Archipel Lecture 2019

The Presence of Absence

At the end of the 7th century, Empress Jito, the third of until today only eight women to lead the world’s oldest continuing monarchy, did something striking. She had a shrine deconstructed only to have an exact copy reconstructed right next to it. What would become one of the world’s most influential rituals had begun.
Today, some 1300 years later, this ritual is still repeated, alternating on two adjacent sites every 20 years. The occupied site is elevated and at the same time rendered strangely mundane by the absence on the other where the traces of the past indicate the future.

Moving between rituals and language, art and urbanism, fashion and food, the lecture looks at absence as a defining concept for a culture of permanent transition and discusses some of FBA’s findings whilst exploring what this could entail for architecture and urbanism.


[selected slides from the lecture]