I always have thought that architecture has the power to change the world.
I wanted to be an architect at the age of five. It was 1970. At that time, the World Expo was held in Osaka. I also went to the World Expo as a family.
What I saw there was a world that I had never seen before.
It was a world that I had never imagined.
In a form unbelievably unimaginable, huge size buildings were erected in front of you, and there were a lot of foreigners in and around the buildings.
I had been born and raised in Nagoya and definitely I had never seen foreigners.
Among them, what is still remembered is a big open space that was extended to surround Taro Okamoto’s “Tower of the Sun”.
As I learned later, this was an event space called “Festival Square”, which forms the center of the World Expo symbol zone.
It was an architecture designed by Kenzo Tange, Kisho Kurokawa, and Arata Isozaki who are giants in the world of architecture.
“Festival Square” was literally a huge square.
At that time, I think Japan did not even have the concept of a square.
So of course it was the first time I had seen it.
It was a huge pillarless space and at the same time a huge roof.
Various devices were installed under the large roof to realize flexibility to cope with various events.
The Osaka Expo gave me who was just a small child the first shock.
For the first time, I learned that it was architects who were designing these buildings.
I also learned that the world in which we lived was not only closed in Japan, but actually Japan was only a part of the world.
And now I have a dream that I want to be an architect.
I also wanted to know more about the world, and I vaguely wanted to work with people around the world.
Now, more than 30 years I have passed since I became involved in architectural design work.
And I always keep thinking about the same thing.
Architecture has the power to change the world.
However, I am not confident that I can say so when I become an adult.
Osaka Expo became the driving force of my dream of becoming an architect, and it made my life rich and enjoyable.
The Osaka Expo was a symbol of the period of high growth at that time.
Of course, the influence that the Osaka Expo had on the construction world is immeasurable.
No one can measure, nor can it be difficult to say whether it was possible to really change the world.
Maybe architecture can not change the world.
In the first place, I think the world is something that is composed of rules different from what architecture can achieve.
But I believe that an architecture is what makes dreams come true and makes people happy.