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of f lows. What is important here is not so much the expressed forms as the image of a space that makes the expression of those forms possible. "²⁷

With buildings like his Tokyo Metropolitan Gymnasium, or Tepia, Fumihiko Maki has indeed placed himself in a dif ferent realm than a younger architect like Toyo Ito. In Maki's explanations of his own work, there is less reference to the "electronic age" and the forms that it elicits, than there is an ef fort to look deeper into the built environment. He writes: 'We may need to commit ourselves once morę to seeing things from the perspective of space. Up to now, our view, our standards, and our norms and process of design with respect to architecture have depended on our looking at (it) from the outside. To look at architecture from the inside naturally means concerning ourselves first of all with the extent of the primary spaces that are required. It is only when we look at architecture from the inside as well as from the outside that we understand how (it) frames and shapes the landscape in addition to standing silhouetted against the landscape."²⁸

Like an old radical professor, Kazuo Shinohara, author of the Tokyo Institute of Technology, Centennial Hall, presides over this debate, relating the strengths of Japanese tradition to a broad-minded acceptance of chaos theory and other mani-festations of the altogether modern world in which contemporary Japanese must live. It is significant both of Shinohara's analysis and of the Japanese spirit that his earlier works were apparently very traditional houses. A thoughtful application of the lessons of the past to the perceptions of the present by Shinohara and a certain number of other Japanese architects place this country in the vanguard of thought about contemporary design.

One of Shin Takamatsu's most outstanding works is his 1985 Kirin Plaża, located on one of the busiest pedestrian corners of Osaka. Manipulating his machinę metaphors, Takamatsu creates an almost unreal point of silent strength, sur-rounded by the outrageous glowing signs for crab restaurants and cheap movies that are typical of the immediate environment. Takamatsu calls this 50 m high quadruple tower, which emits a gentle white light, a "monument without form." Despite its very modern appearance, this seemingly unnatural calm brings to mind the fact that calm and reflection are traditions of the Japanese spirit, which are being swept aside by rampant urbanization and commercialization.

Pages 184/185 Itsuko Hasegawa Museum of Fruit

Yamanashi-shi, Yamanashi. Japan, 1993-95

On a gonerous park site of 195,000 m^}, with a distant view of Mount Fuji, this group of buildings includes a total floor area of 6,459 m^J. The museum takes the form of a group of shelters and underground spaces set into sloped ground, each of which accommodates specific programs. It is also a metaphor of a group of seeds. an expression of the fertility and yitality of fruit.

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