Kazuyo Sejima & Associates   Japan   As part of Pavilion Tokyo 2021, this sinuous installation was set up in the Hama-rikyu Gardens, with water smoothly flowing on a mirrored surface, reflecting the surroundings. Until 5 September the public can visit a series of temporary pavilions sca

Kengo Kuma   Japan   The unobstructed space inside a shed with a striking roof is home to a school for environmental studies that uses the building itself as a lesson on sustainability. Exemplifying restrained use of forest resources, the structure of V-forming pillars w

Kengo Kuma   Japan   A temporary space for open-air events in a residential area of central Tokyo features a vibrant lattice executed with oblong panels of cross-laminated cedarwood. Beneath its translucent skin of plastic resin fins, the pavilion features a recreation a

Kengo Kuma   Japan   At the foot of the ancestral castle of Oka, a small information center tells the history of the enclave beneath an expressive play of roofs clad in a lattice of smoked bamboo. A bamboo gallery marks the garden’s boundary, leading to an elevator that

Florian Busch   Japan   Not far from Niseko, the winter destination famous for its world-class ski slopes, in the same league as Aspen or St. Moritz, a home for a large family rises in the middle of a three-hectare land of virgin forest, safe from the bustle of the tourist

Junya Ishigami   Japan   A semi-exterior void forms a public square for the enjoyment of students of the Kanagawa Institute of Technology, a university center which had no hesitations assigning this new project to the architect who had completed some dazzling workshops on th

Kazuyo Sejima & Associates   Japan   Atop a hill in the Osaka University of Arts campus, this construction seeks to meld with the topography and natural environment besides harnessing views of the landscape and city. Hence Kazuyo Sejima – founder, with Ryue Nishizawa, of the firm SANAA

Tezuka Architects   Japan   The building’s design adapts to the needs of children: the sloping ellipse prompts them to run in endless circles; the rubber roof prevents injuries, and the underfloor heating using warm air prevents burns that could occur with conventional systems.

Sou Fujimoto   Japan   A home for two plus a dog. The house itself is comprised of three shells of progressive size nested inside one another. The outermost shell covers the entire premises, creating a covered, semi-indoor garden. The second shell encloses a limited area i

Sou Fujimoto   Japan   The privileged site is on a southwestwardly slope facing the sea in Hokkaido, the northernmost island of Japan. The programme, consisting of a rehabilitation facility for mentally disabled people, required an ambiguous atmosphere between the intimacy

Sou Fujimoto   Japan   The privacy of a house and the variety of a city coexist in this mental health center for children in Hokkaido. Chance is introduced as part of the design process, but is not less precise for this reason: precision planning that generates an accident

A symbol of Japanese metabolism, the Nakagin block of apartment capsules in Tokyo (1972), a work of Kisho Kurokawa, is a double tower with 140 prefabricated cubicles piled up around two vertical circulation shafts. Having much fallen into disrepair,

The opening ceremony for the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo has taken place in the Japan National Stadium, a work of Kengo Kuma, which presents a sophisticated composition of timber trusses and vegetation in its galleries. Sport events mark our everyday

When the eyes of the world see the Olympic flame in the cauldron of the Japan National Stadium, many will look at the sophisticated branches of its timber trusses and the soothing foliage of its galleries, and recognize the material discipline and lo

Sou Fujimoto   Through Architecture, I like to create beautiful integrations between Nature and Artifacts between Inside and Outside between Small and Large between Street and Room between Old and New between Simplicity and Diversity between Ground and Sky between

Thomas Daniell   Sou Fujimoto is an anomaly in the Japanese architectural world. Though he graduated from the University of Tokyo – a prestigious institution, to be sure – he has never worked for another architect, and in Japan the office at which you apprentice is m

Luis Fernández-Galiano   Sou Fujimoto describes his haphazard architectures as ‘notes without staves,’ and trying to interpret his forms through conventional composition is a futile effort. Escaping both the cartesian grid of regularity and the hierarchical pyramids of subor

Among the many peculiarities of SANAA, the most important Japanese studio in the current international scene, one is its confederal structure, thanks to which its two founders work as a team but can also each carry out projects on a solo basis. In th

Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects Perhaps to compensate for the demolition in 2014 of what was, up to that moment, the architects’ masterpiece – the American Folk Art Museum of New York –, in 2019 the Praemium Imperiale recognized the career of Wi

The Japanese Royal House and the Japan Art Association have given the Praemium Imperiale to the painter William Kentridge, the sculptor Mona Hatoum, the violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter, the actor Bando Tamasaburo, and the US husband-and-wife architects

Luis Fernández-Galiano   Monumental or minuscule, the oeuvre of Kengo Kuma could be described as pixelated craftsmanship. Its creative explosion, encompassing all scales and extending over four continents, is governed by a devotion to the material rigor of construction and t

Manuel Blanco   In the world of fashion, luxury is the ultimate quality, but it must be understood that it is not possible to create a luxury brand ex novo. Luxury has two inseparable ingredients: brand tradition, centenarian in many cases, and the careful use today

David Chipperfield   Tokio  2021  
LIXIL Publishing   - 140 Pages 

William O. Gardner   Visions of the City in Postwar Japanese Architecture and Science Fiction

Ramón Rodríguez Llera   Arquitecturas y paisajes del imaginario japonés. Del exotismo a la modernidad

Jesper Wachtmeister   Influencias y origen

Cathelijne Nuijsink   Rotterdam  2012  
Nai010 Publishers   - 328 Pages 

Claudia Hildner   Contemporary Japanese Dwellings

Rem Koolhaas Hans Ulrich Obrist   Colonia  2011  
Taschen   - 720 Pages 

Where Art and Architecture Conspire with Nature

Arata Isozaki   Cambridge  2006  
MIT Press   - 349 Pages 

Naomi Pollock   London  2005  
Phaidon   - 240 Pages