NARCISSUSCAPE Biopolitics Narratives Survey
Thrilled to have been invited by my friend Riichi Miyake, Director of the Museum of Architecture in Kanazawa, to contribute to a workshop to be held in September in the fabulous, well-preserved city of Kanazawa in Japan.
Museum of Architecture, Kanazawa, Japan
60 Years of Design Survey” International Workshop
Organised by Yoshiro and Yoshio Taniguchi Memorial Kanazawa Architecture Museum
In cooperation with ARCHI-DEPOT Corporation
September 16 (Wed) and 17 (Thu), 2026
Kanazawa Future City Creation Center
3-11-1 Nomachi, Kanazawa City, 921-8031
From the mid-1960s to the 1970s, comprehensive surveys were conducted by architecture and urban planning experts to re-evaluate traditional Japanese villages and cities. It all began with the 1965 Kanazawa survey by the University of Oregon, which, backed by detailed measured drawings and thorough data on how people lived, came to be known as the “Design Survey.” This movement was widely shared with the public through architectural journalism and later influenced the conservation of historic districts by the national and local governments. The Museum of Architecture, Kanazawa, has inaugurated an exhibition titled “60 Years of Design Survey – Where the Vernacular became Architecture” from June 20, and plans to hold lectures and forums this summer. As part of this, on September 16 and 17, experts from different countries will gather for discussions that cross architecture, cultural landscapes, and cultural anthropology.
with
Riichi Miyake (director, Yoshiro and Yoshio Taniguchi Museum of Architecture, Kanazawa)
Naofumi Yamada (curator, Yoshiro and Yoshio Taniguchi Museum of Architecture, Kanazawa)
Anri Ito (auditor, NPO Regional Support Network)
Benoit Jacquet (faculty, Ecole française d’Extrême-Orient)
Kiwa Matsushita (professor, Shibaura Institute of Technology)
Alban Mannisi (Associate Researcher ENSAPLV, Paris, France)
Tomoki Takada (associate professor, University of Hyogo)
Yukiko Katagiri (associate Professor, Kanazawa Institute of Technology)
Ichiro Mizuno (professor Emeritus, Kanazawa Institute of Technology)
Jin Myong-Suk (associate Professor, Jeonbuk National University)
Alban Mannisi : NARCISSUSCAPE. Biopolitics Narratives Survey
Design Survey, a philosophy of attention that examines the economy of relations between present reality and the historicity of its past. It reflects both the technical conditions and political ambitions embedded in a territory, operating as a continuous dialogue between what a society chooses to preserve and what it projects into its future—often revealing less a stable reality than contested horizons of possibility. Through the study of diverse regions and biospheres, we will investigates how vernacular cultural landscapes and social ecologies express the decisions and preferences of past societies and seeks to understand the 20th-century mutation of these references and their evolving transformations today.
Beyond a critical theorisation of these temporal mechanisms, what we consider essential is the support of impartial strategies that prevent surveys from being shaped by the biases of their historical moment. Without resorting to universal claims, which are widely critiqued today, how might we ensure that the spatial curriculum is understood in its full complexity, encompassing its tangible, intangible, and spiritual dimensions, so that it may continue to flourish ?
Voir en ligne : NARCISSUSCAPE. Biopolitics Narratives Survey