Author Description

"Japan Towards Totalscape" locates Japanese architecture, urban design and landscape architecture within the cultural context of present-day Japan, rather than presenting projects as isolate entities. In the last decade, building activity in Japan has spread out from the metropolitan centers into less developed provincial regions, and in view of this development--and increased attention to environmental issues--the relationship between architecture and its environment is here given special emphasis. 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.