seems fascinated by the mechanical or robotic metaphor. His school looks like it could get up and walk away, fitting easily into a "Godzilla' movie or "Power Rangers" television feature. He certainly does not rejea the notion that popular culture is a source of inspiration for this highly

128 Places or Gathebing