
Concrete and Code
Material Politics of Art and Environment in Postwar Japan
Gabrielle Schaad(Author)
Lars Müller Publishers
1st Edition
Will be published approx. in September 2026
Book
Paperback/Softback
384 pages
978-3-03778-817-2 (ISBN)
Description
"Concrete and Code" brings together two influential strands of postwar Japanese art and architecture - the experimental practices of the Gutai Art Association and the speculative urban proposals of the Metabolists - to rethink modernism through the lens of material, infrastructural and social transformation. Gutai's spatial experiments mobilized bodies, materials and environments, foregrounding process, contingency and the conditions of perception. The Metabolists developed proposals for
cities conceived as evolving systems, in which growth, circulation and infrastructure reorganize urban life over time.
Grounded in extensive archival research and richly illustrated with rare documents and images - including materials related to Expo '70 - the book situates these practices within the economic, political and technological conditions of production in postwar Japan. It shows how art and architecture articulated new relations between bodies, materials, systems of labor and social reproduction, and why these negotiations remain critical for understanding the entanglement of environment, technology and everyday life today.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Zürich
Germany
Illustrations
200
200 Illustrations
Dimensions
Height: 240 mm
Width: 165 mm
Thickness: 20 mm
ISBN-13
978-3-03778-817-2 (9783037788172)
Schweitzer Classification
Person
GABRIELLE SCHAAD (1982) is an art and architectural historian working across architectural theory and transnational art and design history. Her work focuses on how space is shaped by technological, material and political conditions in postwar and contemporary contexts, with a focus on Japan. She is a lecturer in the Department of Fine Arts at the Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK).