Critical House

Highly praised for its aesthetics and daring design, Japanese architecture has been rooted in socio-critical discourse since World War II. Especially in the 1970s, the house served as a means of criticism and strategic positioning on this “intellectual battlefield”. In the 1990s, Toyo Ito questioned this approach. What followed was a comprehensive debate on the changing relationship between housing, contemporary architecture and society, which was detrimental to criticism – and reflects the global shift towards so-called post-critical philosophy. In this book, 20 Japanese architects – including Toyo Ito, Kengo Kuma, Yoshiharu Tsukamoto and Kentaro Yamazaki – reflect on this change in interviews and essays, revealing a lively, albeit more subtle, form of criticism in contemporary practice.

Mohammad Eimar, Architectural Designer and Researcher was born in Abu Dhabi , U.A.E and studied engineering at University of Jordan, Amman, Jordan. He has worked as an architect, with Almarsam Architects and Symbiosis Designs ltd, Jordan. From 2016 he worked at Kengo Kuma and Associates Tokyo, Japan, and in March 2023 established Mohammad Eimar Architects , Tokyo, Japan - Amman, Jordan. Masaru Otsuka, Assistant Professor, Department of Architecture and Building Engineering, School of Environment and Society, Institute of Science Tokyo. Koshiro Ogura (b. 1997, Tokyo, Japan) is an architect who currently works as a technical support staff at the Science Tokyo (former Tokyo Tech), and also teaches at Hosei University as an adjunct lecturer. His works focus on architectural representation and design theory, with a secondary interest in preservation and archives.