The Contemporary Tea House ($39.95)

Japan's Top Architects Redefine a Tradition
The tea house is one of Japan's most original and significant architectural forms-a small, simple space for the tea ceremony that traditionally requires a hearth, straw-mat flooring, and a low entrance.
Modern Japanese architects have found the challenge of redefining this highly formalized and constrained idiom almost impossible to resist. The Contemporary Tea House features twenty works that reveal the way world-renowned Japanese architects approach this intriguing subject using materials as disparate as charcoal plastic, and titanium.
The participating architects are Arata Isozaki, Tadao Ando, Terunobu Fujimori, Hiroshi Hara, and Kengo Kuma.

In his introduction Fujimori gives a historical overview of the tea ceremony and the tea house that puts the modern works in context. Isozaki, Ando, and Fujimori then take a behind-the-scenes look at their works and the creative process. Hara and Kuma contributed captions and brief explanations of their pieces as well. A number of owners use their buildings as a stage for the tea ceremony, while others enjoy them as spaces for meditation and reflection. There are even some who have discovered their tea houses are an optimal place to relax with a drink or a good book.

Directed at both the general reader and the specialist, this visually stunning book explores the works of these masters of modern Japanese architecture through superb photographs and informative drawings.

About the authors: ARATA ISOZAKI was born in 1931 in Oita, and graduated from the University of Tokyo's Architectural Faculty in 1954. He set up his own practice, Arata Isozaki & Associates, in 1963, and today is widely recognized as one of the world's leading architects.

TADAO ANDO was born in 1941 in Osaka, and established his own office in 1969. Since 1987, he has served as a visiting professor at Yale, Columbia, and Harvard, and after serving as Professor at the University of Tokyo, he now holds the chair of Professor Emeritus.

TERUNOBU FUJIMORI was born in 1946 in Nagano. He graduated from Tohoku University's Faculty of Engineering in 1971, and completed the Doctoral Course of Architecture at the University of Tokyo in 1978. At present, he is a professor at the University of Tokyo's Institute of Industrial Science, where his main focus of research is architectural history and the history of technology.

Categories

The Contemporary Tea House ($39.95)

The Contemporary Tea House

Know more about us and our services -+