Book Review: Japan Towards Totalscape
Japan Towards Totalscape: Contemporary Japanese Architecture, Urban Design and Landscape edited by Moriko Kira and Mariko Terada, published by NAi Publishers, 2001. Paperback, 332 pages. (Amazon)
To prepare for an upcoming trip to Japan, a friend recommended this book for contemporary architecture in the island nation. As much a theoretical investigation into the Japanese landscape and its current context and a guide to recent buildings, the book is ultimately another companion to an exhibition, held at the Netherlands Architecture Institute in late 2000, early 2001. What makes the exhibition and the book unique is it viewpoint: Dutch architects looking at the landscape of Japan. While the former control nature to an enormous degree through large-scale urban planning, the latter interacts with the landscape one building at a time, creating a continuous flow without planning mechanisms like the Dutch. The book breaks the Japanese landscape into five categories: Metropolitan, Urban, Rural, Natural, and Artificial, with buildings and projects placed into each category to indicate how the country deals with context and how it may in the future. Essays, interviews and photographs of the generic landscape bookend each chapter, in a move from the city to the countryside and back again, reaching what the editors call Totalscape, the unique projects maintaining both diversity and continuity in the landscape all across the country.
To prepare for an upcoming trip to Japan, a friend recommended this book for contemporary architecture in the island nation. As much a theoretical investigation into the Japanese landscape and its current context and a guide to recent buildings, the book is ultimately another companion to an exhibition, held at the Netherlands Architecture Institute in late 2000, early 2001. What makes the exhibition and the book unique is it viewpoint: Dutch architects looking at the landscape of Japan. While the former control nature to an enormous degree through large-scale urban planning, the latter interacts with the landscape one building at a time, creating a continuous flow without planning mechanisms like the Dutch. The book breaks the Japanese landscape into five categories: Metropolitan, Urban, Rural, Natural, and Artificial, with buildings and projects placed into each category to indicate how the country deals with context and how it may in the future. Essays, interviews and photographs of the generic landscape bookend each chapter, in a move from the city to the countryside and back again, reaching what the editors call Totalscape, the unique projects maintaining both diversity and continuity in the landscape all across the country.
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