It can be argued that Japan contains a higher number of internationally significant architects and designers relative to its geographic size than anywhere else in the world. Japanese designers regularly implement radical experiments in new materials and building systems that successfully address imminent energy and resource challenges. These technological achievements are combined with an acute awareness of the ephemerality of existence, creating a rich dialogue between the concrete and the abstract.
Today marks the release of Blaine Brownell’s new book, Matter in the Floating World: Conversations with Leading Japanese Architects and Designers, published by Princeton Architectural Press. Brownell traveled to the offices of twenty leading material and design innovators in Japan, including Tadao Ando, Shigeru Ban, Kengo Kuma, and Kazuyo Sejima, to find the connections between materiality and transience in their work.
The dialogues in Matter in the Floating World are organized into four sections – lightness, atmosphere, flow, and emergence – that embody various approaches to materiality and evanescence in Japanese architecture and design. There is also a companion website that includes samples from the book as well as exclusive online interviews.
