APRIL 2007 » book review

Buildings as Events

Japan-ness In Architecture
by Arata Isozaki
The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA; 2006
369 pp.; hardcover; 54 b&w illus.; $29.95
ISBN 0-262-09038-4

Reviewed by Nicole V. Gagné

One of the world's leading contemporary architects is Japan's Arata Isozaki, designer of such prestigious international projects as Barcelona's Olympic Stadium, the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, the Tokyo University of Art and Design, and the Team Disney Building in Orlando, FL. Isozaki is also an intelligent and thoughtful critic and philosopher of architecture, and has penned numerous essays on Japanese design principles.

His new book, Japan-ness In Architecture, published by the MIT Press, brings together several of his pieces written over the last 20 or so years, their chronology reshuffled to create a progressive series of analyses and historical commentaries. Isozaki's writings offer a special challenge to the Western concept of architecture: "Architectural discourse demands that we view buildings as events and not simply as inert objects. In a sense this might be equivalent to grasping the buildings as textual spaces. By not only considering the objectness of buildings but also discussing the texts written about them, thus shifting the stance to the metalevel, I believe we can reconstruct the problematic that each building originally internalized."

This quote, along with explaining the conceptual redefinition Isozaki embraces, also indicates one of the disadvantages of his book, namely its abundance of academic jargon. If one is knowledgeable about Japanese history, building design, geography and culture, Isozaki's vocabulary will be not much more than an irritant; otherwise, readers will find his book slow going, due to its profusion of regional references combined with a somewhat opaque verbiage.

That caveat accepted, Japan-ness In Architecture offers a fascinating and provocative take on some of the most original and beautiful structures ever built. Isozaki organizes his book into four main sections. The first part examines Japan's historic oscillations between isolationism and globalization, paying special attention to the impact of architectural Modernism in Japan during the 20th century. It includes thoughtful accounts of Frank Lloyd Wright's design of the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo, along with the brief but far-reaching Japanese career of German expatriate architect Bruno Taut.

In this section, Isozaki describes the Western approach to architecture, in which "the placement of columns was invariably determinant [...] This tendency may be categorized as both objective and constructive. On the other hand, Japanese architectural texts were based on kenmen-ho, the interstitial method developed from the 8th to the 14th centuries that counts the number of interstices (ma) – a term indicating both the spans between frontal columns of a main building (or nave-like hall) and the number of eaves that extend from the main building itself to its four sides (reminiscent of aisles). By identifying just these few numerical indicators, the whole plan, use and scale of a building was entrusted to the judgment of a master carpenter. Therefore, it might be said, the kenmen-ho comprehended architecture both spatially and performatively."

In this sense, one can see how Japanese design is as much about emptiness as it is about structure – a perspective that comes naturally to the country that gave Zen Buddhism to the world. This attitude informs the case histories that dominate the book's subsequent sections: the circa-7th-century Ise Shrine in Part II; the 12th-century Todai-ji gate in Part III; and the 17th-century buildings and gardens of Katsura Imperial Villa in Part IV. Isozaki astutely explores the commonality of these disparate structures. A complex of buildings constitute Ise Shrine, and they have been periodically relocated and rebuilt for over 1,000 years. At first glance, nothing could seem more different than the massive gateway Todai-ji. Yet both express their religious significance – and their self-definition as performative rather than inert spaces – through their individual evocations of emptiness or non-being: the Ise Shrine, continually reconfiguring its components while always veiling its central area behind a sacred hedge; Todai-ji, virtually devoid of ornament, baring its innermost structure to the world.

Perhaps subtlest of all is Katsura, described by Isozaki as "a text rich in ambiguity, where architectural languages of quite different formal and temporal inspiration are juxtaposed. These layers of approach and language have made Katsura an object of incessant new reading strategies"; they also describe an elusiveness that parallels both the fluidity of Ise Shrine and the near-minimalist grandeur of Todai-ji. Japan-ness In Architecture is a celebration of these illustrious traditional treasures, and, at the same time, a provocative challenge to some of the West's oldest and least flexible concepts of architectural design. Arata Isozaki's book may not surrender its insights simply and easily, but patient readers will be rewarded with an opportunity to see their own built environment with entirely new eyes. TB

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