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Andrew Barrie
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Nov 5, 2003
Freed architecture
Rem Koolhaas, recently awarded the 2003 Praemium Imperiale for architecture, is prolific to the point of relentlessness. Looking at the stream of bold, innovative and aggressively hip buildings Koolhaas' Rotterdam-based office has produced, one well-known Japanese architect was prompted to liken him...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Jun 15, 2003
Home of conspicuous construction
It is hardly news that Prada spent a lot of money on their new flagship store in Tokyo's swish Aoyama district. The real surprise is what they got for it.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Apr 23, 2003
Shaking up the cityscape
Tadao Ando is not afraid to say what he thinks. More than that, when the Osaka-based architect has an idea about what life in cities should be like, he isn't afraid to radically alter the world to make his visions a reality. After the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake of 1995, he felt that it was important...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Nov 24, 2002
Start at the base and work your way up
Jon Jerde is an architect, and he wants to change your life. The world has never been short of architects with ambitions to create a bold new future (designed in their signature style), but Jerde has actually done it -- it has been calculated that the buildings Jerde has designed collectively draw more...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Nov 3, 2002
A pier without peer
The Yokohama International Passenger Terminal on Osanbashi Pier is slotted into a line of redevelopments along the waterfront -- a smorgasbord of ambitious architecture ranging from renovated century-old warehouses to the Blade Runner-esque towers of the Minato Mirai 21 complex.
CULTURE / Art
Sep 1, 2002
Postmodern -- or what?
Until the time of our great-great-grandparents, each region's architectural style was largely defined by its particular culture, climate and natural resources. Materials and construction techniques developed only very slowly, if at all. With all their buildings being built the same way, cities and towns...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Sep 1, 2002
Tokyo's blueprints of th past - and the future
Tokyo is an ugly city. Sure, it may not suffer from the smog of Mexico City, be blighted by Johannesburg-style shantytowns or possess Houston's plate-glass vacuity. Nonetheless, the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923, World War II bombing and subsequent construction booms have combined to obliterate the...
COMMUNITY
Mar 17, 2002
Cathedrals of commerce, towers of power
The tall building radically reshaped the modern city, thrusting it upward in the decades around the turn of the 20th century, just as the automobile pushed it outwards between the world wars. The skyward trend began in the 1890s, when high-rise commercial buildings began replacing the six- and seven-story...

Longform

Visitors to Kyoto walk along a street near Kiyomizu Temple in April. A popular tourist spot, Kyoto has seen what locals feel to be an overwhelming amount of tourists in 2024.
Is Japan ready for 60 million tourists?