Over at Underbelly, John Alderman created a slideshow of photographs by Huschang Pourian, a designer living in Tokyo. Pourian is exhibiting his photographs of air conditioners at a gallery in the Gaienmae neighborhood.
I realised that even though there are a lot of earthquakes on this island (of Japan), traditional house-building seemed to avoid using diagonals which would strengthen the structures. Based on the inner unit of tatami mats, everything was following the right angle and parallel lines – Japanese order for body and soul. But I also found elements like tubes and wires destroying this order, going through walls, spreading chaos and confusion. Connected to these were white boxes with fans inside. I suddenly fell in love (visually) with these air conditioners and started chasing them….
But air conditioners are not just beautiful. Beside the fact that they make our lives much more comfortable, they also have a dark side. Their high energy consumption causes the well-known "Heat Island Effect". Tokyo is especially affected by this.
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