Description: Japanese architect Toyo Ito has created pardigm-shifting works that have positioned him at the forefront of international architecture. Critics have spoken of his White Uhouse, the Egg of Winds, the Tower of Winds, Yatsuhiro Fire Station, and the Yatsuhiro Museum in awed terms, calling his buildings among the best of this century. He compares his architectural spaces to the virtual space of music and aims to create buildings that relate not only to spacial concerns but also temporal ones, structures capable of change and evolution over time. Tower of Winds, a 1986 commission by the city of Yokohama, exemplifies Ito's stylistic innovation: by day the tower looks as if it is made of solid aluminum, but by night the building changes its appearance as lights turn on in response to environmental cues. This essential book on his work documents a major travelling exhibit and features text from architecture critics and Ito specialists -- including curator Ulrich Schneider, Japanese architecture critic Taki, and architecture historian Spiedel (who lived in Japan for twenty years). Following his formal studies and apprenticeship, Ito's career began in 1971 with the establishment in Tokyo of Urban Robot (Urbot), which later became Toyo Ito & Associates. The winner of numerous awards, he is considered a prophet of architectural lyricism, and his "disciples" include Kazuyo Sejima. In an interview with The Take, Ito spoke poetically of his goals: "I have been wanting to create an architectural space that is like a space in musical sound.... I hate to see the space in architecture freeze and continue to exist for a long time.... A piece of architecture, in its nature, ought to be fickle, and amomentary phenomenon. I find it unbearable how a building is able to stay on earth for hundreds of years, displaying its unchanging appearance. The form of a piece of architecture should be non-completeing, non-central, and synchronized with nature and urban spaces."

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