🚚 Free Worldwide Shipping on All Orders!Shop Now
HomeStore

Modern Architecture in Japan

Modern Architecture in Japan

Manfredo Tafuri (1935–1994), the celebrated Italian architectural historian, published L’architettura moderna in Giappone in 1964. At the time, Tafuri was twenty-nine years old and had not visited Japan. His slim volume on the country’s postwar architecture was the first in a series of guidebooks on contemporary architecture under the direction of Leonardo Benevolo. Here, translated into English for the first time, the book presents a rare outsider’s view of the Metabolist movement and figures such as Kenzō Tange by one of the most astute critics of the second part of the twentieth century.

Tafuri’s ideas about Japanese architecture were primarily formed through texts, including magazine articles and contemporary photographs. How did Tafuri come to select the achievements of Japanese architects as the focus of his reflections on modern architecture? What happens when a historian of architecture relies purely on photographs for making judgments about a building? 

Edited and introduced by Mohsen Mostafavi, this volume reflects on these questions and more, presenting the translated text alongside essays by Marco Biraghi, Catherine Ingraham, Ken Tadashi Oshima, Federico Scaroni, and Hajime Yatsuka, as well as a rich collection of images. Together, these materials situate the reader in relation to Tafuri’s scholarship, the histories of Japanese architecture and Italian criticism, and the idiosyncrasies of this luminous text.
$8.40

Original: $28.00

-70%
Modern Architecture in Japan—

$28.00

$8.40
Product image 1
Product image 2
Product image 3
Product image 4
Product image 5
Product image 6
Product image 7
Product image 8
Product image 9
Product image 10
Product image 11
Product image 12
Product image 13
Product image 14
Product image 15
Product image 16
Product image 17
Product image 18
Product image 19
Product image 20
Product image 21
Product image 22
Product image 23
Product image 24
Product image 25
Product image 26
Product image 27
Product image 28
Product image 29
Product image 30
Product image 31
Product image 32
Product image 33
Product image 34

Description

Manfredo Tafuri (1935–1994), the celebrated Italian architectural historian, published L’architettura moderna in Giappone in 1964. At the time, Tafuri was twenty-nine years old and had not visited Japan. His slim volume on the country’s postwar architecture was the first in a series of guidebooks on contemporary architecture under the direction of Leonardo Benevolo. Here, translated into English for the first time, the book presents a rare outsider’s view of the Metabolist movement and figures such as Kenzō Tange by one of the most astute critics of the second part of the twentieth century.

Tafuri’s ideas about Japanese architecture were primarily formed through texts, including magazine articles and contemporary photographs. How did Tafuri come to select the achievements of Japanese architects as the focus of his reflections on modern architecture? What happens when a historian of architecture relies purely on photographs for making judgments about a building? 

Edited and introduced by Mohsen Mostafavi, this volume reflects on these questions and more, presenting the translated text alongside essays by Marco Biraghi, Catherine Ingraham, Ken Tadashi Oshima, Federico Scaroni, and Hajime Yatsuka, as well as a rich collection of images. Together, these materials situate the reader in relation to Tafuri’s scholarship, the histories of Japanese architecture and Italian criticism, and the idiosyncrasies of this luminous text.