Yukio Futagawa

If there's one decade that architects would like to forget about, it's the 1970s. Modernism had a bit too much mirrored glass (such as the Portman on the cover) and Postmodernism, regardless of recent reappraisals, was far from universally loved. Nevertheless, the decade produced some winners, from the late work of Louis I. Kahn to the early houses of Richard Meier. This special issue of Japan's Global Architecture collects around 100 international projects that were completed in the decade. Not all are winners – GA wasn't about value judgments so much as thorough documentation and the lovely photos of Yukio Futagawa – but the issue reveals that there was plenty of good work produced in the decade. Yet with so many projects, the documentation is slim, with the projects getting only one or two spreads on the albeit large-format pages. Another downside is that a few projects aren't documented in English (Olympiapark by Behnisch is in German, for example) alongside the Japanese translations. Robert A. M. Stern and Arata Isozaki contribute a couple critical essays, while four authors (Christian Norberg-Schulz, John Morris Dixon, Manfredo Tafuri, and Dennis Sharp) present what they consider the most impressive buildings of the decade – not surprisingly, most are included in the special issue.… (mais)