Japan Towards Totalscape: Contemporary Japanese Architecture, Urban Design and Landscape

Japan Towards Totalscape presents Japanese architecture, urban design, and landscape architecture within the cultural context of present-day Japan. Rather than presenting projects as autonomous entities, the emphasis here is on the relationship between architectural and urban projects and their direct and indirect surroundings. In the last decade, building activity in Japan has spread out from the metropolitan centers into less developed provincial regions. In view of this development--and the increasing attention given to environmental issues in general, the relationship between architecture and its environment is given special emphasis here. Along with essays by prominent critics, historians, economists, and designers from Japan and around the world, Japan Towards Totalscape features extensive documentation of more than eighty different projects from leading Japanese architects of various generations over the past ten years, including Itsuko Hasegawa, Atelier Wow, Tadao Ando, Jun Aoki, Shigeru Ban, C + A, F.O.B.A., Toyo Ito, Jun Tamaki, and Riken Yamamoto, among others.