Join us for a lecture by Marcela Aragüez on her new book, The Red Book, the first English translation of a little-known 1967 report that laid the conceptual groundwork for Festival Plaza—the iconic centerpiece of Expo ’70 in Osaka.
Produced by an extraordinary team of architects, artists, engineers, computer scientists, musicians, and writers, the original report proposed a radically new model of adaptive urban space. It captures 1960s Japan at a moment of bold experimentation, when traditional festivals were reimagined as spatial strategies and local cultural knowledge met cybernetics, media theory, and experimental performance. The result was a vision of a managed yet interactive environment, poised between human agency and technological control.
In recovering this overlooked document, Aragüez challenges the dominant narratives of Expo ’70 and widens the cast of protagonists in postwar architectural history. At a moment of renewed debate around responsive environments and the future of public space, the book offers a timely and provocative account of how past futures were collectively imagined, engineered, and staged.
Following the lecture, Ken Tadashi Oshima will join Araguez for a discussion.
Marcela Aragüez “The Red Book”
Date and Time : July 8th, 2026. 19:00~20:15 JST (door opens at 18:45)
Place : HASEKO-KUMA HALL (Engineering Building no.11, 7-3-1, Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, TOKYO)
Language : English
No registration required.
Please directly come to the venue. No online broadcast planned.
