Revitalizing environmental features of Japanese architecture. The experience of Raymond, Schindler and Neutra through their collaboration with Wright

Abstract

ABSTRACTWithin the framework of Wright's Imperial Hotel in Tokyo, significant modern architects dialogued with Japanese Culture. Such is the case of the Czech-American architect Antonin Raymond who developed an extensive work in Japan pursuing a quest of synthesis between the West and Japan. Soon, followed Rudolf Schindler and his comrade Richard Neutra, previously qualified as architects in Vienna, whence Japonism represented a sensation to the cultural circles of the epoch. This article discusses the proposals of the trio, stressing the consistency in relationship to Japanese culture and its inherent link with Nature, pillar of Daoist philosophy. The authors intend to demonstrate that theirs was a deliberate search for the uncertain direction of modern architecture, once it was unleashed from dusk clichés of historicism, especially for distant and promising lands. We conducted this between Japan, Europe and the USA and consulted original documents in the archives of Columbia, UCLA, the Toyô Bunko in Tokyo, Arquivio Ultramarino (Lisbon) and the Getty Research Institute. The results reveal unheard of connections between key aspects of the work of those influential architects and environmental features of Japanism. The authors consider such nexus, as instrumental for a novel scientific approach to global architecture.