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The diplomacy of the game

The temporary pavilion designed by Shigeru Ban in Tokyo’s Brazilian Embassy offers the chance for a conversation with André Corrêa do Lago, a diplomat and economist, about games and events organizers’ role for a positive transformation in the lifestyle of common people.

Shigeru Ban, Football Pavilion 2014, Tokyo

New forms of culture emerge from play, remarks play-theorist Brian Sutton-Smith in his seminal book The Ambiguity of Play. But how to achieve a better ‘play’ in contemporary culture?

A hint might be embedded whithin the rituals of any ludic activity, rooted in the synergy between the strategist, the player and the game. Considering the structure of a game, there is a hierarchical relationship between the player and the strategist. The first responds to a group of rules and constraints set by the second, a figure that instruments and legitimizes a determined kind of play. Despite both are essentially decision makers and players, the second is more conscious of the nature of the game, a “diplomat of the game” we could say under the frame we would like to argue.

More than one month has passed since the end of the last major sport event of this year, the FIFA World Cup 2014 in Brazil. Also in the same country, Rio de Janeiro is expecting the next Olympic Games in a couple of years and other cities as Tokyo are already preparing to host the Olympics in 2020. In each case organizers are pursuing to learn from previous lessons, aware of the legacy this opportunity can bring to their cities. It is precisely in this scenario that the figure of the strategist emerges to attune the forces involved, sometimes anticipating and others speculating, in all cases betting for a positive transformation in the lifestyle of common people.

We had a conversation with André Corrêa do Lago, a Diplomat and economist by career and current Ambassador of Brazil in Tokyo. Despite the fact that he has not been trained as an architect, he is highly attentive to architectural and sustainability related affairs, considered as one of the most prominent architectural critiques in his home country Brazil. This year, he was appointed as curator of the Brazilian Pavilion in the current 14th Venice Architecture Biennale given his background and position as a strategist.

Celebrating another relevant strategist, our talk starts remembering a woman who was bridge between continents during the period of WWII and who served as Director of Domus Magazine in 1944, Italian born and Modernist Brazilian architect Lina Bo Bardi. It is worth mentioning how much decision makers can affect a whole generation, either for good or bad. Corrêa do Lago points out that it was during the military regime that the city of Brasília would rise to become a national symbol of modern thinking. However the work of Bo Bardi and many other acclaimed architects of her and next generation, such as Paulo Mendes da Rocha and Joao Filgueiras Lima (known simply as ‘Lele’), remained unknown to the world only until the 80’s with the collapse of the regime.

With special interest in sustainability and ephemeral architecture, the Diplomat commissioned this year’s Laureate Pritzker Architecture Prize, Japanese architect Shigeru Ban, to design a Pavilion that would last until the end of 2014 World Cup event. The request was planned to be set at the entrance of the Embassy building designed in 1982 by Brazilian architect Ruy Ohtake, son of Japanese naturalized Brazilian artist Tomie Ohtake. For Corrêa do Lago the strategy was attractive from the perspective of confronting the work of two extreme opposites; the architecture of Ohtake more solid and monumental made of concrete, with the temporary intervention of Shigeru Ban made from his characteristic paper structural tubes. The choice of Ban responded partly to the ephemeral quality he keeps in most of his buildings, as Corrêa do Lago considers this typology of architecture is underestimated due to its short lifespan. He finds value in the fact that these interventions are only relevant to their specific moment, having the potential to create a strong social impact.

The building for the Embassy of Brazil in Tokyo was conceived as a curved-glass facade running along a narrow street in the neighbor of Kita-Aoyama. As many other projects that Ohtake has undertaken during his career, there is a playful recurrence of curved volumes and color, which distinguishes his architecture among the other residential buildings around the area. The original design considered a generous elevated atrium accessible through stairs running along the street, in which Ban’s proposal settled a translucent shed posed over thick paper columns serving as the structure of the pavilion. The introduction of these elements creates a new level of depth and rhythm in the existing space, leaving areas in-between for people to gather and exchange. The furniture also made in paper was part of the design envisioned by the Pritzker Prize architect. The most singular element for the pavilion is a partition made of sections of paper tubes displayed as hollow circular sections in which soccer balls are displayed randomly. As Corrêa do Lago explains, it was thought as a kind of screen similar to a Japanese ‘byobu’ (屏風), a word which he remarks was taken from the Portuguese language ‘biombo’ or folding screen, which rather than diving connects the space using air and light.

The game-strategist has a particular skill to read the potentials of the players in order to get the maximum performance of them, first as individuals and followed as collaborative entities. During the days of the World-Cup event, Corrêa do Lago also invited Professor of Architecture and Urban Design at Keio University Darko Radović and his students (co+labo), researching among other topics the urban quality of open spaces in Tokyo for coming Olympics in 2020. More experimental and speculative, his intervention served as an interface between public and private realms. It consisted on placing a black box in the fashion of an extensible furniture or ‘urban cupboard’ (something derived from his idea of a ‘Wold-Cup-Board’) where visitors could draw their ideas on the walls. When opened, the box became a showcase displaying diverse products coming from Brazil along with some of co+labo’s publications.

In this play Shigeru Ban’s pavilion was not the protagonist but the stage for it. It brought to the neighborhood an opportunity for people to gather, sometimes more casually and others more seriously becoming a venue to think and discuss about architecture and the legacy of sport events and cities, metaphorically conjugating the verb ‘play’ in its three tenses: past, present and future. André Corrêa do Lago as a dual strategist, is the nomadic Diplomat seeking to re-evaluate the role of his own culture among others, and the architectural critic concerned about everyday people’s relation with cities and architecture. He ends our conversation reminding that right moves not always work, but with the firm conviction that what touches people is quality.

Football Pavilion 2014
Location: Tokyo, Minato-ku
Period: 11 June – 18 July 2014
Design and site supervision: Shigeru Ban, Nobutaka Hiraga, Grant Suzuki, Hernan Concha Emmrich
Key program: event space
Site area: 158 sqm
Total floor area: 124 sqm
Client: Embassy of the Federative Republic of Brazil in Tokyo

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The diplomacy of the game

The temporary pavilion designed by Shigeru Ban in Tokyo’s Brazilian Embassy offers the chance for a conversation with André Corrêa do Lago, a diplomat and economist, about games and events organizers’ role for a positive transformation in the lifestyle of common people.

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