Constructing the Transnational Architecture of Antonin Raymond - Revealing a Culturally Collaborative Design Practice in Postwar Japan.
This talk will explore a research methodology applied to the architectural work of Antonin Raymond in postwar Japan, revealing a complex collaborative design practice with Japanese architects, craftspeople, and industrial designers. It foregrounds the contributions of the original members of Raymond’s architectural office and other associated designers, all of whom contributed new discoveries about the design practice of the firm and to the interpretation of Raymond’s work in Japan.
Researching archival material in the Czech Republic, Japan and America, I became aware of the need to bring a fresh, and more inclusive perspective to Raymond’s design practice through the recollections of previously unseen design collaborators in Japan. Although Raymond’s adaptation of Japanese vernacular architecture and design is well known, the collaborative process that underpins the transnational practice had not been studied. By applying research methodology generally associated with cultural ethnography, including interviewing, unpacking personal archives, and spending time with Raymond’s previously unacknowledged design collaborators, I could piece together a more complex, interwoven design process that informs the construction of Raymonds’ iconic architectural design legacy in postwar Japan. The book project that came out of my research presents these Japanese voices for the first time, coming to a wider understanding of Raymond’s design career between nations, and the forging of a new tectonic aesthetic in his adopted country. Raymond’s much lauded career in Japan embodied both his own architectural work between nations, and also the work of his lesser known Japanese design collaborators.
The excursion into the collaborative process of Raymond’s postwar Japanese work has inspired me to also interrogate Raymond’s least known, and critically unexplored later career in the USA. Raymond’s civic and corporate commissions in the USA are often dismissed as production work, a seemingly anonymous career coda to his foundational modernist designs in Japan. While excavating the Raymond firm’s later work in the USA, I will also be exploring the collaborative role of Noémi Raymond, Antonin’s wife and architectural design partner. Although Noémi’s contribution to Raymond’s work is now acknowledged, there is more research to be done about the nature of her design collaboration, by exploring her earlier craft-oriented design practice and tracing her imprint on the Raymond firm’s architectural production.
Helena Čapková is an Associate Professor of Art history at Ritsumeikan University, Kyoto. She has published extensively about transnational entanglements and intersections between Czech and Japanese designers in the early part of the 20th century that came to define a new direction for Japanese architectural modernism. Her curatorial practice resulted in a number of exhibitions in Japan, US and Czech republic, including Bedřich Feuerstein, architect. Prague – Paris – Tokyo (National Technical Museum, 2021-2022) https://www.ntm.cz/en/archiv-clanku-en/10112021-3172022-bedrich-feuerstein-architect-prague-paris-tokyo. Her latest publication is a collaborative project with Koichi Kitazawa: Antonín Raymond in Japan 1948-1976: Recollections of Friends (2024, https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/A/bo217887981.html).
