I wouldn't go as far as to say that I wish I was a worm, but it is certainly not exaggerated to claim that I just rediscovered the greatness of worms.

As a matter of course, I'm seeing worms in a positive light here, but nonetheless, I guess it does sound a bit odd to talk about them in relation to an exhibition at an art museum.

Let me first explain why I think the exhibition "Architectural Environments for Tomorrow - New spatial practices in architecture and art" at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo (MOT) could be described as "the 12th International Architecture Exhibition, Venice Biennale, revisited".

The Venice International Architecture Exhibition is one of the world’s largest showcase events dedicated to architecture. Last year’s edition included the "People meet in architecture" exhibition, for which architect Sejima Kazuyo was appointed general director, assisted and advised by her partner in the SANAA team of architects, Nishizawa Ryue, together with MOT chief curator Hasegawa Yuko. This time’s "architecture and art" exhibition was again put together by the same trio, and featured a largely identical lineup of architects and artists.

However there are a few major differences as well. The Venice event took place at a large venue, whereas contents were mostly determined by the exhibitors themselves. The current exhibition is held at a museum, but even though this naturally has a limiting effect on the scale of presented works, it also allows for better control and a clearer concept.

However, the concept is perhaps not immediately accessible on an intellectual level. While walking around the venue, I rather felt how it expressed itself by degrees through my body.

Upon entering the first exhibition hall on the museum’s second floor, the visitor is greeted by a photograph shot by Italian Walter Niedermayr. The picture shows the SANAA-designed "Rolex Learning Center" - a construction resembling an undulating flying carpet with holes in Lausanne, Switzerland, completed in 2009. What is unusual about the photograph is that it was taken through a window, with drops of water on the windowpane being clearly visible. Above that, the picture shows the building while still under construction. In short, the photograph couldn't be more different from the usual architecture shot highlighting the razor-sharp edges of a completed building against a blight blue sky. So what’s the idea behind this one? What is clear is that it captures a "circumstance" - that of a building under construction, and in the rain.

Placed in front of the photograph is an architectural model of the Learning Center. SANAA are renowned for their highly abstract and transparent architecture, whereas this model looks fairly unrefined with its dents and traces of glue. Rather than being an object for display, to me it seemed to be demonstrating how the "holey flying carpet" came into being as a result of hard work using one’s hands and body.

Displayed in the same hall are piles of architect Hirata Akihisa’s small study models, the looks of which again suggest hand labor in a trial-and-error style.

Junya Ishigami "Glass Bubble", 2011 / Photo (C)Yasuhiro Takagi

Enthroned in the back of the next exhibition hall is the "Glass Bubble" by Ishigami Junya, renowned as an architect who likes to challenge extremes. This dome-shaped construction, made out of a total of twenty-five 3mm glass panels each measuring 1.8 x 1.8 meters taped together, is displayed alongside pieces of broken glass - apparently by-products of the process of setting up the exhibition.

At this point at the latest, the visitor realizes that certain elements appear time and again, such as a handmade feel, trial-and-error methods, cheap, everyday materials, and a focus on "circumstances". Hasegawa speaks of a "bricolage" style in her text in the exhibition catalogue, and it is the exhibition of the Indian Studio Mumbai, comprised of a total of 150 architects, carpenters, masons and furniture upholsterer, that further underpins this feeling. That "exhibition" is in fact nothing but an array of wall fragments, pillars and other building components, lined up next to cans of paint and maquettes. But this is enough to convey that the members are using such common materials day by day to create various architectural spaces with their hands.

This reminded me of the worm that appears in Sasaki Masato’s "Chisei wa doko ni umareru ka (Where does intellect come from?)" (Kodansha Gendai Shinsho). This book introduces Darwin’s observational records, including notes describing how worms utilize leaves, flowers, pebbles and other appropriate materials to block their burrows' entrances. This evokes the idea that the worm can judge by touch whether an object can be used as sealing material.

Now if this isn't very similar to the way the architects participating in this show employ not only intellect in a narrow sense, but mobilize their bodily senses for repeated trial-and-error, explore the potentials of familiar circumstances and materials, and finally create spaces and environments (for the worm that would be the burrow)! One may actually call it a particularly "flexible intellect", and personally it also reminds me of architect Arakawa Shusaku, who once claimed that "the building forms of bugs are closer to perfection than those of humans".

The fact that SANAA’s and Hirata’s models are full of "holes" further reinforces the image of worms and bugs. Spanish architect Anton Garcia-Abril’s "The Truffle", which the visitor reaches a little later on his tour around the exhibition, presents a cavernous space produced by encasing bales of hay in concrete, and then having the hay eaten by a cow. The result is a burrow par excellence.

In a work introduced through photographs next to the display of Ishigami’s display, Doug + Mike Starn (USA) add "parasite" structures in the form of towering bamboo constructions to existing buildings, and these again look very much like bagworms doing a handstand.

The general image of "architecture" is largely defined by the idea of constructing things based on certain concepts. The works introduced at this exhibition, however, are characterized by a rather physical, situational and environmental quality. This supposedly reflects "new spatial practices", and indicates at once alternatives to the iconic architecture constructed in an acrobatic fashion by way of advanced structural analysis the 21st century, which tends to be identified with the idea of "new architecture".

The work of El Anatsui (Nigeria), displayed in the same exhibition hall as Studio Mumbai’s projects, suggests that such tendencies and intentions can be detected also in the realm of contemporary art. Anatsui’s tapestry, assembled by the sculptor and assistants by piecing together pressed aluminum lids, is another product of manual work with cheap, commonplace materials, resulting from a process of repeated trial and error.

El Anatsui "Garden Wall", 2011 Aluminium and copper wire / Photo (C)Daici Ano

The last exhibition hall on the second floor is dedicated to a video by Indonesian Fiona Tan. The film, in itself a high-quality work composed of exquisitely beautiful images, introduces the daily lives and thoughts of islanders in the Seto Inland Sea, and thus illustrates the circumstances on the island on which Sejima and Nishizawa were commissioned to work on an architectural project. The work seems to be questioning at once how this project can provide architects and artists with food for thought.

From here the visitor proceeds down to the exhibition space on the ground floor, where about 600 variously sized lenses suspended from the ceiling immediately jump to the eye. While Kojin Haruka’s "Contact Lens" can certainly be interpreted as expressing a plurality of viewpoints, the variedly magnified and jogged sceneries seen through those lenses are plain viscerally eye-catching. And if one associates this with a bug’s compound eye, there is again the connection to the insect world.

Spanish architects Selgascano as well present an array of study models, arranged on undulated acrylic panels. While looking fairly stylish compared to the works of Studio Mumbai, they are without a doubt trial productions. Ito Toyo exhibits variously sized models of the Taichung Metropolitan Opera House, the cave-like interiors of which again remind the viewer of worms' burrows.

At the end of the tour around the exhibition, the visitor returns to SANAA’s Rolex Learning Center - alas this time that is in the form of Wim Wenders’s filmic rendition of the complex in 3D. As suggested in the title, "If Buildings Could Talk…", human characters listen to the voice of the architectural construction from the "mountains", "valleys" and other "geological formations" that characterize this particular building’s interior. The voice of the architecture refers to the environments and circumstances created and contained by the "site".

This is how the introduced ideas of "new environments" and "new spatial practices" focusing on manual labor, familiar materials, and a response to circumstances, are being wrapped up at the end of the exhibition.

Wim Wenders "If Buildings Could Talk…" (2010) / Photo (C)Donata Wenders; from left: Wim Wenders, Ryue Nishizawa, Kazuyo Sejima (Reference image)

Overall, it is a show that highlights the particular feeling and problem consciousness of the era. The only thing that bugged me about the event is that none of the works introduced above is related to the Great East Japan Earthquake in March 2011. A diorama of the afflicted area before the disaster, along with pictures of a "Home-for-All" drawn by architects and children around the world at the initiative of the "Kishin no Kai Architects' Group" put together by Sejima and Ito, is on display in the entrance hall as a related event since December 13, but here we can hardly speak of innovative architectural or artistic proposals.

As a matter of course, artistic expression after the earthquake does not at all have to be dealing with the disaster. However, the events led to a re-examination of the significance of architecture and architects in particular. Sejima and Nishizawa actually went to the Tohoku region and engaged in work in the affected areas, and above that, isn't it the manual labor, use of everyday materials, response to circumstances, and flexible intellect highlighted in this very exhibition, that is in fact most needed in those areas since March 2011?

Furthermore, isn't the "Home-for-All" project sharing the same "people meet in architecture" idea that last year’s Venice show was themed around? When thinking of the possibilities to include proposals and displays based on such kind of orientation, I feel truly gutted.

But still, it has to be attested that the exhibition as a whole is an occasion for visitors to experience "new environments" and "new spatial practices", slowly, just like worms and bugs as they explore their surroundings. On the other hand, as architect Hara Hiroshi points out in the text he contributed to the exhibition catalogue, architecture is expected to indicate the "workings of the world." It is now up to the architects to prove the full merit and extensity of their "flexible intellect", and show whether or not they are able to illustrate the workings of the world by accumulating the many little meanings embedded in environments, circumstances and materials.