The ’smallness’ defining many a contemporary Japanese building might overseas be a much-loved characteristic of the country’s architecture; it is often however the result of necessity and circumstances, rather than choice, for many Japanese architects.
Because of their scale, resources and years of experience, it is perhaps inevitable that large construction firms are often the ones benefiting from the bigger national projects in the country, making larger commissions less common for the small boutique studios. And with few open competitions in the country, the bread-and-butter of the independent architect depends very much on slightly smaller private commissions such as regional municipality work, retail, hospitality, interiors and of course single-family houses (which more often than not, have to be, because of the major cities’ density, small-scale).
See the architecture projects reshaping Japan
At the same time, the aftermath of the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami in 2011 incited a wealth of new proposals from architects eager to contribute to society on a larger scale. Not all efforts have resulted in a large-scale public commission, and many of those who felt obliged to help in the country’s reconstruction have put their efforts back into private commissions.
From the country’s strengthened architectural enthusiasm, a number of new projects have been emerging across Japan, managing to not merely fulfil their brief, but brighten up their immediate environment. A new generation of smaller and medium scale high profile buildings (take for example, Kengo Kuma’s research building for the University of Tokyo) and public spaces (such as the Roof and Mushrooms pavilion in Kyoto by Ryue Nishizawa and Nendo) are being born all around the country.
Here, we present a few examples of the most recent contemporary Japanese architecture.
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Postcard from Helsinki Design Week 2025Helsinki Design Week turns 20 this year. Celebrating two decades of design, core themes of this year revolve around happiness and optimism: here are design critic Hugo Macdonald's ten highlights
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A new Tadao Ando monograph unveils the creative process guiding the architect's practiceNew monograph ‘Tadao Ando. Sketches, Drawings, and Architecture’ by Taschen charts decades of creative work by the Japanese modernist master
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The Architecture Edit: Wallpaper’s favourite July housesFrom geometric Japanese cottages to restored modernist masterpieces, these are the best residential projects to have crossed the architecture desk this month
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Mayumi Miyawaki’s Fukumura Cottage puts this lesser-known Japanese modernist in the spotlightDiscover the little-known modernist architect through this private home in Japan’s Tochigi prefecture countryside
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Kengo Kuma’s ‘Paper Clouds’ in London is a ‘poem’ celebrating washi paper in construction‘Paper Clouds’, an installation by Japanese architect Kengo Kuma, is a poetic design that furthers research into the use of washi paper in construction
