From the Inside Flap
One of Japan's most prominent and internationally renowned architects today, Hiroshi Hara has been responsible for the designs of many of the most significant and largest projects in his country, including major urban complexes such as the Iida City Museum, the Umeda Sky Building in Osaka, the Miyagi Prefectural Library in Sendai, the Kyoto Station Complex, and the recently completed Sapporo Dome. Nevertheless, in addition to extensive public buildings, Hara has, throughout his career, continued to turn out numerous small private residences, the design of which is nothing short of revolutionary. The past few decades have witnessed the further maturation and flourishing of Hara's works which, taken as a whole, have constituted one of the most original contributions to the increasingly varied and widely recognised stage of Japanese architecture since the 1960s.
Featuring an in-depth critical analysis by Professor Botond Bognar, a scholar of Japanese architecture, and seven short theoretical essays by Hiroshi Hara, as well as a selection of 29 individual projects, this richly illustrated book introduces the best of Hara's work in the context of both contemporary Japanese architecture and the wider international scene. Seamlessly combining the significant elements of architectural and urban design, while relying both on the tenets of phenomenology and the use of the latest technologies, these projects poignantly and poetically exemplify Hara's exceptional design ability, to advance an 'architecture of modality' in which reality and fiction are virtually interchangeable. As the book demonstrates, Hara in his architecture has found a fitting response to the fluid reality of the world-in-flux engendered by our age of information.
About the Author
BOTOND BOGNAR is an architect, architectural scholar and photographer. Currently Professor of Architecture and an Associate of the Center for Advanced Study at the University of Illinois, he was educated at the Technical University of Budapest and the University of California, Los Angeles. As a Mombusho Scholar, he conducted research at the Tokyo Institute of Technology. He practised architecture in both Hungary and Japan where he lived for several years.
Beyond teaching, Professor Bognar lectures extensively both in the United States and abroad. In addition to being a frequent contributor to international journals and other publications on architecture, he is also the author and editor of numerous books, including Contemporary Japanese Architecture (New York, 1985); The New Japanese Architecture (New York, 1990); The Japan Guide (New York, 1995); Minoru Takeyama (London, 1995); Togo Murano: Master Architect of Japan (New York, 1996), winner of a 1997 AIA International Book Award; World Cities: Tokyo (London, 1997), and Nikken Sekkei 1900-2000: Building Future Japan (New York: 2000).
