Kisho Kurokawa Sketches

"When I see a sketch by an Italian Futurist Architect or a sketch by Louis Kahn, who is my favorite architect, I feel strong impressions expressed there for the World of Image. The reason I get these strong impressions are because there are messages, like a human touch, hidden behind the sketches - the essential difference from construction drawings. Even if the theme is about architecture, architects' sketches have the same quality with the World of Image as paintings have.

The reason architects' sketches attract the attention of so many people in the world is because Imagination and the World of Image, that architects originally defined as architecture, has now been industrialized.

My first work was "Agricultural City Plan, 1961" which was never to be built. The project was invited to be part of the 1960 exhibition "Architecture of Illusion" at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.  I always recall this exhibition when I am caught up in my busy schedule, and try to do the sketches remembering what state of mind I was in at first.

Most of the sketches, which are the theme of these woodcut prints, are based on the original sketches that have been preserved for 20 years.  Some of them I sketched on my business cards, and some I sketched on napkins on the airplane.  Some sketches were to become actual work, others were only  constructed in the World of Image./Kisho Kurokawa

Text from the exhibition catalog
"KISHO KUROKAWA Woodcut Print Works"
Riccar Art Museum in Ginza, Japan.  1981