Kazuo Shinohara

One of the greatest and most influential architects of Japan's postwar generation, Shinohara Kazuo (1925-2006) has remained virtually unknown outside the small community of devoted followers. As one of the leaders of architectural movement Metabolism, Shinohara achieved cult- figure stature with sublimely beautiful, purist houses that break away from Japan's postwar suburban architecture.Perhaps the most iconic of Shinohara's works, House of White (1964-66), rearranges a familiar design palette: a square plan, a pointed roof, white walls, and a symbolic heart pillar-to give the almost oceanic spaciousness through abstraction. The underlying formalism in Shinohara's architecture-its basic explorations of geometry and color-lends his work a poetic quality that fuses simplicity and surprise, the ordered and the unexpected.This volume brings together new scholarship from the foremost specialists on Shinohara and Japan's modern architecture. New perspectives and historical frameworks range from the development of the small house as a building type in postwar Japan to Shinohara's engagement with French critical theory.Hitherto unpublished archival drawings and personal travel photographs by Shinohara complement the essays. AUTHOR: Seng Kuan holds a PhD in architectural history from Harvard University and teaches at Harvard Graduate School of Design and the Chinese University of Hong Kong. SELLING POINTS: * Kazuo Shinohara (1925-2006) was a Japanese architect who developed a cult following for his purist houses. He helped develop the architectural movement, Metabolism which is characterized by pure white spaces and megastructures. One of his most well known buildings is House of White. * This book brings together new scholarship from the foremost specialists on Shinohara. * This book deals with Japanese modern architecture which is very influential around the world. * This volume includes previously unpublished archival drawings and personal travel photographs of Shinohara.

Kazuo Shinohara (1925-2006) has proved to be the most influential architect of his generation in shaping contemporary Japanese architecture. His influence stretches from Toyo Ito, Itsuko Hasegawa and Kazunari Sakamoto, via Kazuyo Sejima, to the many excellent young studios working today.

"In addition to highlighting the human benefits of built environments which relate to particular place, time and being, many of the Japanese buildings examined illustrate practical strategies for revealing these universal parameters which are equally applicable beyond Japan. It is suggested that wider use of some of these approaches could not only help to sustain both environmental and cultural identities against the homogenising effects of globalisation, but also has the potential to heighten our appreciation of the peculiar condition of being here now."--Jacket.

In cooperation with Harvard University Graduate School of Design

Shinohara, arguably Japan's most original architect, was born in 1925 and comes from a mathematical background. He was trained at Tokyo Institute of Technology, the national polytechnic university (resembling ETH in Zurich); he also taught in the Department of Engineering for some thirty years. One of the substantial figures of late twentieth-century design, he possesses the sensibility of both a Voysey and a Lautreamont. Well known for his residential work, Shinohara has more recently turned his hand to larger buildings, notably the Centennial Hall of Tokyo Institute of Technology, which serves as a club and meeting facility for the alumni and faculty. A work of imposing appearance, Centennial Hall has nonetheless mystified many Japanese observers, who see in it a giant robotic figure towering over the urban landscape. While notions of technology are certainly implied in the design -- the structure could not have been calculated without a computerized matrix of 3180 simultaneous equations-- nothing was farther from the architect's intention than a simple High-Tech emblem, or popular icon.On the contrary, this book portrays Centennial Hall as the culmination of three successive architectural concepts or styles, the product of Shinohara's career as a teacher and hands-on designer during the course of Japan's unbelievably rapid postwar growth. Thus Centennial Hall looks toward what Shinohara speaks of as a fourth space -- with reference to both the F 14 A Tomcat fighter plane and the Apollo 11 moon-landing craft. But just as this work was not intended to evoke comic-book style robots, neither does it seek to embody American-style technology for its own sake.

Kenzo Tange (1913-2005) is a peerless figure among twentieth-century Japanese architects, unmatched in his talent, influence, and versatility. A leading force of the Metabolist movement, he was the first non-Western architect whose works would be embraced as universal in value. This unique assemblage of new scholarship by an international team of experts reframes Tange according to the contingencies of Japanese modernism as well as contemporary discourses of cultural identity, technology, urbanization, and the synthesis of the arts. Case studies on celebrated works-Hiroshima, Tokyo Bay Plan, and Yoyogi Stadiums-clarify Tange's wide-ranging interests and design methodology. Illustrated with archival drawings and period photographs, this volume provides fresh and compelling perspectives on the practices, discourses, and production contexts of Tange's work as well as the architecture and urbanism of postwar Japan. Kenzo Tange-Architecture for the World represents the most serious and comprehensive reassessment of Tange in the English language in decades.

"Over 500 buildings are presented, from 15th-century Buddhist temples to 20th-century cultural buildings, from venerable folkhouses to works by leading contemporary architects of Japan such as Kenzo Tange, Fumihiko Maki, Arata Isozaki, Hiroshi Hara, Toyo Ito and Riken Yamamoto as well as by foreign architects such as Norman Foster, Peter Eisenman and Steven Holl."--BOOK JACKET.