THE LATEST PUBLICATION PROJECT BETWEEN VOLUME AND STEFAN RIEKELES BRINGS VISIONARY ARCHITECTURE IN JAPANESE ANIMES SUCH AS AKIRA OR GHOST IN THE SHELL TO THE FORE AND GIVES US A GLIMPSE OF HOW THESE VISIONARY IMAGES INFLUENCE OUR REAL WORLD
TEXT: PAPHOP KERDSUP
PHOTO COURTESY OF VOLUME
(For Thai, press here)
Four years ago, Stefan Riekeles, German curator and ex-artistic director of Japan Media Arts Festival Dortmund 2011, caused quite a stir in the world of architecture when he brought the original drawings of Japanese anime to “Anime Architecture” exhibition at the Tchoban Foundation: Museum of Architectural Drawing in Berlin. The exhibition asks the visitors to reconsider how the cities and their architecture are presented in anime and how anime artists’ vision of the future has been influencing the subsequent actual designs.
“Ghost in the Shell”, “Tekkon Kinkreet” and “Rebuild of Evangelion” are only a few examples of the exhibits showing the “future” through design fictions. Images of the dystopian world, blended with science fiction spirit, in Katsuhiro Otomo’s ‘AKIRA’ are perhaps what we’re most familiar with and this major work was at the forefront of the Japanese cyberpunk movement gaining its popularity in the 1980s.
Nine years ago was the exhibition “Proto Anime Cut: Archive–Spaces and Visions in Japanese Animation”, one of Riekeles’ early introductions of anime to European readers, followed by “Anime Architecture” five years later. Earlier this month, the Collector’s Edition of the book, with the same title as the Tchoban foundation’s exhibition, was available for pre-order, via publishing platform Volume, for GBP 75 (THB 3,000).
In addition to its hardcover and acrylic slipcase, the printing quality which further enhances each anime’s original background paintings, drafts and storyboards and the numbering of each copy make this Collector’s Edition even more special. It’s not a surprise, then, that all 1,000 copies of this exhibition catalog were snapped up in less than two weeks.
To study the concepts of this exhibition and to see where “Anime Architecture” has travelled to, visit anime-architecture.org