Eraserhead‡machine

Giorgio Grassi: Italian Rationalist

Giorgio Grassi (born 1935) is one of Italy’s most important modern architects, and part of the so-called Italian rationalist school, also known as La Tendenza, associated most famously with Carlo Aymonino and Aldo Rossi that emerged in Italy in the 1960s. Much influenced by Ludwig Hilberseimer, Heinrich Tessenow and Adolf Loos, Grassi’s architecture is the most severely rational of the group: his extremely formal work is predicated on absolute simplicity, clarity, and honesty without ingratiation, rhetoric, or spectacular shape-making; it refers to historical archetypes of form and space and has a strong concern with the making of urban space. For these reasons Grassi is a non-conformist and a critic of conventional mainstream architecture.

Hiroyuki Ito

Japan’s Paradoxes

In the summer of 2015, I set out from New York to travel my home country.

The Japan I saw was full of contradictions: ancient and modern, Western and Eastern, democratic and feudal, peaceful and anarchic, sacred and profane, anonymous and unique.

The country’s character is complex: it is charming, but not without its troubles. Opposing forces create dynamic tensions that drive you crazy and yet also keep you going.

“Going where?” I don’t know. But the country is forever moving forward, and my job is to document its endlessly fascinating paradoxes.