Terra Instabilis
The construction holds, the writer Heinrich von Kleist once remarked, because all building blocks want to collapse at the same time. The passionate flaneur had passed a round arch on one of his walks, which inspired within him a very comforting thought: an indescribably refreshing consolation that he would hold on to, even if his own sense of logic let him down. Though, he also felt a curious kind of concern. After all, the stability of the construction depended upon a collective drive to tumble and fall.
The observation of the architectural structures raised his awareness of the fragility of all things; the epistemic notion that everything earthbound would eventually disintegrate into some sort of rubble. Obviously — in the realm of architecture and beyond — some structures stand more steadfast than others. But under extreme conditions, even those built to last are, in the long run, doomed to fall.
Incorporating Maya motives and a pyramid-like structure reminiscent of ancient Giza’s great monuments, Frank Lloyd Wright’s Imperial Hotel in Tokyo evoked a sense of eternity. Riddled with cultural references which neither belonged to the East nor to the West, it must have also appeared somewhat placeless, or rather conversely: universal and ubiquitously present. While many of the architect’s colleagues back in the US were busy building ever-higher and perfecting the construction principles of their “proud, soaring things” that, in the words of Louis Sullivan, rose “in sheer exaltation”, Wright had decided to draw inspiration from the tallest structures of ancient times: instead of scraping the sky, his hotel building spread across the ground, proudly sitting on its high-priced, central Tokyo plot. Most importantly, it was built to last — in terms of impression, but also to resist the geological rumbles and tremors that frequently jolt Japanese ground.
Unlike highrises, which some structural engineers define as a “vertical construction for which wind is a more significant load factor than weight or earthquake”, Wright’s construction efforts focused on the building’s foundation: based on a novel, flexible system developed to absorb shocks and vibrations, his heavy superstructure was meant to practically hover between heaven and earth. “If a battleship floats on wild waters,” the architect once remarked, “why not float a building upon shaking land?” In Julius Hoto, the Imperial Hotel’s structural engineer, he had found a confident backer of his idea of a “monolithic mass resting on a soft flexible cushion.” And as legend has it, their aseismic strategy (which involved a range of other innovative features) was a legendary success.
“Hotel stands undamaged as a monument of your genius — hundreds of homeless provided by perfectly maintained service. Congratulations.”
This radio telegram from Tokyo was the first to reach the United States concerning the 1923 Great Kanto earthquake. It was sent by Baron Okura Kihashiro, the building project’s key financial promoter, and addressed to its architect, who was quick to pass the message on to the international press, helping to perpetuate the durable myth of a fortress fit to withstand inconceivable seismic power — in fact, though, Wright’s iconic building had not performed better than many others. Moreover, the American star architect’s “pioneering” concept was not even the first concerted attempt to make buildings (and whole cities) more durable and resistant against recurring natural disasters in the face of which conventional laws of statics no longer hold.
In Japan, a country particularly prone to seismic tremors due to its location astride several converging continental and oceanic plates, the comparatively young science of “earthquake engineering” has been eagerly explored since the late 19th century. While practically no usable information on the western world’s technological and scientific advances had reached the country during its self-imposed isolation from 1639 to 1854, the Tokugawa shogunate re-opened Japan’s shores in 1854.
When the government was overturned in 1868, the new Meiji Emperor’s regime was committed to reinforce the military to maintain national independence from invading foreign imperialistic pressure — which also required the expansion and modernization of the country’s industries through the promotion of western approaches within the fields of science and engineering.
The resulting professional exchange had a major impact on the realm of architecture and urban development: Hitherto, Japanese towns and cities had been characterized by the traditional timber structures; homes, factories, castles and shrines were typically built by carpenters. The construction of brick and mortar buildings required expertise entirely different from that which masters of Japanese timber construction had passed on to their apprentices for centuries. Once wafted over from the west, modern architectural courses and educational programs were established in the context of engineering rather than the arts. Rather than aesthetical considerations or the creative aspects of architectural design, the study of materials and construction methods was considered of overriding importance. On account of Japan’s particular geological conditions, the ideal modern residence was rather firm than pretty.
In 1880, a group of foreign researchers founded the “Seismological Society of Japan” under the lead of British geologist and mining engineer John Milne to carry out extensive investigations into experimental seismology. Eleven years later, the huge intraplate Nohbi Earthquake hit Nagoya. The degree of damage was tremendous. In return, the catastrophe supplied vast amounts of valuable data to the Gaijin researchers and their growing Japanese cohort. Ironically, the earthquake had destroyed many “modern” brick and masonry structures built on the advice of foreign architects and engineers, while leaving lots of traditional, wooden ones standing. As a consequence, unreinforced masonry construction was widely rejected in Japan for years to come and would even become prohibited later. Unluckily, the learning effect came too late for parts of the Japanese capital, where the Meiji government had jump started a major modernization, which involved rebuilding whole neighborhoods according to western standards. Ginza Bricktown, for example, had just been erected onto the “perfectly-located ground zero” cleared by the Ginza Fire of 1872.
On September 1, 1923, Bricktown was razed to the ground by the Great Kanto Earthquake; hardly any building in the brand new neighborhood stood up to the severe seismic shocks. Moreover, much of the crumbled down brickwork was reduced to ashes. Due to Japan’s rapidly growing energy grid, searing wires and gas explosions had become an increasing secondary threat during seismic disasters. The Kanto Earthquake, that mainly hit the evolving metropolitan area of Tokyo and Yokohama, killed approximately 105.000 dominantly by fire; 109.000 houses collapsed, while 212.000 burnt down.
As traditional Japanese buildings were particularly prone to fall victim to flames and traditional western ones had turned out to give in to gravity, the Seismological Society — meanwhile absorbed by a new institution named “Earthquake Investigation Committee” — advocated an urban future dominated by steel and concrete, which had already begun to materialize. During the 1923 disaster, the statistics of damage on Tokyo’s first concrete towers revealed that only 22 out of 553 had suffered heavy damage, while over 75 percent got off rather lightly.
Wright’s Imperial Hotel was listed in the category of second-best performance, which corresponds only to light damage. Completed shortly before the Great Kanto Earthquake, it was constructed of a curious mix of materials: Its load-bearing walls were comprised of two brick wythes — a solid one on the outside and hollow, patterned one the inside — sandwiching a stable concrete layer of contentious composition: while Wright himself supposedly claimed that there was no steel reinforcement, his structural engineer Hoto later expressed that the hotel’s walls were built by “layering up an outer and inner shell of brick, filling in between, as the work progressed, with concrete and laying reinforcing steel into this concrete, thus making exceedingly strong monolithic walls.” According to the earthquake engineer and seismological researcher Robert K. Reitherman, “It is symptomatic of this building’s story that there are conflicting reports concerning such a basic point.” It almost seems as if Wright not merely wanted to construct a steadfast building, but also a durable myth.
Looking at other defining materials of Wrightʼs floating battleship, the building performed a medley of styles, blending cutting-edge engineering with archaic tradition and symbolic clout: as though attempting to beat the impending geological forces with their own weapons, Wright opted to work with volcanic stone (as it is traditionally used in the earthquake prone Etnean areas of Sicily, but of Japanese origin: Oya stone), in combination with ferrocement, a then very modern, state-of-the art material, essentially made of mortar or plaster applied over a metal mesh. Although the origin is of reinforced concrete, ferrocement was and still is most typically used for boats, shell roofs, and water tanks built to last under extreme conditions. The portable Mulberry Harbours used in the D-Day landings were made of ferrocement, their remains still standing firm in the Normandy region of north-western France.
Though particularly sturdy as well as earthquake and fire-resistant, both volcanic rock and ferrocement have their deficiencies, at least in the long-term. One disadvantage of ferro-concrete is its relatively high risk of corrosion: once tiny air voids are left in the original construction during its wet stage, pools of water occur, as the cured material absorbs moisture; as a result, untreated steel components may rust and expand. While in modern practice, liquid acrylic and other additives to the grout mix mitigate such failures, Wright had to put up with the material’s potential drawbacks. The architect also accepted the cons of the igneous rock (derived from the Latin term ignis, meaning fire): formed from molten lava, the magmatic stone type typically features a vesicular texture caused by cavities that trapped volatiles frequently leave behind. Prone to salt crystallization, such material is particularly vulnerable to chipping, too.
Decisions were made to build low instead of high and to borrow aesthetically from the Mayans and ancient Egyptians; rather than following the modern Western style the Meiji regime was so keen to impose upon its metropolises, Wright’s material choices almost read as acts of rebellion. So too its storied constriction method, which bucked a whole string of engineering trends and challenged some of the arguments of Tachu Naito, the prime advocate of the “rigidity” theory in the 1920s and 30s. Naito, who had spent some time in America as a student and would, decades later, endow Tokyo with its own Eiffel Tower, devised the structural concept of the shear wall — a vertical element designed to resist seismic loads. Although not directly countering this approach, Wright fiercely promoted his own distinct idea of creating a “flexible structure, instead of a foolish, rigid one,” and suggested dividing building structures into several parts.
“Why fight the quake? Why not sympathize with it and outwit it?” the architect asked retrospectively, referring to the result of his strategy as an “jointed monolith”. Steadily improved upon, his experimental construction principle inspired forests of earthquake-resistant skyscrapers and cities to come. “What is immediately apparent today is that this was an early and thorough use of the seismic separation joint, though this seems not to have been subsequently appreciated,” earthquake engineer Reitherman remarks. Every Tokyo tourist has noticed the gaps between buildings, which — to appropriate Kleist’s expression — prevent whole blocks from collapsing at the same time.
The example of the Imperial Hotel, however, shows that Wright was not particularly consistent in enforcing his influential concept. As critics point out, the building’s monumental, Mayan revival style columns and solid partitions must have, in fact, amounted to a rather inflexible structure. As Reitherman notes, the building’s unintended rigidity “probably decreased the amount of non-structural damage, and also decreased its dynamic response to the ground motion.” Conversely, Wright’s idea of a flexible foundation devised to cushion the construction proved to be its biggest problem: The base consisted of alluvium, an oceanic substance found commonly washed-up, here applied in a non-marine setting, which — according to current knowledge — could never have made the building “float”, but rather turned it into a vessel on a distressed sea: instead of absorbing seismic waves, as Wright had hoped, the alluvium amplified them. Moreover, the terrain wasn’t very stable. By the 1960s, a reporter of the Architectural Forum recited the hotel’s owners and operators, claiming that the stately building “was slowly sinking into the mud.”
Despite protests all over the world, Wright’s Imperial Hotel was demolished in 1968, due to financial failure and excessive maintenance costs. Allegedly, the prime reason for its economic obsolescence was its low-rise, low density design — an affront to its location in an area of high-priced real estate. “The only fair comment that can be advanced is that the building is probably a hundred years ahead of the age in its architectural features and fifty years behind in many things which make for the comfort of its patrons,” the Far Eastern Review had commented shortly after the hotel’s completion. Frank Lloyd Wright, the article continues, “sacrificed everything to his art, raising a monument to his genius and bequeathing to the Japanese the difficult task of making it a financial success.” Obviously, along with all the reinforced concrete, Western capitalism had long since arrived in Japan.
Looking back with the distance of a century since its construction, the famed hotel — or rather, the ambiguity of Wrightʼs constructional approach — reflects that of all earthly existence, which brings us back to Kleist’s round arch and the collective urge to tumble and fall; to the death drive, which, in Lacanʼs sense, belongs to life as gravity belongs to the world. Freud defined it as a force opposed to the life instinct or libido, to self-preservation: While Eros tends to cohesion and union, the death drive strives for dissolution and disintegration.
Perhaps, it’s not actually not an urge for destruction, but a desire to persist and remain. As Slavoj Zizek once noted, the Freudian death drive has nothing to do with the desire for self-destruction; rather, “the very opposite of dying — a name for the undead eternal life itself.” In a way, it relates to the logic of passing itself: death is to decompose, to become one with the earth — which naturally implies both: a stable base, as well as the tremors that threaten to disrupt and disintegrate any form of cohesion.
Some critics claim that, from today’s perspective, most of the Imperial Hotel’s aseismic measures are out-dated and of dubious benefit. To many others, Wright’s construction concept remains relevant as a rare — early example of an architect’s comprehensive effort to integrate design and engineering into an earthquake-proof structure. And yet, albeit subconsciously, the master builder may have created less an indestructible monolith, than an architectural memento mori. “Architecture is life, or at least it is life itself taking form and therefore it is the truest record of life,” he once remarked.
Buildings are not said to die, but legends do. While long reduced to earthy rubble, Wright’s fallen icon has taken on a pretty durable form of existence.
Words
Anna Sinofzik
Photography
Jun Yasui