RETURN OF THE ENTIRE HUMANKIND TO EARTH
Mr. Ambasz's architecture. Why is it so appealing to us?
Is it because it suggests a new state of "Cohabitation with Nature"? Why the " "?
Is it because the history of the few, albeit very long, last thousand years teaches us that, since the destruction of nature is not limited to industrial agents, we cannot easily believe that we can reestablish the pact of reconciliation with nature? Notwithstanding all the above, in Ambasz's architecture nature appears almost everywhere, around and within. See, for example, the Nishiyachiyo Station Master Plan for the new town of Nishiyachiyo in Japan.
The nature that emerges in his architecture is there not simply to give some color to the tastelessness of empty spaces. When one sees photographs and drawings of Ambasz's work one is stricken by the considerable amount of "thought-heavy" green. Why?
After all, isn't an architect a person who draws detailed designs for great pylons, steel beams, glass panels, or concrete blocks?
Certainly, there are other architects who have been successful in skillfully integrating natural conditions into their own architectural plans.
Or to say it differently: there are other architects who have expressed their architectural philosophies by adapting their work to the forms of animals and plants.
But, there is a very definite difference in Ambasz's inventive architecture.
And it reminds me of something.
What?
For example, a gigantic space station, endowed with desert and savannah areas, where ten million people dwell. Of course, in my evocation I am not retracing the bright scenarios of the conquest of space that were dreamed in the late fifties or mid -sixties.
To me such a space station stands as a inconsolable emblem for the desolation of our "Mother Earth." Mankind, who has not yet been able to elucidate fully the mysteries of photosynthesis, certainly should tremble at the dangers of living in space.
Nothwithstanding all of this, if we are forced to think about space stations, it is entirely because we feel a longing for escape from the crises that we feel will emerge in the coming years.
In short, Ambasz is an architect, that rare one, I suspect, who does not merely think in terms of just one building but, rather, always bears in mind an entire culture, who thinks of his buildings in the context of an entire planet still possessing many areas to be explored.
If I were the chairman of the committee for the Return of the Entire Humankind to Earth, I would first go to Mr. Ambasz and ask him to be our architect.