Over the last twenty years, Japanese kawaii ("cute") culture has swept the globe. In contemporary art, examples range from Yoshitomo Nara’s cigarette-smoking girl to Takashi Murakami’s sharp-toothed and three-eyed Kiki. Then there is Hello Kitty, the iconic kawaii character who rang the closing bell at the New York Stock Exchange on August 4, 2010. In architecture, critic Tomoharu Makabe theorizes twenty-two essential kawaii traits, including "small scale", "house shape", "antimodule", and "anti-super flat". However, in practice, what modes of agency are possible for buildings to operate within an aesthetic generally characterized by femininity, vulnerability, and passivity?

Centering on Setouchi Archive, a pachinko parlor turned into a gallery in the so-called "art island" of Naoshima in the Seto Inland Sea in Japan, this paper throws light on the "soft power" of kawaii architecture to transform a post-industrial wasteland to an art-filled heaven and restore mother nature’s balance. Beyond a discussion of aesthetics, the paper looks at the spatial/cultural operations of kawaii to break the dichotomy of the powerful and powerless. Like a mother’s womb, Setouchi Archive conceives and incubates research, collections, and exhibitions in relation to the landscape, culture, folklore, and history of the Seto Inland Sea area. Inside its upside-down world of kawaii, "The weak gain power and command the strong". "The ugly become beautiful"."The dead are reborn". (Bijutsu Techo, February 1996)

Authors:
Lisa Hsieh, University of Minnesota, United States

About the Presenter(s)
Lisa Hsieh is currently an Associate Professor of Architecture at the University of Minnesota in the United States.

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