Project Japan — Metabolism Talks

This book by Rem Koolhaas and Hans Ulrich Obrist, Project Japan, published by Taschen, is part of the Darwin Bookshop because it captures a singular architectural movement that emerged from postwar Tokyo with radical vision and global consequence. Through extensive oral histories and archival excavation, Koolhaas and Obrist reconstruct the story of Metabolism — the only major avant-garde movement in architecture to emerge outside the West. It proposed buildings that could grow like organisms, cities that could float, and urbanism as a living system — an optimistic architectural response to the devastation of war and the demands of modern life.

More than a survey, Project Japan is an investigative archive. Through interviews with key figures like Kiyonori Kikutake and Kisho Kurokawa, as well as planners, bureaucrats, and critics, the book maps the complex interplay between political utopia, national identity, and architectural form. Designed with the visual density of an AMO project, it includes hundreds of photographs, plans, media clippings, and previously unseen materials. The layout itself becomes a medium — not just transmitting history, but staging it.

This is a book about architecture, but also about the last moment in which architecture believed it could shape public life. It is essential for readers interested in Japan’s global influence, design as ideology, and the way architectural dreams become political documents.

Technical Sheet

Title: Project Japan: Metabolism Talks
Artist / Author: Rem Koolhaas, Hans Ulrich Obrist
Editors: Kayoko Ota with James Westcott
Date: n.d.
Technique / Printing Method: Offset printing
Medium / Materials: Softcover with wraparound band
Dimensions: 17 x 23.3 cm
Pages: 720
Publisher / Editor: Taschen
ISBN: 978-3-8365-2508-4
Language: English
Condition: New