Mirei Shigemori - Rebel in the Garden: Modern Japanese Landscape Architecture

by Christian Tschumi

Overview

Mirei Shigemori had a major impact on the development of Japanese landscape architecture in the twentieth century. Active from the 1920s, he founded the Kyoto Garden Society in 1932. In 1939 he designed his own first masterpiece, the garden at the main hall of the Tôfuku-ji temple. From then on he designed 240 gardens all over Japan until his death in 1975; amongst the most famous are the Tenrai-an tea garden (1969) and the Matsuo Taisha garden (1975). The main characteristic of his gardens is that they respect tradition and, at the same time, depart from conventional paradigms by opening up to the influence of Western modernism with its own language. The first part of the book covers Shigemori’s life and factors that influenced his work. The second part contains a detailed illustration of 17 gardens. The book is published as a new and revised edition.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9783035621754
Publisher:	Birkhäuser
Publication date:	08/10/2020
Edition description:	2nd rev. ed.
Pages:	204
Product dimensions:	9.45(w) x 12.99(h) x (d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Christian Tschumi ist selbstständiger Landschaftsarchitekt, plant unterschiedlichste Freiräume, hält Vorträge, publiziert und juriert.

Christian Tschumi, independent landscape architect who designs a wide range of open spaces and is active as a publisher and juror

Editorial Reviews

"The majority of the publication focuses on present-day photographs of Shigemori’s landscapes and detailed plans collected by the author with the cooperation with Shigemori’s estate. The projects are astonishingly simple yet staggeringly beautiful." (Masako Ikegami in THE DIRT, 07.2021, https://dirt.asla.org/2021/07/13/mirei-shigemori-abstraction-not-elimination/)

From the Publisher