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A symbol is an expression of meaning, while blank symbols express special meanings. By focusing on the application of blank symbols in Japanese architecture and indoor designs, we analyzed the aesthetic principles in Japanese architecture and indoor designs from the perspective of semiotics, such as "Kongji," "Emptiness," and "Dying out," and their minimalist and pure design concepts. Traditional Chinese culture was also further explored, especially the profound influence of the "Chan sect" and the philosophy of "unity of heaven and mankind" on Japanese architecture and designs. This study aims to facilitate the coexistence and mutual appreciation of Chinese and Japanese architectural designs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aesthetic comprehension of space is a process of transforming the user into an experiencer and narrator. In Japanese architecture, spatial narration is a method of constructing a bridge between the experiencer and space. This article examines the role of spatial narration as a design tool for spatial atmosphere by considering two acclaimed projects of contemporary Japanese architecture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focusing on the early work and collaborations of the Japanese architect Arata Isozaki, this paper researches links between the robotic culture of postwar Japan and the surge of figuration in postmodernism, challenging the commonly held view that this architectural movement emerged in the West. Specifically, the paper looks at how Isozaki's robotic creation for Expo '70 embodied the notion of theatrical mask, which characterized both postmodern ideals and early Japanese robotics, and influenced his own architectural work. Delving into Isozaki's creative exchanges with the film director Hiroshi Teshigahara and the novelist Kōbō Abe, coming into contact with each other in the 1950s, a synergy between cinema, literature, and architecture is highlighted, considering their speculations about possible technological means of reconstructing the human face in light of the symbolic dimension of this enterprise for Japan as a nation, and for architecture as a discipline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within the framework of Wright's Imperial Hotel in Tokyo, significant modern architects dialogued with Japanese Culture. Such is the case of the Czech-American architect Antonin Raymond who developed an extensive work in Japan pursuing a quest of synthesis between the West and Japan. Soon, followed Rudolf Schindler and his comrade Richard Neutra, previously qualified as architects in Vienna, whence Japonism represented a sensation to the cultural circles of the epoch. This article discusses the proposals of the trio, stressing the consistency in relationship to Japanese culture and its inherent link with Nature, pillar of Daoist philosophy. The authors intend to demonstrate that theirs was a deliberate search for the uncertain direction of modern architecture, once it was unleashed from dusk clichés of historicism, especially for distant and promising lands. We conducted this between Japan, Europe and the USA and consulted original documents in the archives of Columbia, UCLA, the Toyô Bunko in Tokyo, Arquivio Ultramarino (Lisbon) and the Getty Research Institute. The results reveal unheard of connections between key aspects of the work of those influential architects and environmental features of Japanism. The authors consider such nexus, as instrumental for a novel scientific approach to global architecture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Western fascination with Japan and Japanese design is long established. The popularity of the recent exhibition The Japanese House: Architecture and Life After 1945 at London's Barbican illustrates that this fascination remains. This ‘blockbuster’ review of postwar domestic Japanese Architecture, supported by The Japan Foundation and previously hosted at MAXXI, National Museum of 21st Century Arts, Rome, responds to an enormous challenge: to try to account for the range and diversity of architectural approaches to domestic design within the broader contexts of traditional Japanese architecture and national life after 1945.The seven decades covered in the exhibition span postwar reconstruction, rapid economic expansion, bubble-era boom and bust, and deflationary stagnation, brought up to the present day. Material is organised ‘genealogically’ rather than chronologically, drawing together certain threads and traditions. It makes connections across time periods to suggest how the design of the Japanese house has dealt with sociological changes over this period, from the fracturing of the nuclear family and an increase in single-person households to an ageing population. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Nothing is more urgent in China today than a critique of the everyday; and a social analysis of the conditions and prospects of ordinary individuals vis-à-vis – or despite – the achievements of the nation and the state. Jia Zhangke's film, Still Life (2006), reveals this urgency vividly, describing the destruction of local settlements and the dislocation of ordinary people amidst the great engineering feat of dams and bridges over the Yangtze River. A husband and a wife, having lost contact with each other for years because of hectic careers and radical socio-spatial dislocation, finally meet and agree to divorce. With sounds of music flowing down distantly, they dance for a minute and bid farewell, with one watching and the other walking away, disappearing into the distance against a vast landscape of debris and magnificent structures building-up behind them. This scene was followed immediately by another depicting a tourist cruise on the river with a loudspeaker reciting a Li Bai poem from the eighth century: poetic words about a scenic spot that would soon be flooded for the building of the Three Gorges Dam, to power an industrial China on the rise. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article explores the evolution of Asian architecture symbolizing modernity and determines the existence of Japanese influence to Asian architectural designs. It examines the robotic architectural design of the Bank of Asia in Thailand and how it depicts anthropomorphism of the robot. It discusses the essence of the use of artifice in Bank of Asia infrastructure design and the concept of superflat in Japanese architecture.

The article reviews the articles "Thinking Through the Gap: The Space of Japanese Architecture," by Adrian Snodgrass, and "And so on, and," by Linda Marie Walker.

This paper reviews Japanese architectural design since 1980 in Shanghai, China's largest city, through studies of typical examples: the Ruijin Building, the Garden Hotel of the 1980s, buildings in Hongqiao of the 1990s and three projects built in the new millennium. The design merits and local people's attitudes towards these buildings are examined and compared with prominent contemporary buildings, designed by local and overseas architects. The study is set against a background of technical advance and modernisation within the building industry in Shanghai. The paper showcases the unique experiences a fast-growing city gained in its progress towards modernisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article features the Museum at Ueno Park in Tokyo, Japan, designed by English architect Josiah Conder in collaboration with Japanese workmen and students under his training. According to the article, the completion of the museum signaled the successful implementation of European technology and professionalism in Japan. The destruction of the museum in the Great Earthquake of 1923 accelerated the waning the confidence in the mode of architectural science and aesthetics that the building had originally represented. The article notes that the museum was an embodiment of the complex power relations between a non-Western country that struggled to maintain its independence and a host of Western countries encroaching on this right.

Japan’s Ise Shrine is famous for its thirteen-hundred-year-old reconstruction tradition, the Shikinen sengu, in which the most sacred structures are completely rebuilt every twenty years. The construction process incorporates not only the usual elements of planning, materials procurement, and installation, but also integrates some thirty Shinto rituals that mark important milestones in the construction process. This renewal is remarkable because it preserves an ancient architectural style that is extremely susceptible to decay as well as the ancient construction technologies needed to build it. Because each cycle is very closely modeled on its predecessor, the most recent reconstruction, completed in 1993, provides a window through which we can examine ancient construction attitudes and technologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gateways, or mon, have served as powerful symbols of authority throughout Japanese history. In particular the stately mon built for the Edo city residences of the regional lords expressed the dignity of high rank in the Tokugawa political and social order, but unlike their earlier counterparts in temples and palaces, they have been neglected as a subject for scholarly study. These gateways, virtually the only surviving examples of secular buildings from the great castle-city of Edo, clarify our understanding of the use of architectural style as a symbol of status in the period of Tokugawa rule (1603-1867). The Rōjū- mon, or "Gatehouse of the Senior Councillor," is one of three well-preserved gatehouses dating from the last century of warrior government in Japan. Analysis of the structure of the building reveals the design principles upon which it was based and details of building practices at the time. The technical and stylistic features of the gatehouse are interpreted in the light of Tokugawa government laws and pictorial records to establish the importance of mon architecture as a status symbol in general terms and the precise meaning of this building as an example of the gatehouse type. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article takes a look on the authenticity and otherness of the new Japanese theme parks consuming foreign architecture. It is stated that consuming foreign architecture has a stronger educational emphasis in Japan and demonstrates a different kind of commitment to developing Japan's cosmopolitan outlook as a nation. The author notes that rather than using architectural otherness to aggrandize the identity, Japanese seem more curious to learn/teach about other cultures through staging them.

The article describes the works of Japanese architects Akiko and Hiroshi Takahashi. They believe in making clear responses in design through the creation of simple geometric shapes set against the various internal and external conditions of the buildings. They strive to achieve clear shapes or abstract form to amplify the various aspects of each project.

The article focuses on ArtPolis, a series of projects sponsored by the Government of Kumamoto Prefecture. The ArtPolis was initiated in 1988 by the former Governor Morihiro Hosokawa, who conceived the idea of creating a series of public buildings in Kumamoto by innovative architects. The principal significance of ArtPolis resides in the fact that it is the first time that so many avant-garde architects have designed major public projects.

The article focuses on pluralistic Japanese architecture. The author discusses the spreading pluralistic design of buildings that are being constructed in Japan, such as the Tarlazzi Building and Bizan Hall. He enumerates the underlying qualities and strategies conveyed by the designs, including the relationship of nature to the city and a tendency toward primitivism. Other features of Japanese architecture are also discussed.

The article provides information on the development of Japanese modern architecture and interior design in Japan. It states that American collector Edward S. Morse published his study entitled "Japanese Homes and their Surroundings" that illustrated with simple line-drawings of traditional Japanese dwellings and asymmetry of Japanese architecture. Moreover, it mentions that architects Antonin Raymond and Bruno Taut who both practiced architecture in the country offered their writings as they willfully ignored the contribution of the other. Further, it mentions the relevance of art deco in the country.

The article describes the architectural design and details of a house by architect Shuhei Endo. The architect used coiled corrugated-steel surface which seamlessly unified the inside with the outside. The structure resembles an obi, the belt used on a kimono. The metal spirals and reverses course in some areas to create the exterior form.

The article describes the architectural design created by Tadao Ando for the Lotus Pond Hall of Honpukuji in Awaji Island, Japan. It discusses how Ando freed Buddhist architecture from some 2,000 years of stylistic shackles with a revolutionary temple design executed in 1992. The article details the design of the lotus pond and the circular Buddha hall.