Tokyo Perspective (ONLY 50 COPIES - SIGNED)
Kazuya Urakawa
Tokyo Perspective (ONLY 50 COPIES - SIGNED)
Photographs: Kazuya Urakawa
Text: Kazuya Urakawa
Publisher: Reminders Project
134 pages
Pictures: 57
Year: 2016
Comments: Hardcover, 415 x 295 mm. First edition, 2016. Design by Yumi Goto and Jan Rosseel. Edition limited to 50 numbered and signed copies.
Looking at cityscapes in Tokyo, I often feel as if the city has fallen into a state of amnesia. This feeling is awoken by the scrap-and-build approach that Tokyo has repeated more frequently than any other city in the world, whether due to man-made factors or otherwise. In particular, the twin catastrophes of the Great Kanto Earthquake (1923) and the Great Tokyo Air Raid (1945) and the subsequent reconstructions thereafter are two of the chief causes.
However, scrap-and-build has been accelerated by economic motives in pursuit of rationality and efficiency since the 1980s, when Japan enjoyed the bubble economy, we commonly see the buildings demolished as young as 50 years old. In contrast, facing a vacant lot after a building was demolished, we cannot remember the building that used to stand there. This indicates not only that buildings truly fall into oblivion after their demolition but also that we don’t take note of them in the city in a meaningful way. Although architecture is generally regarded as an art, I feel that people may not think so in Japan.
Italian architect Aldo Rossi talks about the relation between locus and architecture in the city in his evocative book “Architecture of the city”.
These [locus] outlines delineate the singularity of monuments, of the city, and of buildings, and thus the concept of singularity itself and its limits, where it begins and ends. They trace the relation of architecture to its location ― the place of art ― and thereby its connections to, and the precise articulation of, the locus itself as a singular artifact determined by its space and time, by its topographical dimensions and its form, by its being the seat of succession of ancient and recent events, by its memory. (Aldo Rossi, Architecture of the City, The MIT Press, 1984, P107)
The relation between scrap-and-build and the memory-loss for the city is comparable to two sides of the same coin, and the excessively frequent scrap-and-build approach overtakes the accumulation of memory. I suppose that the memory-lost city can never retrieve those lost memories and will therefore lose singularity ― lose itself.
more books tagged »reminders project« | >> see all
-
Red String (ONLY 35 COPIES)
by Yoshikatsu Fujii
sold -
Recruit (Handmade book ltd edt 147 copies signed)
by Hiroshi Okamoto
sold -
Hiroshima Graph - Everlasting Flow (Ltd edition of 75)
by Yoshikatsu Fujii
sold -
Mišo Bukumirović (Only 91 copies)
by Hajime Kimura
sold -
Dear Japanese (ONLY 70 COPIES)
by Miyuki Okuyama
sold -
Hiroshima Graph : Rabbits abandon their children (ONLY 72 COPI...
by Yoshikatsu Fujii
sold
more books tagged »yumi goto« | >> see all
-
The Restoration Will (ONLY 87 COPIES)
by Mayumi Suzuki
sold -
Snowflakes Dog Man (Regular edition Signed)
by Hajime Kimura
sold -
Bird, Night and then (Only 55 copies)
by Kenji Chiga
sold -
The Restoration Will (CEIBA EDT)
by Mayumi Suzuki
sold -
Snowflakes Dog Man (ONLY 69 COPIES - SIGNED)
by Hajime Kimura
sold
more books tagged »signed« | >> see all
-
The Afronauts (With Signed Print)
by Cristina de Middel
sold -
Asoue (Signed)
by Michael Wolf
sold -
Nokturno (LTD & SIGNED)
by Andrej Lamut
Euro 45 -
Tokyo Diaries (Signed)
by André Príncipe
sold -
Hackney Wick (SIGNED)
by Stephen Gill
Euro 180 -
Good dog (SIGNED)
by Yusuf Sevinçli
sold
more books tagged »japanese« | >> see all
-
GRASSHOPPER (SIGNED)
by Koji Onaka
sold -
Where is '69 Shinjuku Kaminari Zoku
by Fumiaki Fukada
sold -
Mizugi no Yangu Redii-Tachi/ Young Ladies in Bathing Suits
by Collective
sold -
Ipy Girl Ipy
by Tad Wakamatsu
Euro 60 -
Tokyoites (Tokyo-Jin)
by Yutaka Takanashi
sold -
LONDON BOOK
by Naoya Nakamura
sold
more books tagged »architecture« | >> see all
-
Koudelka Piemonte
by Josef Koudelka
sold -
E.D.S.A (LTD SIGNED EDT)
by Elisabeth Neudörfl
sold -
ARCHITECTURAL APOCALYPSE (WITH ACETATE AND OBI)
by Ryuji Miyamoto
sold -
Caracas - una quimera urbana (SIGNED)
by Ramon Paolini
Euro 700 -
Kleine Fotoenzyklopädie (SIGNED)
by Guadalupe Ruiz
sold -
Le poème électronique Le Corbusier
by Collective
Euro 20
more books tagged »limited edition« | >> see all
-
Reconstrucción
by Rosana Simonassi
Euro 30 -
Ten Disciples (Signed)
by Tsutomu Yamagata
sold -
Communism & Cowgirls (SIGNED)
by Rob Hornstra
sold -
TYO2 - PAPER VERSION (SIGNED)
by Antony Cairns
sold -
Time Lost (Signed)
by Pablo Larreta
sold -
New York (SIGNED)
by Daisuke Yokota
sold
more books tagged »tokyo« | >> see all
-
Tokyo-Ga
by Arnaud Lemorillon
Euro 19 -
Ryuseki (flowing Stones)
by Nobuyoshi Araki
sold -
Araki Nobuyoshi no Nise Ruporutaju (Nobuyoshi Araki's Pseudo-R...
by Nobuyoshi Araki
sold -
Kako (The Past) (WITH OBI)
by Nobuyoshi Araki
sold -
You're there and I'm here 2
by Seung-woo Yang
sold -
TOKYO : A VISION OF ITS OTHER SIDE
by Masatoshi Naito
sold
Books from the Virtual Bookshelf josefchladek.com