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Paperback: 720 pages
Publisher: Language:
English
ISBN: 978-3836525084
Once there was a nation that went to war, but after they conquered
a continent their own country was destroyed by atom bombs... then
the victors imposed democracy on the vanquished. For a group of
apprentice architects, artists, and designers, led by a visionary,
the dire situation of their country was not an obstacle but an
inspiration to plan and think… although they were very different
characters, the architects worked closely together to realize their
dreams, staunchly supported by a super-creative bureaucracy and an
activist state... after 15 years of incubation, they surprised the
world with a new architecture-Metabolism-that proposed a radical
makeover of the entire land... Then newspapers, magazines, and TV
turned the architects into heroes: thinkers and doers, thoroughly
modern men… Through sheer hard work, discipline, and the
integration of all forms of creativity, their country, Japan,
became a shining example... when the oil crisis initiated the end
of the West, the architects of Japan spread out over the world to
define the contours of a post-Western aesthetic…
Between 2005 and 2011, architect Rem Koolhaas and curator Hans
Ulrich Obrist interviewed the surviving members of Metabolism,
together with dozens of their mentors, collaborators, rivals,
critics, protégés, and families. The result is a vivid documentary
of the last avant-garde movement and the last moment that
architecture was a public rather than a private affair…
Press
Archined, 25 January 2012
Architectural Digest (France), Janaury
2012
Die Welt, 5 December 2011
Spiegel
New York Times, 27 November 2011
New York Magazine, 23 October 2011
Domus, October 2011
Architects Newspaper, 27 October 2011
Stark, 28 October
