1st Edition
Materials and Meaning in Contemporary Japanese Architecture Tradition and Today
Part 1: Black Blood Red to Palest Pink 1. Neolithic Daddy 2. Lamune Hot Springs 3. Kengo Kuma: From PoMo to Paulownia 4. Murai Museum: Subtle Setting for a Shabby Studio 5. Outlandish Amateur, Polished Professional: Comparing the Approaches of Terunobu Fujimori and Kengo Kuma Part 2: Radical Reds 6. Looking Back at Japan’s Radical Reds: Team Zoo Part 3: Reluctant Regionalists 7. Remaking the Landscape of Kotohira Shrine 8. Fumihiko Maki, Ancient Izumo and Oku 9. Jun Aoki’s Aomori Museum of Art 10. Reluctant Reds Conclusion: The Red School: From Deepest Red to Palest Shades of Pink
Biography
Dana Buntrock began her studies of Japanese architecture more than twenty years ago, her first visit a month-long trip that took her to tiny corners of the country to see avant-garde and out-of-the-way works. Her more recent research trips still range in remote pockets of the country, now renting cars, carrying a complex array of cameras and seeking out craftsmen who carry on age-old traditions. The architecture she sees is still often avant-garde, but today there are other approaches evident as well, ones more concerned with underscoring the uniqueness of these remote regions. Buntrock’s first book, Japanese Architecture as a Collaborative Process: Opportunities in a Flexible Construction Culture (E&FN Spon, 2001) looked at professional practice and what it said about a nation’s culture. Her second, Materials and Meaning in Contemporary Japanese Architecture (Routledge, 2010) is concerned with the art and craft of architecture, and how these are used to reflect the particularities of places.
"Dana Buntrock has written a valuable and long-needed overview of the historic, aesthetic, and spiritual meanings attached to Japanese building materials. By taking this approach, she reveals, for instance, Fumihiko Maki's feel for traditional vernacular materials like cedar, demonstrating that much of contemporary Japanese architecture judiciously juggles past and present. 'Natural materials are garrulous,' architect Hiroshi Naito tells the author. Buntrock offers insights into how the most ancient and 'talky' materials catalyze flexible thinking in the most modern of Japan's architects." -Norman Weinstein, Architectural Record
