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   The different cultural spaces of the Ishinomaki center – auditoriums, exhibition areas, and classrooms – are lined up along a narrow corridor of 170 meters that is fragmented to adapt to the human scale... [+]

Sou Fujimoto   Japan   Facing the Pacific Ocean, on a rocky stretch southeast of Tokyo, House O twists to face the sea and frame different views. The uniqueness of its floor plan, conceived as the branches of a tree, is its spatial continuity. All the spaces – entrance, li

Sou Fujimoto   Japan   A group of dwellings with the prototypical ‘house’ shape pile up in this apartment building in the residential section of the center of Tokyo. It consists of four dwelling units, each made up of two or three independent rooms connected by outdoor sta

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   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   Tokyo’s exclusive shopping district of Omotesando has become an architectural showcase with boutique buildings like that of Dior by SANAA, Prada by Herzog & de Meuron, and Tod’s by Toyo Ito. This collection of unique buildings mixes with the green of

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

Studio Velocity   Japan   This enclave in Aichi Prefecture, Japan, has two main defining features. One is its combination of low density and extensive occupation of land, which gives rise to an expansive fabric built close to the ground. The other is the presence of hedges th

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

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

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

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

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

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