“The Works of Kisho Kurokawa: Capsule, Metabolism, Spaceframe, Metamorphose”

"The self-taught Japanese graphic designer Awazu Kiyoshi produced this poster to accompany a publication, ‘Capsule, metabolism, spaceframe, metamorphose’, made by Kurokawa Kisho for Expo ’70 in Osaka. Both Kurokawa and Awazu were affiliated with Metabolism, a post-war movement in Japanese design that saw the city as an organism that should accommodate growth and change. The poster embeds Kurokawa’s architectural principles in a multilayered jumble of image, colour, and type. The four words of the book’s title, rendered in lively pink and orange, line its edges. Outlines of Kurokawa’s work, including the spaceframe of one of his Expo ’70 pavilions, form the background. On top, Awazu arranges graphic elements and Japanese and English text, setting some blocks within cartoon-like speech bubbles. The poster is an example of Awazu’s subjective style, a reaction against modernist functionalism in its swirling pop geometry and reproduced imagery (a rooster, a snake). It is both futuristic and folk inspired, a cross-disciplinary intensification of Kurokawa’s Metabolist ideas and the architecture and design scene they helped shape. This graphic language also puts Metabolism into conversation with post-war designers exploring megastructures and flexible architecture outside Japan, such as the London-based group Archigram."—https://collections.mplus.org.hk/en/objects/poster-the-works-of-kisho-kurokawa-capsule-metabolism-spaceframe-metamorphose-2016727