Japan-ness In Architecture

Isozaki Arata (Toshiko Mori intro)

ISBN 10: 0262090384 / ISBN 13: 9780262090384

Editore: MIT Press Cambridge MA 2006, 2006

Riguardo questo articolo

23.0 x 15.0cms 350pp b/w illust very good+ hardback & dustwrapper Isozaki analyses the struggles that Japanese architects have hadt to create a national identity out of modernity. In the process he analyses the Ise shrine the Todai-ji temple & the Katsura Imperial villa. The section headings are: Japan-ness in architecture; a mimicry of origin Emperor Tenmu's Ise Jingu: consruction of the pure land (jodo) Chogen's rebuilding of Todai-ji: a diagonal strategy Katsura as envisioned by 'Enshu taste'.

Codice articolo 30027510

Dati bibliografici

• Titolo: Japan-ness In Architecture
• Editore: MIT Press Cambridge MA 2006
• Data di pubblicazione: 2006
• Lingua: Inglese
• ISBN 10: 0262090384
• ISBN 13: 9780262090384
• Rilegatura: Rilegato
• Condizione della sovraccoperta: sovraccoperta

Descrizione articolo

Riassunto

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 Japan-ness in Architecture, 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.

Informazioni sull?autore

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Arata Isosaki is a leading Japanese architect. His works include the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, the Olympic Stadium in Barcelona, the Volksbank Center am Postdamer Platz in Berlin, the Team Disney Building in Orlando, and the Tokyo University of Art and Design.