December 2022 MBR The Architecture Shelf

The Architecture Shelf

Uncrating the Japanese House
Yuka Yokoyama, editor
William Whitaker, editor
Elizabeth Felicella, photographer
August Editions
c/o Distributed Art Publishers
155 Sixth Avenue, 2nd floor, New York, NY 10013-1507
www.artbook.com
9781947359093, $45.00, HC, 144pp

https://www.amazon.com/Uncrating-Japanese-House-Yoshimura-Nakashima/dp/1947359096

Synopsis: In 1953, Japanese architect Junzo Yoshimura designed a now-classic Japanese house and garden that he called Shofuso. It was built in Nagoya, Japan, and shipped to New York in 1954, where it was exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art and then relocated to Philadelphia's Fairmount Park. The curators of MoMA's House in the Garden exhibition highlighted its synthesis of historic Japanese architecture with modern architecture: the clarity of the house's post and beam structure, its flexibility of use and the close relationship of indoor and outdoor spaces.

"Uncrating the Japanese House: Junzo Yoshimura, Antonin and Noemi Raymond, and George Nakashima" is an extensively illustrated volume that centers on Yoshimura's design for Shofuso and two allied sites located in New Hope, Bucks County, Pennsylvania: Raymond Farm (1939-41), a live-work residence built by Antonin and Noemi Raymond within the fabric of an existing 18th-century Quaker farmhouse; and Nakashima Studios, a complex of structures designed by George Nakashima over three decades (1947 - 77) to serve his furniture-making business and as his family's home. Each site, in its own way, is the embodiment of the personal relationships and cross-cultural collaborations among this group of architects and designers.

The Raymonds, along with Yoshimura, Nakashima and others, came to understand Japan's changing environment through the act of building, through collaboration and travel. Together, they extended these lessons into the furniture and furnishings of modern living in both Japan and the United States.

"Uncrating the Japanese House: Junzo Yoshimura, Antonin and Noemi Raymond, and George Nakashima" documents an exhibition of objects and ephemera mounted at Shofuso. New York - based architectural photographer Elizabeth Felicella captures each site in a portfolio of newly commissioned images. Essays by Ken Tadashi Oshima and William Whitaker, illustrated with historical photographs, family snapshots and architectural drawings, further elucidate this important chapter in the history of modern architecture and design.

Critique: Collaborative compiled and co-edited by the team of Yukoyama and William Whitaker, and profusely illustrated throughout with the full color photography of Elizabeth Felicella, "Uncrating the Japanese House: Junzo Yoshimura, Antonin and Noemi Raymond, and George Nakashima" is a unique, informative, and unreservedly recommended addition to personal, professional, community, and academic library Architectural Studies collections and supplemental curriculum studies lists.

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