Models Talk: CCA c/o Tokyo video series

Models Talk is a new three-part video series that the CCA produced together with architectural curator and editor Kayoko Ota (Tokyo) and Studio GROSS (Tokyo and Berlin), as part of our CCA c/o Tokyo program.

Socially engaged approaches in architecture, including participatory design, reprogramming, and minimum intervention, are increasingly common—but can often yield predictable results. This series of videos focuses instead on works that challenge convention in order to address current urban issues, and uses the particularities of film as a format to convey the ideas defining these works. In each video one architect leads the viewer through a model that acts as a guide by way of the problems, concepts, and inventive propositions that underlie the work. 

Motivated by the desire to illustrate architectural concepts and make them more easily accessible, Models Talk gives a platform to three architects working through contemporary challenges to express their proposals.

In Recipe for Mixed Rice (10 minutes), the viewer is dropped first with Kumiko Inui on a train through Nobeoka, then through her approach to designing for its train station: an inclusive workshop that asks how space can be “freed up, not filled.” Kazuko Akamatsu reveals a similarly generous exercise in urban redevelopment in A Matter of Void (9 minutes). “Because [Shibuya is] such a dynamic place, I thought it would be more appropriate to create an environment where people can feel they’re in the middle of this constantly moving city.” Erika Nakagawa, then, conceives of any new project as “an addition to its surrounding environment” in A Neighbourhood in A House (13 minutes). The series reveals a shared empathy in how these contemporary practitioners approach design questions and the role of documentary film as an intimate vehicle behind-the-scenes of these processes.

All 3 Films here on Dezeen