The Architecture of Tokyo

When this guide was first published in 2001, it was the only one to introduce in one volume the architecture of the Tôkyô region, encompassing Tôkyô proper and adjacent prefectures, in all its remarkable variety. Having been out of print for some time, it is now being reissued in a revised and extended edition, this time with Japan expert Ulf Meyer as co-author. The Tôkyô region is the most populous metropolitan area in the world and a place of extraordinary vitality. The political, economic and cultural center of Japan, Tôkyô also exerts an enormous international influence. In fact the region has been pivotal to the nation’s affairs for centuries. Its sheer size, its concentration of resources and institutions and its long history have produced buildings of many different types from many different eras. Over 500 buildings are presented in this guide, from 15th-century Buddhist temples to 21st-century cultural buildings, from venerable folkhouses to works by leading contemporary architects of Japan such as Kenzô Tange, Fumihiko Maki, Arata Isozaki, Hiroshi Hara, Toyô Itô, Riken Yamamoto and Tadao Ando as well as by foreign architects such as Norman Foster, Peter Eisenman and Steven Holl. The buildings are arranged chronologically and grouped into six periods: the medieval period (1185–1600), the Edo period (1600–1868), the Meiji period (1868–1912), the Taishô and early Shôwa period (1912–1945), the post-war reconstruction period (1945–1970) and the contemporary period (1970 until today). This comprehensive coverage permits those interested in Japanese architecture or culture to focus on a particular era or to examine buildings within a larger temporal framework. A concise discussion of the history of the region and the architecture of Japan develops a context within which the individual works may be viewed.

Hiroshi Watanabe studied architecture at Princeton University in Princeton and at Yale University in New Haven. He has written extensively on contemporary Japanese architecture and on the work of architects from Western countries in Japan. He was the Japan correspondent for Progressive Architecture. Ulf Meyer studied architecture at the Technische Universität Berlin and the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago and has since worked as a freelance author and journalist in the field of architecture and urban planning with numerous articles in newspapers, trade journals and books in Germany and abroad.