University's Department of Architecture hosts celebratory exhibition

A free photographic exhibition documenting a decade of change in Japanese architecture will go on show in the University of Queensland's Architecture Department for a week from Saturday, February 7.

Contemporary Japanese Architecture 1985-1996 covers a dynamic period in the recent history of Japanese architecture, characterised by a boom in the country's economy.

The University is co-hosting the exhibition with the Royal Australian Institute of Architects (Queensland chapter) under the patronage of the Consulate-General of Japan, Brisbane, as part of a world tour organised by the Japan Foundation and the Architectural Institute of Japan.

The head of the University's School of Architecture and Planning, Michael Keniger, said traditional Japanese architecture was renowned for its refined visual and structural qualities, and for its abstract evocation of nature and the elements.

The 10-year period represented in the exhibition generated an architecture of extremes, and, to a large extent, ignored the rich heritage of the culture's traditional architecture, he said.

'The economic boom in Japan in the early part of the period enabled architectural experiments to verge on excess,' he said.

'The latter part of the period saw a more reflective approach that attempted to bring about an architecture better suited to its climate, place and time.'

The exhibition will represent the first opportunity in 1998 to celebrate the Australia-Japan Friendship anniversaries, celebrated annually since 1996.

They commemorate the opening of the first Japanese Consulate in Australia, in Townsville in 1896, the signing of the Basic Treaty of Friendship and Co-operation Between Japan and Australia (1976), and the Commerce Treaty Between Australia and Japan (1957), as well as the centenary of the opening of the Consulate-General of Japan in Sydney (1897).

The exhibition, from February 7 to February 15, will be officially opened in the Zelman Cowen building, from 6pm on Friday, February 6.

For more information contact Michael Keniger, the head of the University's School of Architecture and Planning (telephone (07) 3365 3537) or Antony Moulis (telephone (07) 3365 4010).