Timed to coincide with the London Design Festival, Tangling has been co-curated by the Japanese curator Naomi Shibata and Justin Jaeckle of the Foundation. It consists of a looping, site-specific structural installation that dominates the volume, and room-length windows, of the compact street level gallery. Constructed by structural engineers AKT II and assembled onsite, the self-supporting form is a highly experiential work. The structure compels the visitor to duck under its low arcs and squeeze through its narrow passages, creating a highly embodied awareness of the architectural environment. This effect is intentional, an expression of the architect and curators' desire to communicate to visitors as much the feeling of a Hirata structure as the ideas behind it.
The loop is a materialisation of "tangling", the concept on which Hirata's practice is based and which he sees as the optimal approach for creating architecture. According to Hirata, "tangling" reflects the ecological nature of the reality in which architecture is produced and lived in, a complex condition of relationality and contingency he sees as overlooked by twentieth century architecture and its Modernist dogma of rationality and autonomy. Instead, following the eighteenth century German philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and his theories of the coexistential and relative nature of space, Hirata calls for an architecture able to realise its social potential and responsibilities through a conceptually and formally entangled approach.
The entwinement of structure and display in Tangling is a highly effective device. It not only adds an experiential quality conventionally lacking in architectural exhibitions, but also materialises the values of complexity and interconnectivity that underpin the architect's approach
Akihisa Hirata: Tangling
Architecture Foundation
136-148 Tooley Street, London
