Drawings, Organic Building (1989–1993), Osaka, Japan 日本大阪有機大廈（1989至1993年）繪圖

This presentation drawing depicts the Organic Building, a nine-storey structure in Osaka conceived and realised by Gaetano Pesce from 1989 to 1993. Built as offices for Oguraya Yamamoto, a Japanese foodstuffs company, the project is notable for its gridded facade of orange fibreglass panels, each of which is embedded with a planter at its centre. Exemplifying Pesce’s humanistic playfulness and wit, the panels take on different personalities, with a variety of pipe- and scupper-like forms that appear to be extensions of the building. Together, the planters hold over eighty varieties of plants, which are watered by a sophisticated irrigation system hidden behind the facade.

Characteristic of Pesce’s bold, individualistic play with colour, scale, shape, and materials, the ‘vertical garden’ of the Organic Building can be considered a precursor to today’s vegetation-covered ‘green walls’. The project also represents the productive exchange of ideas between Italy and Japan during the 1980s, when many architects and designers, including Pesce, Ettore Sottsass, Isozaki Arata, Uchiga Shigeru, and Kuramata Shiro, created strong links between the two countries.

This series contains over thirty drawings relating to the design of the building, including concept sketches, detail drawings of particular building features, and large-scale renderings.