World Observation

Reviews / Votes

Thanks to this deeply researched study, readers can at last gain a full and nuanced picture of twentieth-century scholar, architect, and pan-Asianist ideologue Ito Chuta. As Mullane demonstrates, Ito's fascinating and eccentric body of work is equally important to our understanding of global architectural modernity as it is to the history of modern Japan. -- Jordan Sand, Georgetown University Were World Observation solely a biography of the architect Ito Chuta, it would be a valuable and compelling study, given Ito's importance to the origins of the field of Japanese architecture. But Matthew Mullane's book is so much more. World Observation makes a strong case that the modern practice of observation and the history of architectural design in Japan are inseparable. In doing so, it connects design to drawing, travel, thinking, and writing in ways that are surprising and insightful, and dynamically entangles the emerging field of architecture in Japan to developments elsewhere in Asia and Europe. The result is a richly conceptualized vision of the multinodal origins of modern architecture that will be of interest to readers well beyond the field of architectural history. -- Yukio Lippit, Harvard University Matthew Mullane examines the work of Ito Chuta, a teacher, architect, architectural historian, and preservationist who played a pivotal role in the development of the architectural profession in Japan. This impressive study is theoretically sophisticated, is based on rigorous archival research, and tackles aspects of Ito's career that some postwar scholarship has shied away from, including his contributions to Japanese imperialism. -- Jonathan Reynolds, Barnard College/Columbia University