What sets current Japanese architecture apart?
I think Japanese contemporary architecture is amongst the best in the world. And not only over the last few years, but since early Modernism and then the Metabolist movement. What is very important is that Japanese architects, since the very beginnings of the Modernist movement, and even earlier, from the end of the nineteenth century, were, whilst very interested in foreign cultures, at the same time profoundly seeking their own architectural style and their own cultural identity. Each generation of Japanese architects was trying to understand the essence of Japanese cultural characteristics, and how to express them in architecture – they were looking for a Japanese style, regardless of which direction they went – the nationalistic style of the 1930s – the so called “teikan style”, or the style expressed by architects of the new generation of early modernists, like Sutemi Horiguchi in the late twenties, or later Kenzo Tange, then Arata Isozaki, Tadao Ando and others. But anyway, I thi
