Uncrating the Japanese House
Regular price $ 55.00With Junzo Yoshimura, Antonin and Noémi Raymond, and George Nakashima.
Midcentury modernism meets Japanese design in three revolutionary American buildings―the products of a unique, sustained, cross-cultural collaboration.
In 1953, Japanese architect Junzo Yoshimura designed a now-classic Japanese house and garden that he called Shofuso. It was built in Nagoya, Japan, and shipped to New York in 1954, where it was exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art and then relocated to Philadelphia’s Fairmount Park. The curators of MoMA’s House in the Garden exhibition highlighted its synthesis of historic Japanese architecture with modern architecture: the clarity of the house’s post and beam structure, its flexibility of use and the close relationship of indoor and outdoor spaces.
This extensively illustrated volume centers on Yoshimura’s design for Shofuso and two allied sites located in New Hope, Bucks County, Pennsylvania: Raymond Farm (1939–41), a live-work residence built by Antonin and Noémi Raymond within the fabric of an existing 18th-century Quaker farmhouse; and Nakashima Studios, a complex of structures designed by George Nakashima over three decades (1947–77) to serve his furniture-making business and as his family’s home. Each site, in its own way, is the embodiment of the personal relationships and cross-cultural collaborations among this group of architects and designers.
The Raymonds, along with Yoshimura, Nakashima and others, came to understand Japan’s changing environment through the act of building, through collaboration and travel. Together, they extended these lessons into the furniture and furnishings of modern living in both Japan and the United States.
This volume documents an exhibition of objects and ephemera mounted at Shofuso. New York–based architectural photographer Elizabeth Felicella captures each site in a portfolio of newly commissioned images. Essays by Ken Tadashi Oshima and William Whitaker, illustrated with historical photographs, family snapshots and architectural drawings, further elucidate this important chapter in the history of modern architecture and design.
- Dimensions: 9.65 x 0.79 x 9.65 inches
- 159 pages
- Hardcover
All items indicated as gifts are wrapped in high-quality gift wrap before placement in secure packaging for shipping.
NOTE: To request gift wrapping for part or all of any order, please add this item to your cart prior to checking out. During checkout you can specify any additional gift wrapping instructions.
You can now pre-order you favorite local artists' handcrafted work directly from the Princeton University Art Museum Store!
Provide your name and contact information, as well as a brief description of the piece you are interested in. Please allow time for us to coordinate with our artists on the production and delivery of your custom order. We will be in contact with you as soon as possible.