| architecture |
| calligraphy |
| ceramics |
| clothing |
| comics |
| gardens |
| lacquerwork |
| literature |
| movies |
| music |
| painting |
| poetry |
| sculpture |
| tea ceremony |
| television |
| theatre |
| weaponry |
| thematic routes |
| timeline |
| the site |
context: architecture > modern
Itsuko Hasegawa, 1941-
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Hasegawa's astonishing cultural centre at Shonandai |
I think Hasegawa is my favourite contemporary Japanese architect. She is still a rarity, a woman at the top of her artform. She is particularly famed for her Museum of Fruit, for her Sumida Culture Factory, with layers of translucent perforated aluminium screens, and for the building shown here, a cultural centre. This was a huge project, with offices, a cinema, a museum, a theatre and some astounding public spaces like nothing else I've ever seen, including an extraordinary artificial postmodernist interior version of traditional Japanese gardens, complete with metal trees.