City with a Hidden Past

by Fumihiko Maki, Yukitoshi Wakatsuki, Hidetoshi Ohno

Thirty years after the original Japanese edition by Fumihiko Maki and a team from Maki and Associates, an English-language version of this book is finally available. The original was based on a commissioned study on The Desirable Living Environment and examined Japanese urban spaces in the context of Tokyos rapid change and the citys distinctive aesthetic consciousness. In particular, the concern for surface layers, micro-topographies, and small spaces in the metropolis received special focus. With the ever-growing and new global metropolises emerging today, fundamentally different attitudes toward public domains are revealed. It is clear that old ideas no longer apply.

174 pages, Paperback

Published March 15, 2018

Reviews

[Hannah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Super interesting book, just slightly more technical than I expected. The architecture passages are very detailed and in-depth, I would have wished for the urbanism chapters to be similarly detailed.

[Federico García · Rating 4 out of 5]

If someone wants to know the hidden order of a city like Tokyo, this is the book to read. Written first in 1980 by Maki, Ohno and others for a Japanese audience, you can trace here the historical formation clues of the city and the architectural features that make traditional Japan so different to the rest of the world.