Some 30 years have passed since the Yokohama-born Waro Kishi opened his office in Kyoto in 1981. During this time, he has continued to search for his position as an architect and to question the meaning of practicing in Kyoto, not without feeling the overwhelming weight of the city’s history and traditions. Although he has long been a self-professed Modernist focused on pursuing rationality and order, Kishi has established a reputation as a leading contemporary architect who carefully interprets the qualities of his sites while applying Japanese aesthetic sensibilities justified on sound historical grounds.

This book contains fourteen incidents that Waro Kishi identifies as having shaped his perspective and approach to architectural design begin this monograph, which goes on to present a wealth of selected projects by the architect in elegant detail. His personal interactions with 1960s Southern Californian houses, the Pantheon, Hong Kong, rice terraces in Bali, and more determined his path as a designer. The architect’s own selected works (39 in total) span his career from 1982 until the present. Among these are numerous private homes, the Leica Ginza Showroom, the Zohiko Urushi Museum, and an annex project for Kyoto City Museum, plus temples, lounges, and even urban-scale planning projects.

Some 30 years have passed since the Yokohama-born Waro Kishi opened his office in Kyoto in 1981. During this time, he has continued to search for his position as an architect and to question the meaning of practicing in Kyoto, not without feeling the overwhelming weight of the city’s history and traditions. Although he has long been a self-professed Modernist focused on pursuing rationality and order, Kishi has established a reputation as a leading contemporary architect who carefully interprets the qualities of his sites while applying Japanese aesthetic sensibilities justified on sound historical grounds.

This book contains fourteen incidents that Waro Kishi identifies as having shaped his perspective and approach to architectural design begin this monograph, which goes on to present a wealth of selected projects by the architect in elegant detail. His personal interactions with 1960s Southern Californian houses, the Pantheon, Hong Kong, rice terraces in Bali, and more determined his path as a designer. The architect’s own selected works (39 in total) span his career from 1982 until the present. Among these are numerous private homes, the Leica Ginza Showroom, the Zohiko Urushi Museum, and an annex project for Kyoto City Museum, plus temples, lounges, and even urban-scale planning projects.