This book publishes for the first time in English a collection of architectural writings and essays by the Japanese architect Toyo Ito. Born in 1941, Ito is one of the world's most innovative architects. The texts in this collection cover almost exactly 40 years of writing and feature famous essays as well as previously untranslated writings that shed new light on Ito’s relationship to evolving patterns of architectural thinking and design.
Architecture Words is a series of texts and important essays on architecture written by architects, critics and scholars. Like many aspects of everyday life, contemporary architectural culture is dominated by an endless production and consumption of images, graphics and information. Rather than mirror this larger force, this series of small books seeks to deflect it by means of direct language, concise editing and beautiful, legible graphic design. Each volume in the series offers the reader texts that distil important larger issues and problems, and communicate architectural ideas; not only the ideas contained within each volume, but also the enduring power of written ideas more generally to challenge and change the way all architects think.