New Forms Taschen 125

Arata Isozaki Art Towar Mito Mito. Japan, 1986-90

A cultural center indudmg concert halls. exhibition space and this unusual 100 m high tower, whose spiraling shape may have been inspired by the paper lamps des igned by lsozaki's friend the sculptor Isamu Noguchi, Art Tower Mito was mtended to celebrate the centenary of this Tokyo area community.

probably to some extent inspired by the similarly designed paper lamps conceived by lsozaki's friend, the late sculptor Isamu Noguchi. It also bears a certain resem-blance to Brancusi's "Colonne sans fin." Though its form is certainly distant from that of the Centre Pompidou in Paris, it seems elear that the intellectual model for the mixed-use cultural center, here induding an exhibition space, concert halls and a No theater stage, is indeed French. The Art Tower Mito is redolent with historie references, from Sir John Soane to Claude Nicolas Ledoux, but as the architect says in typically humorous fashion, ”Every element is treated in a schizophrenic manner, so the whole becomes coherent." Isozaki certainly went through a Post-Modern period, most notably with his 1983 Tsukuba Center, but here, despite the numerous indirect historie references, he has already gone beyond the Post-Modern pastiche to create an unusual work of art. The culminating point of Art Tower Mito is pre-

134 Places of Gatmering