In this text, Maki analyses the influence of Le Corbusier’s work in Japan. According to him, understand this influence in Japanese architecture is not as easy as it is to understand the influence of his work on Brazilian or Indian architecture, since he has just one late work built in Japan in opposition to his numerous works in those countries. To explain the “Le Corbusier Syndrome” Maki proposes to divide it in three periods.
The first period was between the First and the Second World War, when the young architects in Japan began to discuss the future of modern architecture. In this moment, the five points of Le Corbusier became famous. The second period was in the postwar years of 1950s and 1960s, when Le Corbusier changed his style and his work of urbanism became influent in Japan. The third period started with his death in 1965 and continues until this day, with his work being subject of continuous studies.
According to Maki, Western architecture symbolized progress and authority in Japan after the Meiji Restoration. Contrary to the rejection of historicism that modernism represented in Europe, it was almost entirely neutral when it came to Japan.
In the years before the death of Le Corbusier, his work began to be reanalyzed in a critical way. At this time, Peter Eisenman, Colin Rowe and Robert Venturi, that had laid the groundwork for the critical reconsideration, published many treatises in the USA concerning his work.
Despite the influences and reconsiderations of Le Corbusier’s work, Maki argues that no architect did as much as Le Corbusier to reformulate the spacial rhetoric that was required at that time. In addition, he states that the influence of Le Corbusier was possible because Japan at that time was receptive to overseas influences for different reasons and accidental factors and the Japanese architects always tried to assimilate and create their own version of that presented to them.
Maki, F 2008, Nurturing Dreams : Collected Essays on Architecture and the City, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, USA. Available from: ProQuest ebrary. [12 January 2015].
The first period was between the First and the Second World War, when the young architects in Japan began to discuss the future of modern architecture. In this moment, the five points of Le Corbusier became famous. The second period was in the postwar years of 1950s and 1960s, when Le Corbusier changed his style and his work of urbanism became influent in Japan. The third period started with his death in 1965 and continues until this day, with his work being subject of continuous studies.
According to Maki, Western architecture symbolized progress and authority in Japan after the Meiji Restoration. Contrary to the rejection of historicism that modernism represented in Europe, it was almost entirely neutral when it came to Japan.
In the years before the death of Le Corbusier, his work began to be reanalyzed in a critical way. At this time, Peter Eisenman, Colin Rowe and Robert Venturi, that had laid the groundwork for the critical reconsideration, published many treatises in the USA concerning his work.
Despite the influences and reconsiderations of Le Corbusier’s work, Maki argues that no architect did as much as Le Corbusier to reformulate the spacial rhetoric that was required at that time. In addition, he states that the influence of Le Corbusier was possible because Japan at that time was receptive to overseas influences for different reasons and accidental factors and the Japanese architects always tried to assimilate and create their own version of that presented to them.
Maki, F 2008, Nurturing Dreams : Collected Essays on Architecture and the City, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, USA. Available from: ProQuest ebrary. [12 January 2015].