Japan 2000: Architecture and Design for the Japanese Public

Munich, New York, and Chicago: Prestel Verlag; Art Institute of Chicago, 1998. 158 pages, illustrations (some colour); 28 cm. Catalogue published in conjunction with the exhibition of the same name coorganized by The Art Institute of Chicago and The Japan Foundation. Firm binding, clean inside copy. OVERSIZE! No priority/air, except by special arrangement. "Japanese architecture and design acquired international prominence in the so-called 'bubble-economy' era of the 1980s. Japanese products - from automobiles to electronic equipmentwere sold in record numbers the world over, and Japanese brand names became synonymous with high quality. Now that the boom of the 1980s has given way to a recession, what is the country's designed and built environment like, and what are the factors that determine it? This attractive volume and the traveling exhibition it accompanies seek to address these questions. Essays written by experts in their fields are accompanied by impressive color plates to present Japanese architecture and design of the 1990s to a Western readership for the first time." - Publisher. CONTENTS: The historical background of postwar public architecture in Japan, by Hiroyuki Suzuki; Designing for the Japanese public; Plates, by Naomi R. Pollock; The growth of industrial design in Japan, by John Heskett; The history of Japanese design : a personal view, by Takuo Hirano; The cultural engineering of traditional local industry, by Tadanori Nagasawa; Plates, by Tetsuyuki Hirano and Tetsuro Hakamada.. Paperback. Fine. 4to. Collectible.