co+re talks at the Faculty of Architecture, University of Belgrade.
Darko and Davisi introduced ordinary, dominant Tokyo which reluctantly opens itself to the stranger, and how they decided to embrace, for the foreigners rare, opportunity to live, explore and teach architecture and urbanism in one of the indisputable capitals of design culture. For that, one needs to learn how to enjoy what Barthes described as “the murmuring mass of an unknown language” which in Tokyo, indeed, “constitutes a delicious protection, envelops the foreigner […] an auditory film which halts at his ears all the alienations of the mother tongue”. In Tokyo they both understood Georges Perec, learned to observe and how to accept that, sometimes, one simply can not understand. Only then, Tokyo gives itself generously, opens up in its own, beautiful and provocative ways.