Customer Reviews

The Yokohama Project

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The book is an inspiring and surprisingly honest account of the design and the construction of the Yokohama Terminal. The most optimistic part about it is the rather obvious fact that it was conceived and managed by a few academically rigorous but professionally inexperienced architects. The enormity of the project, the complexity of the structure, the problems of circulation, security, fire safety, seismic performance, etc. should all have choked the project before it even had reached the competition entry boards - the fact that it did not is an early tell-tale sign of the fresh naiveté, which must have fueled the design team.

The true merit of the team (and the story as whole) is the fact that the designers decided to go through with it. They moved to Japan and spent over two years and 23.5 billion yen supervising the project through construction administration. The writers talk as openly about their greatest successes and their worst failures.

The very extensive photographic documentation of the design and construction show the amazing story of the metamorphosis of an architectural idea into a material form. As I was reading thorough the text I saw myself picking favorite parts of the design and browsing impatiently ahead to see how they resolved themselves in the actual construction - sometimes I agreed with the chosen solution and sometimes I did not. The point is that the process of decision-making is revealed very clearly.

I would like to finish with a quote from the book, which offers a most delightful message to the youthful talent in all of us:

"This is where amateurs have advantage over pros. A pro knows what he can deliver and rarely goes beyond it. An amateur has no concept of his limitations and generally will go beyond them."

This book engages this one specific project, its an exceptional book that's deeply routed in the ethics and practice of architecture.

Its already more than a month but I have not received the delivery of the book.