The Lab Book: Situated Practices in Media Studies

Abstract

instance, are featured in the fourth chapter. She expands upon the definition of metabolism to explore the “smooth circulation of energy, transportation, and information through the urban infrastructures” to the “pathways that circulate oxygen, blood, nutrients” (p. 109). Furuhata employs Kurokawa Kishō as a central historical actor to weave together capsule architecture and contemporary critiques of petrochemicals and geoengineering. Metabolism’s capsules strike a particular ecological dilemma given their reliance on plastics. She employs Marx to focus on the political economy of production and the ecological footprint of the Metabolist architects. Furuhata concentrates on the Chisso Corporation’s nitrogenbased fertilizers that were spreading Minamata disease among the public, a form of methylmercury poisoning resulting from industrial pollution (p. 116). Metabolist architects were deeply implicated in the industry of plastics manufacturing and the resulting effects of environmental pollution. As part of the “substrata of advanced capitalism,” capsule architecture derived from plastics remains closely connected to the climatic challenges of environmental waste. In fact, the oil economy that financed Kurokawa and other Metabolists’ projects embraced domestic comfort and convenience through the dual logic of security and survival through containment (p. 117). The 1973 oil crisis halted the flow of oil into Japan, marking the decline of domestic financing for the Tange Lab and Metabolist built projects. Despite this crisis, Kenzo Tange continued designing a monumental stadium in Riyadh and temporary accommodations for pilgrims visiting Mecca. Kurokawa’s capsules later appeared in Iraq (1972). Such entanglements with the fossil fuels and petroleum industries point to the architectural experiments by the Metabolists as being contradictory. Their very existence colored by architects’ ecological interests and hope for the sustainable development of cities, they were closely tied to an economic dependency on fossil fuels and petrochemical industries, whose effects undermine the very idea of sustainability. The inevitable rise of surveillance systems and smart urbanism feature in the fifth chapter, which introduces tear gas as an elemental component of climatic media. Norbert Weiner’s connections to Japanese cyberneticians and architects foreground how tear gas was “not only immersive but communicative” (p. 137). Police use of tear gas in Japan as a form of urban governance responded to moments of crisis in civic order. Furuhata reads the correspondence between Ikehara Shikao and Weiner to supplement scholarship by Peter Galison and others who have addressed cybernetic logic and wartime geopolitics. Furuhata articulates how Tange Lab architects positioned the city as a self-regulating cybernetic organization. Optimization and organization underlying Arata Isozaki’s Festival Plaza for Expo ’70 allowed two giant robots with control rooms to modulate ambient components of the exposition through manual operators of lighting, sound, and screens. Tear gas and networked surveillance, for Furuhata, form two ends of the spectrum of atmospheric control. Expo ’70 paved the way for what we know now as smart urbanism and cloud-based security systems. These are just two of the wellresearched journeys that the reader will encounter in this book. Navigating the rich content can be tricky for readers not familiar with these Japanese architects or the prevailing ideologies behind Cold War science. In constructing the genealogy of this book, Furuhata shifts between these networks of historical actors and related concepts around climatic media. Despite this minor issue with the book’s overall structure, the author makes a remarkable contribution to the histories of climate in East Asia—where architecture, weather, and digital computing are reinforced as mutually interdependent discourses that continue to evolve and transform how we think about climate control. references