Customer Reviews

Pet Architecture Guide Book Vol 2

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This is a book about special structures in Tokyo, known as "pet architecture." They are built in marginal or neglected spaces, such as small traffic islands, awkward triangular strips, or blocks that got chopped up as the city modernized and widened the roads for vehicular traffic. What results are mini-architectures, which Atelier Bow-wow attempts to give a kind of logic through a case study analysis that ranges from an add-on garage to homeless shelters.

For anybody who appreciates the amazing constraints that become moments of extreme creativity, this is a great book. It has everything: nice clear organization, good photographs, and eloquent descriptions that note idiosyncrasies and aesthetic choices. Since the "pets" are listed serially, one can pick up the book, open it to any page, and begin there.

This book is really helpful; it contains many projects of Atelier Bow-Wow and their typologies of the urban scape around different cities in Japan.

Even if you don't know how to read Japanese text, there is some English translation. The book does begin "backwards," but you can open any page within the book and see images that speak for the pair's creative problem-solving, which is neatly constructed into a livable and highly functional sliver of space.

i think i misunderstood the subject of the book. o thought it was about works of architects in japan working with small plots.
the book shows 'buildings' such as flower booths and the like.
the graphic design is remarkable though.