Modern Asian Living

Featuring hundreds of photographs, this Asian design book is a love note to the modern, stylish luxury homes and interior spaces of Asia. In recent years Asian design--in architecture, interiors and product design--has catapulted on to the global stage. Gone are the thatched villas and vernacular furniture of yesteryear. Replacing them are sleek, modern spaces, decked out with high quality furnishings and furniture, beautiful artworks ans state-of the-art technology. This book showcases a number of brand new properties--be they shops, homes, holiday houses, restaurants, bars of offices--that represent this new wave of Asian talent. Each space in Modern Asian Living has been chosen and styled carefully, often with furniture and products from some of the Pacific region's hot manufacturers and suppliers. Work from all the leading architects, interior designers, product designers and artists are showcased—and full listings are given at the back of the book.

With over 180 photographs Contemporary Asian Living Rooms explores 50 of Southeast Asia's most interesting homes and hotels. Living room design in Asia has moved away form the classical Asia style to incorporate the new global chic. This Asian design book takes you into the living rooms of fifty of Southeast Asia's most interesting homes and hotels, showcasing the work of up-and-coming local talents such as Pantaa, Yothaka and Tawul Praman as well as the latest in European design. Living room interiors range from the starkly minimal to the luxuriously plush - from Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and Bali. Created by some of the leading talents in contemporary Asian design today, these interiors feature creative shapes, contours, materials and new ways of working with the space where family and friends spend most of their time together in the house.

Modern Asian Design provides a comprehensive introduction to the development of Asian design in the modern period, both tracing historical threads and offering a theoretical framework within which to chart the history of design in Asia. Rather than a singular “Asian history”, this book presents a series of studies centred on trade routes, colonial relationships, regional networks and cross-cultural exchanges. Modern Asian Design builds on existing resources beyond design history in an effort to map the field, focusing particularly on relations between Asia and the West and also across Asian design cultures. Opening with a brief overview of trade and exchange networks in the 17th and 18th centuries, the bulk of this study comprises analysis of the development of modern design in Asia during the later 19th and early 20th centuries, a period of rapid modernisation. The book's final two chapters bring these central ideas into a contemporary and highly relevant context.

Featuring over 300 beautiful photographs and extensive commentary, New Asian Style blends the chic designs of modern Asia with the traditional sensibilities of traditional art from across the region. More than ever before, interior design is a global affair. And more than ever, Westerners are eager to try out elements of Asian design and architecture. This book is the ultimate resource for professional and amateur designers seeking to recreate the mysterious elegance, balance, and beauty of Asian design. Through the magic of Masano Kawana's beautiful full-color photography, New Asian Style explores more than 30 stunning contemporary houses and homes from Singapore, all of which stand as examples of interior decorating and style that transcend their Eastern origins. In an effort to help designers pick up Asian ideas for their own settings, Jane Marsden's essays examine what elements make Asian style and how they might be captured in new settings anywhere in the world.

In many non-Western contexts, modernization has tended to be equated with Westernization, and hence with an abandonment of authentic indigenous identities and values. This is evident in the recent history of many Asian societies, where efforts to modernize – spurred on by the spectre of foreign domination – have often been accompanied by determined attempts to stamp national variants of modernity with the brand of local authenticity: ‘Asian values’, ‘Chinese characteristics’, a Japanese cultural ‘essence’ and so forth. Highlighting (or exaggerating) associations between the more unsettling consequences of modernization and alien influence has thus formed part of a strategy whereby elites in many Asian societies have sought to construct new forms of legitimacy for old patterns of dominance over the masses. The apparatus of modern systems of mass education, often inherited from colonial rulers, has been just one instrument in such campaigns of state legitimation. This book presents analyses of a range of contemporary projects of citizenship formation across Asia in order to identify those issues and concerns most central to Asian debates over the construction of modern identities. Its main focus is on schooling, but also examines other vehicles for citizenship-formation, such as museums and the internet; the role of religion (in particular Islam) in debates over citizenship and identity in certain Asian societies; and the relationship between state-centred identity discourses and the experience of increasingly ‘globalized’ elites. With chapters from an international team of contributors, this interdisciplinary volume will appeal to students and scholars of Asian culture and society, Asian education, comparative education and citizenship.

A seminal publication focusing on the modern art of Japan, China, India, Thailand, and Indonesia. A significant and challenging contribution to the discussion of the advent of modernism in Asia.

Modern Asian Theatre and Performance 1900 – 2000 is a ground-breaking survey, tracking the advent of modern drama in Japan, India, China, Korea and Southeast Asia. It considers the shaping power of realism and naturalism, the influence of Western culture, the relationship between theatrical modernisation and social modernisation, and how theatre operates in contemporary Asian society. Organised by period, nation and region, each chapter provides: ·a historical overview of the culture; ·an outline of theatre history; ·a survey of significant playwrights, actors, directors, companies, plays and productions. With contributions from an international team of scholars, this authoritative introduction will uniquely equip students and scholars with a broad understanding of the modern theatre histories of Asia.

This book would never have materialized without the cooperation of all of the contributors, each of whom, certainly, also has a list of people to thank for help. As editor, however, I have the privilege of naming a few whose contributions were especially important. My understanding of Central Asian society has benefited enormously from the opportunities I have had to work and conduct research in the region, especially in Uzbekistan. I would therefore like to thank the International Research and Exchanges Board and the University of Tennessee for making several stays in Central Asia possible over the past few years.