Jorge Almazán Architects Keio University Studiolab   Japan   An abandoned complex comprising two houses and three warehouses – where rice was once sold and stored – has been converted into an art center for the Japanese city of Ota, in Gunma Prefecture. Exhibition galleries, studios, and workshops are inserted

Shigeru Ban   Japan   On a site adjacent to the the Toyota Municipal Museum of Art, completed by Yoshio Taniguchi in 1995, stands this new institution for the city in Aichi Prefecture, a work of the Japanese architect Shigeru Ban. The Toyota City Museum, built parallel to

Kengo Kuma   Japan   A local company took the initiative of developing this cultural project as a coworking space and cafeteria. The structure and finishes are completed with cross-laminated timber panels, of which Okayama Prefecture is the largest producer in the countr

OMA - Office for Metropolitan Architecture   Japan   On view through 16 July at the Roppongi Museum in Tokyo is ‘Miss Dior: Stories of a Miss,’ an exhibition designed by Shohei Shigematsu, a partner at OMA, which walks visitors through almost eight decades of the history and creativity of the Miss Dior

Tomohiro Hata   Japan   With a built area of 260 square meters, the project involved reconstructing a house in the Japanese city of Muko, in Kyoto Prefecture. The area was previously dotted with farmhouses, each one composed of a main house and a group of other residential

Arquitectura-G   Japan   The first floor of a glass-enclosed building, on a main street in the commercial area of Nagoya, harbors the retail store of the Swedish fashion brand Acne Studios. The commission from the new creative direction of the company asked, on one hand, to

Hiroyuki Ito    Japan   The Japanese firm Hiroyuki Ito Architects was commissioned to build this apartment building in the Tokyo ward ot Bunkyo. The zone of its location has undergone significant change in recent years, with hotels replaced by residential complexes. The pro

Nikken Sekkei   Japan   On the campus of Waseda University in Honio, a city in Japan’s Saitama Prefecture, this three-story building contains facilities for sport training and meetings. The gym had to have natural indirect lighting, ideal for physical exercises done indoors

Kengo Kuma Taisei Design Planners Architects & Engineers   Japan   This wellness center doubles as a medical facility for staff of KaneKa, which specializes in environmental technology. The 625-square-meter building combines with green roofs that fold and touch ground, besides different systems developed by KaneKa,

Selgascano FRPO   Japan   The base is designed with prefabricated modules which transport the rest of the material, and which are assembled with three cranes that become part of the pavilion. A large fabric is stretched out over the more than thirty inflatable spheres that fo

Francisco Mangado MAM Architecture   Japan   To simplify and lighten the construction of the pavilion, its design takes as reference the apparent formal simplicity of old wooden ships, while the layout of the interior spaces is inspired by the constellation of Aquarius...

b720 Fermín Vázquez Arquitectos External Reference   Japan   The proposal stands out for its organic forms and its contact with the natural environment, establishing at the same time a connection with the sea world. The project includes several aquatic elements built using sustainable materials...

Icaria Atelier Fernando Suárez Corchete Javier Terrados   Japan   The geometry which configures the spaces is directly related to the evocation of the aquatic world: the layout of undulating surfaces can suggest water landscapes for some or wandering among boat hulls for others...

Kengo Kuma   Japan   Fifteen homes are stacked on the slope of Mt. Okura, overlooking the city of Sapporo (Hokkaido). The stepped volumes are set apart from one another just enough for all the units to get natural light and ventilation, and also optimal views of the surr

ENORME Studio Néstor Montenegro Smart and Green Design   Japan   Besides an easterly route from the Philippines to Acapulco, the Augustinian friar Andrés de Urdaneta discovered a north-flowing current towards the Japan Sea. Both phenomena helped Spain create an enriching commercial and cultural channel in the Paci

Kengo Kuma   Japan   Founded in the year 1958, Snow Peak is a manufacturer of climbing apparel and gear with headquarters in the region of Niigata, a popular spot for winter activities like skiing and visits to the traditional hot springs called onsen. The mountainous la

Sou Fujimoto Architects   Japan   The Maruhon Makiart Terrace – Ishinomaki Cultural Center seeks to express the recovery of Ishinomaki, a city in Miyagi Prefecture, Japan, that was much damaged by the earthquake and tsunami that hit the country in 2011. The different programs – audit

Sou Fujimoto Architects   Japan   The renovation of a 1970s brutalist building and the construction beside it of a ‘green tower’ are the latest chapters of a hotel establishment’s history of more than 300 years. Contrasting with the original building, which preserves its enclosure ev

1-1 Architects   Japan   The irregular perimeter of the plot, along with the proximity of the neighboring houses, is addressed with a narrow oblong just 1.8 meters wide and a careful positioning of windows and doors to the garden.

OMA - Office for Metropolitan Architecture   Japan   After its successful run at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, the traveling exhibition 'Christian Dior: Designer of Dreams' moves to the Museum of Contemporary Art of Tokyo. On view through 28 May, it is organized by a scenographic narrative de

SUO Style-A   Japan   This project aimed to revitalize Setonaikai National Park's Yashima area, a tourist destination that was popular in the 1970s but had since seen a decline in visitor numbers, owing to which many of the existing constructions were demolished and stric

Junya Ishigami + associates   Japan   In Ube, a city in Yamaguchi Prefecture, stands this cave house with a small restaurant included that was built for a chef. When the restaurant is closed, its dining area doubles as a family room and the owners’ children can do their homework there.

Ingenhoven Architects   Japan   The German office established in 1985 by Christoph Ingenhoven has completed two skyscrapers flanking Toranomon Hills Tower …

The bomb on Hiroshima caused not only trauma and radiation. It also had the paradoxical effect of opening up Japanese culture and society to the West. With the bomb came the Americans, and with them the artefacts of an incipient pop culture, plus the

Toilets are a symbol of Japan's world-renowned hospitality culture. With the Tokyo Toilet Project, public toilets have been redesigned in 17 locations throughout Shibuya with the help of 16 creators invited from around the world created by such world

1931-2022 Arata Isozaki died on 29 December at 91. He did not have a readily recognizable style; his mood was pragmatic, even eclectic, and this turned him into the best representative of the rich variety that has characterized Japanese architecture

The Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, is proud to present ‘Heatherwick Studio: Building Soulfulness’ from Friday, March 17 to Sunday, June 4, 2023. This exhibition is the first one in Japan to showcase twenty-eight major projects of Heatherwick Studio. By look

Luis Fernández-Galiano   The publishing house Siruela, which placed the philologist Irene Vallejo on the bestseller lists with her marvelous Papyrus: The Invention of Books in the Ancient World (a work based on her dissertation, which also brought her Spain’s National Essay

Located in the Toyosu area of Tokyo, teamLab Planets is a digital museum in which visitors are invited to enter large interactive installations where the boundaries between bodies and artworks are blurred. Since it opened in July 2018 the museum has

CNN   Oscar Holland   Junko Ogura   Designed in 1972 by architect Kisho Kurokawa, the Nakagin Capsule Tower stands as an emblematic example of metabolism architecture right in the heart of Tokyo, will be demolished on April 12, 2022. The decision ends years of uncertainty surrounding t

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

Kengo Kuma   The writer Haruki Murakami, a friend of mine, has written that both short stories and novels are indispensable for him. He develops the ideas that he discovers during the process of writing short stories in order to write novels. And when he is writi

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

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

Luis Fernández-Galiano   Perfection is route more than target. In the 16th century, the mystic St. Teresa of Ávila praised a life of poverty and humility in The Way of Perfection, and the same title served the writer Pío Baroja to express regenerationist concerns in the earl

The idea that architecture is a form of nature has become a maxim that the firm Junya Ishigami + Associates faithfully follows in its work, an oeuvre now enriched by the Botanical Garden Art Biotop: Water Garden in Tochigi, Japan. The singularity of

Arata Isozaki The Hyatt Foundation gave the Pritzker Prize in 2019 to Arata Isozaki, master of Japanese architecture and bridge between West and East. Born in 1941, Isozaki studied at the University of Tokyo, where he met Kenzo Tange, who was a ke

Wired   Michael Hardy   In 2011, A devastating tsunami crashed into the northeast coast of Japan, destroying entire villages, killing thousands and causing a meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. In the wake of the disaster, the Japanese government implemen

Cristina Carrillo de Albornoz   Madrid  2023  
La Huerta Grande   - 400 Pages 

Ito Teiji   Esthétique japonaise de la limite

David Chipperfield Architects   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

Naomi Pollock   London  2005  
Phaidon   - 240 Pages 

Arata Isozaki   Cambridge  2006  
MIT Press   - 349 Pages