The first profound depiction of the great reformer of Japanese garden design in the twentieth century Mirei Shigemori decisively shaped the development of Japanese landscape architecture in the twentieth century. He founded the Kyoto Garden Society in 1932 and published the 26-volume Illustrated Book on the History of the Japanese Garden in 1938. One year later he designed his own first masterwork, the garden of the main hall of Tôfuku-ji Temple. Between then and his death in 1975, he went on to design 240 gardens throughout Japan. Among the most famous are the Tenrai-an tea garden (1969) and the Matsuo Taisha garden (1975). All of his gardens are distinguished by the fact that they honor tradition while at the same time – through their openness to Western modernity – they free themselves from its weight and develop a language of their own. The first part of the book will deal with Shigemori’s life and influences, including his interest in ikebana and tea ceremonies. The second part will offer detailed presentations of some seventeen different gardens. Mirei Shigemori prägte maßgeblich die Entwicklung der japanischen Landschaftsarchitektur im 20. Jahrhundert. Seit den 1920er Jahren tätig, gründete er 1932 die Kyotoer Gartengesellschaft und publizierte 1938 das 26-bändige Werk Illustrated Book on the History of the Japanese Garden. Ein Jahr später entwarf er sein erstes eigenes Meisterwerk, den Garten bei der Haupthalle des Tôfuku-ji Tempels. Von da an gestaltete er 240 Gärten in ganz Japan bis zu seinem Tod 1975; zu den berühmtesten gehören der Teegarten Tenrai-an (1969) und der Matsuo Taisha-Garten (1975). Kennzeichen seiner Gärten ist, dass sie die Tradition ehren und sich zugleich – in der Öffnung gegenüber den Einflüssen der westlichen Moderne – von dem Althergebrachten durch eine eigene Sprache lösen. Der erste Teil des Buches wird sich mit dem Leben Shigemoris und den Einflüssen auf sein Werk auseinandersetzen. Dabei wird auch seine Auseinandersetzung mit Ikebana und Teezeremonien eine Rolle spielen. Der zweite Teil wird etwa 17 Gärten ausführlich darstellen.

Mirei Shigemori had a major impact on the development of Japanese landscape architecture in the twentieth century. Active from the 1920s, he founded the Kyoto Garden Society in 1932. In 1939 he designed his own first masterpiece, the garden at the main hall of the Tôfuku-ji temple. From then on he designed 240 gardens all over Japan until his death in 1975; amongst the most famous are the Tenrai-an tea garden (1969) and the Matsuo Taisha garden (1975). The main characteristic of his gardens is that they respect tradition and, at the same time, depart from conventional paradigms by opening up to the influence of Western modernism with its own language. The first part of the book covers Shigemori’s life and factors that influenced his work. The second part contains a detailed illustration of 17 gardens. The book is published as a new and revised edition.

Every three years, three hundred square miles of land in northwestern Japan are transformed into the most ambitious and largest-scale art installation in the world: the Echigo-Tsumari Art Field. One hundred sixty of the world's best-known landscape artists, sculptors, and architects create artworks in two hundred villages that dot the mountains and terraced rice fields of the Japanese countryside, with the intent of rediscovering relationships between nature, art, and humanity, forging collaborations between global artists and local communities, and connecting people to each other and the land. Half a million people make the annual pilgrimage to witness this unique art project. Art Place Japan offers an exhaustive full-color catalog of the eight hundred artworks created during the past fifteen years. For those lucky enough to visit, this book, the first in English on the subject, also offers detailed information on how to visit the often-remote sites, with travel information and a newly commissioned map that locates the projects throughout the Niigata Prefecture.

An in-depth exploration spanning 800 years of the art, essence, and enduring impact of the Japanese garden. The most comprehensive exploration of the art of the Japanese garden published to date, this book covers more than eight centuries of the history of this important genre. Author and garden designer Sophie Walker brings fresh insight to this subject, exploring the Japanese garden in detail through a series of essays and with 100 featured gardens, ranging from ancient Shinto shrines to imperial gardens and contemporary Zen designs. Leading artists, architects, and other cultural practitioners offer personal perspectives in newly commissioned essays.

A detailed history of Katsura, the seventeenth-century Imperial Palace in Kyoto, Japan, a pivotal work of Japanese architecture, often described as the 'quintessence of Japanese taste'. First revealed to the modern architectural world by Bruno Taut, the great German architect, in the early twentieth-century, Katsura stunned and then excited the architectural community of the West. Le Corbusier and Walter Gropius, pillars of the Modernist establishment, were fascinated by Katsura's 'modernity'. This book documents the palace in detail, combining newly commissioned photographs, detailed drawings, archival material, and historical analysis.

The first book to reevaluate the evocative and polarizing work of one of midcentury America’s most significant architects Born to Japanese immigrant parents in Seattle, Minoru Yamasaki (1912–1986) became one of the towering figures of midcentury architecture, even appearing on the cover of Time magazine in 1963. His self-proclaimed humanist designs merged the modern materials and functional considerations of postwar American architecture with traditional elements such as arches and colonnades. Yamasaki’s celebrated and iconic projects of the 1950s and ’60s, including the Lambert–St. Louis Airport and the U.S. Science Pavilion in Seattle, garnered popular acclaim. Despite this initial success, Yamasaki’s reputation began to decline in the 1970s with the mixed critical reception of the World Trade Center in New York, one of the most publicized projects in the world at the time, and the spectacular failure of St. Louis’s Pruitt-Igoe Apartments, which came to symbolize the flaws of midcentury urban renewal policy. And as architecture moved in a more critical direction influenced by postmodern theory, Yamasaki seemed increasingly old-fashioned. In the first book to examine Yamasaki’s life and career, Dale Allen Gyure draws on a wealth of previously unpublished archival material, and nearly 200 images, to contextualize his work against the framework of midcentury modernism and explore his initial successes, his personal struggles—including with racism—and the tension his work ultimately found in the divide between popular and critical taste.

Few figures in the American arts have stories richer in irony than does architect Minoru Yamasaki. While his twin towers of New York’s World Trade Center are internationally iconic, few who know the icon recognize its architect’s name or know much about his portfolio of more than 200 buildings. One is tempted to call him America’s most famous forgotten architect. He was classed in the top tier of his profession in the 1950s and ’60s, as he carried modernism in novel directions, yet today he is best known not for buildings that stand but for two projects that were destroyed under tragic circumstances: the twin towers and the Pruitt-Igoe housing project in St. Louis. This book undertakes a reinterpretation of Yamasaki’s significance that combines architectural history with the study of his intersection with defining moments of American history and culture. The story of the loss and vulnerability of Yamasaki’s legacy illustrates the fragility of all architecture in the face of natural and historical forces, yet in Yamasaki’s view, fragility is also a positive quality in architecture: the source of its refinement, beauty, and humanity. We learn something essential about architecture when we explore this tension of strength and fragility. In the course of interpreting Yamasaki’s architecture through the wide lens of the book we see the mid-century role of Detroit as an industrial power and architectural mecca; we follow a debate over public housing that entailed the creation and eventual destruction of many thousands of units; we examine competing attempts to embody democratic ideals in architecture and to represent those ideals in foreign lands; we ponder the consequences of anti-Japanese prejudice and the masculism of the architectural profession; we see Yamasaki’s style criticized for its arid minimalism yet equally for its delicacy and charm; we observe Yamasaki making a great name for himself in the Arab world but his twin towers ultimately destroyed by Islamic militants. As this curious tale of ironies unfolds, it invites reflection on the core of modern architecture’s search for meaning and on the creative possibilities its legacy continues to offer. Beautifully illustrated with over 100 color illustrations of Yamasaki’s buildings, this book will be of interest to students, academics and professionals in a range of disciplines, including architectural history, architectural theory, architectural preservation, and urban design and planning.