Project Japan: Metabolism Talks...

Project Japan: Metabolism Talks...

Hans-Ulrich Obrist, Rem Koolhaas • Taschen

ISBN-10: 3836525089 · ISBN-13: 978‑3836525084 · 2011

Live offer for this book: 14 live copies of this book from $59.50 (as of 2026-08-26).

Dimensions: 9.2 × 6.7 × 1.7 in

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Completeness 40

Cover quality: good

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then the victors imposed democracy on the vanquished. when the oil crisis initiated the end of the West, the architects of Japan spread out over the world to define the contours of a post-Western aesthetic....” ―Rem Koolhaas / Hans Ulrich Obrist Between 2005 and 2011, architect Rem Koolhaas and curator Hans Ulrich Obrist interviewed the surviving members of Metabolism―the first non-Western avant-garde, launched in Tokyo in 1960, in the midst of Japan’s postwar miracle. Project Japan features hundreds of never-before-seen images―master plans from Manchuria to Tokyo, intimate snapshots of the Metabolists at work and play, architectural models, magazine excerpts, and astonishing sci-fi urban visions―telling the 20th-century history of Japan through its architecture. From the tabula rasa of a colonized Manchuria in the 1930s, a devastated Japan after the war, and the establishment of Metabolism at the 1960 World Design Conference in Tokyo to the rise of Kisho Kurokawa as the first celebrity architect, the apotheosis of Metabolism at Expo ’70 in Osaka, and its expansion into the Middle East and Africa in the 1970s: The result is a vivid documentary of the last moment when architecture was a public rather than a private affair. Oral history by Rem Koolhaas and Hans Ulrich Obrist Extensive interviews with Arata Isozaki, Toshiko Kato, Kiyonori Kikutake, Noboru Kawazoe, Fumihiko Maki, Kisho Kurokawa, Kenji Ekuan, Atsushi Shimokobe, and Takako and Noritaka Tange Hundreds of never-before-seen images, architectural models, and magazine excerpts Layout by award-winning Dutch designer Irma Boom Review "Project Japan features hundreds of fantastic never-before-seen images that tell the 20th Century history of Japan through its architecture." ― Yellow Magazine About the Author Rem Koolhaas is a co-founder of the Office for Metropolitan Architecture. Having worked as a journalist and scriptwriter before becoming an architect, in 1978 he published Delirious New York. His 1996 book S,M,L,XL summarized the work of OMA and established connections between contemporary society and architecture. Among many international awards, he has received the Pritzker Prize (2000) and the Praemium Imperiale (2003). He directed the 2014 Venice Architecture Biennale, coinciding with the first publication of Elements of Architecture. Hans Ulrich Obrist (b. 1968, Zurich, Switzerland) is artistic director of the Serpentine Galleries, London. Prior to this, he was the curator of the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. Since his first show “World Soup” (The Kitchen Show) in 1991, he has curated more than 300 shows.

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