Tag - architecture

 
 

ARCHITECTURE

Japan Times
CULTURE / Books / ESSENTIAL READING FOR JAPANOPHILES
Jul 30, 2016
'Japan-ness in Architecture': Arata Isozaki and the search for a national identity
In "Japan-ness in Architecture," architect and theorist Arata Isozaki chronicles the search for a Japanese identity through design. Isozaki begins by outlining Japan's architectural discourse in the 20th century, in which he played a key role. He writes honestly about his contemporaries who grappled...
Japan Times
ASIA PACIFIC
May 6, 2016
Pyongyang skyline changes shape despite sanctions
The Pyongyang skyline is rising — and not just with the trophy structures that represent the North Korean state. Despite its political and economic isolation, the capital is in the midst of a building boom.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jan 12, 2016
Gabriel Orozco: always ahead of the game
Gabriel Orozco has returned to Tokyo. Following his retrospective "Inner Circles" at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo in early 2015, "Visible Labor" at Rat Hole Gallery is a collection of new works that explore Orozco's classic themes of the city, transportation and games, revealing influences of...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jan 5, 2016
The difficulty of being Frank Gehry
The exhibition "Frank Gehry: I Have an Idea," currently at 21_21 Design Sight and curated by fellow architect Tsuyoshi Tane, crams in a lot, but it's not exactly a linear retrospective. Rather, it's an upward look at a man on a tightrope — a man who must balance form and function; rein in creativity...
Japan Times
WORLD
Jan 3, 2016
Skyscraper blaze in Persian Gulf raises questions about safety
A blaze that engulfed a Dubai skyscraper on New Year's Eve — the emirate's third high-rise fire in three years — has raised fresh questions about the safety of materials used on the exteriors of tall buildings across the wealthy region.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Nov 17, 2015
'Gabriel Orozco: Visible Labor'
This show runs concurrent with Gabriel Orozco's solo show at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, his first large-scale exhibition in Japan. During his recent stay here, Orozco created a new series of works titled "Visible Labor," featuring pieces inspired by Japanese architecture and crafts.
LIFE / Language / MORNING ENGLISH
Nov 16, 2015
Let's discuss Hotel Okura's auction
Fans of Tokyo's soon-to-be-demolished Hotel Okura are getting a chance to purchase memorabilia from the 1960s-era modernist masterpiece.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Nov 7, 2015
Aomori's moving castle and other architectural tales
Once every century, Hirosaki in Aomori Prefecture experiences an unusual event — the Hirosaki Moving Castle Project — when the city relocates an entire castle using manpower only.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Nov 3, 2015
'Architecture Since 3.11'
Nov. 7-Jan. 31
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Oct 13, 2015
'Architect Frank Gehry: I Have an Idea'
Oct. 16-Feb. 7
Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle
Oct 10, 2015
Home sweet home: Preserving the traditional Kanazawa townhouse
Traditional wooden townhouses called machiya could once be found throughout Japan and were especially common in cities such as Kyoto and Nara in Kansai, as well as Kanazawa in Ishikawa Prefecture.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Oct 10, 2015
Saitama's 'Little Edo' is big on Japan's colorful history
As my smartphone clock flashes from 11:59 a.m. to 12 p.m., I watch the visitors to Kawagoe, in Saitama Prefecture wipe the sweat from their foreheads and direct their attention toward a more primitive form of time keeping — the Toki no Kane (Bell of Time) tower in the middle of the town square.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / How-tos / HOME TRUTHS
Oct 3, 2015
Don't be green about the charm of tatami
When we were thinking of buying a condominium, we visited several old danchi — apartments built by Japan's former public housing corporation — because they were cheap and, we thought, easy to renovate. One of the units we inspected had bedroom floors made of tatami mats, and we wondered if we could...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Sep 29, 2015
What lies behind the bright lights of the city
When visitors enter The Container, the micro-gallery housed inside Bross hair salon in Tokyo's Nakameguro neighborhood, they'll be faced with a faintly illuminated photograph that divides the space into two. The artwork, which forms the center of Suzanne Mooney's solo show, titled "A Few Light Taps Upon...
COMMENTARY / Japan
Sep 2, 2015
Olympian effort needed to save Tokyo's, Asia's heritage
The Hotel Okura is just the latest victim of Tokyo's penchant for tearing down its storied past to make way for a generic future.
Japan Times
LIFE / Style & Design
Aug 29, 2015
Keith Haring's urban art finds apt lodgings in Japan's countryside
If someone were to tell you that the largest private collection of New York street and pop artist Keith Haring's work is stashed in some of Japan's lushest mountainous countryside, and if you went to visit it, you could stay in a Keith Haring-inspired boutique hotel, you would probably think they were...
Japan Times
LIFE / Style & Design
Aug 29, 2015
Kitagawara shapes a new Kobuchizawa Station
Since 2011, Tokyo University of the Arts and the city of Hokuto in Yamanashi Prefecture have been working together to redesign its Kobuchizawa Station building as part of an initiative to breathe new life into the rural area.
Japan Times
LIFE / Style & Design
Aug 22, 2015
Kaoru Mende's bright ideas on darkness
'Whenever I see the alcove of a tastefully built Japanese room, I marvel at our comprehension of the secrets of shadows, our sensitive use of shadow and light," wrote the prominent modern novelist Junichiro Tanizaki in his 1933 essay on Japanese aesthetics, "In Praise of Shadows."

Longform

Sociologist Gracia Liu-Farrer argues that even though immigration doesn't figure into Japan's autobiography, it is more of a self-perception than a reality.
In search of the ‘Japanese dream’