EMERGING JAPANESE ARCHITECTS OF THE 1990S ...

EMERGING JAPANESE ARCHITECTS OF THE 1990S edited by Jackie Kestenbaum (Columbia University Press: $34.50; 120 pp., paperback original). Because land in Tokyo is so much more valuable than the structures on it, the Japanese regard buildings as disposable commodities. This tendency to build, raze and rebuild has given a new generation of architects the opportunity to create dramatic, postmodern edifices that reflect Western concepts of space and design, rather than indigenous traditions. Although many of these buildings would look equally at home in New York or Los Angeles, the extensive use of eroded-looking concrete suggests a contemporary reinterpretation of the ideal of sabi, a worn, unpretentious rusticity highly esteemed in Zen aesthetics.