Arata Isozaki Book order

<b>One of Japan's leading architects examines notions of Japan-ness as exemplified by key events in Japanese architectural history from the seventh to the twentieth century; essays on buildings and their cultural context.</b> Japanese architect Arata Isozaki sees buildings not as dead objects but as events that encompass the social and historical context--not to be defined forever by their everlasting materiality but as texts to be interpreted and reread continually. In <i>Japan-ness in Architecture</i>, he identifies what is essentially Japanese in architecture from the seventh to the twentieth century. In the opening essay, Isozaki analyzes the struggles of modern Japanese architects, including himself, to create something uniquely Japanese out of modernity. He then circles back in history to find what he calls Japan-ness in the seventh-century Ise shrine, reconstruction of the twelfth-century Todai-ji Temple, and the seventeenth-century Katsura Imperial Villa. He finds the periodic ritual relocation of Ise's precincts a counter to the West's concept of architectural permanence, and the repetition of the ritual an alternative to modernity's anxious quest for origins. He traces the constructive power of the Todai-ji Temple to the vision of the director of its reconstruction, the monk Chogen, whose imaginative power he sees as corresponding to the revolutionary turmoil of the times. The Katsura Imperial Villa, with its chimerical spaces, achieved its own Japan-ness as it reinvented the traditional shoin style. And yet, writes Isozaki, what others consider to be the Japanese aesthetic is often the opposite of that essential Japan-ness born in moments of historic self-definition; the purified stylization--what Isozaki calls Japanesquization--lacks the energy of cultural transformation and reflects an island retrenchment in response to the pressure of other cultures. Combining historical survey, critical analysis, theoretical reflection, and autobiographical account, these essays, written over a period of twenty years, demonstrate Isozaki's standing as one of the world's leading architects and preeminent architectural thinkers.

A detailed history of Katsura, the seventeenth-century Imperial Palace in Kyoto, Japan, a pivotal work of Japanese architecture, often described as the 'quintessence of Japanese taste'. First revealed to the modern architectural world by Bruno Taut, the great German architect, in the early twentieth-century, Katsura stunned and then excited the architectural community of the West. Le Corbusier and Walter Gropius, pillars of the Modernist establishment, were fascinated by Katsura's 'modernity'. This book documents the palace in detail, combining newly commissioned photographs, detailed drawings, archival material, and historical analysis.

This volume entitled Studio Talk is a collection of 13 interviews that have constituted the first chapter, “Studio”, of each issue of GA DOCUMENT EXTRA series that have been published since 1995, an unpublished interview with Frank O. Gehry originally for the aforementioned series, and an interview with Enric Miralles (GA DOCUMENT #60) who has passed away in 2000.Frank O. Gehry 1929-Arata Isozaki 1931-Ricardo Legorreta 1931-Richard Rogers 1933-Alvaro Siza 1933-Richard Meier 1934-Norman Foster 1935-Tadao Ando 1941-Thom Mayne/Morphosis 1944-Christian de Portzamparc 1944-Bernard Tschumi 1944-Jean Nouvel 1945-Steven Holl 1947-Zaha Hadid 1950-Enric Miralles 1955-2000

Part of a series that places buildings within their historical context, this text considers the Museum of Modern Art in Japan, the Clore Gallery and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. It includes technical drawings that explain how the buildings were detailed and put together.

This work features 20 of Arata Isozaki&#39;s projects, including the new designs for Toyonokuni Libraries for Cultural Resources and the Kyoto Concert Hall. Each building is illustrated with colour photographs, drawings and plans, and is analyzed in text by Isozaki himself.