Ito, Toyo

views updated

Ito, Toyo (1941– ). Korean-born Japanese architect. Drawing on traditional Japanese architecture, using semi-transparent screens, and rejecting Metabolism, he sought the ‘Contemporary Hut’ (an allusion to the Primitive Hut of C18 European theory), and succeeded in creating a kind of oriental Minimalism with his White-U house, Tokyo (1975–7), and his own Silver Hut, Nakano, Tokyo (1982–4—a cluster of rooms around a courtyard, roofed with vaults on concrete columns). Other works include the Guest House for Sapporo Breweries, Eniwa (1987–9), the apparently insubstantial Nomad Restaurant, Tokyo (1985–6), the Shimosuwa Lake Suwa Museum, Shimosuwa-machi, Nagano (1990–3), the ITM Building, Matsuyama (1991–3), the Old People's Home, Yatsushiro, Kumamoto (1992–4), and the Fire Station, also in Yatsushiro (1992–5—in which influences from Le Corbusier are overt).

Bibliography

Kalman (1994);
Ito (1974);
Jencks (1995);
Jencks & Schaarschmidt-Richter (eds.) (1995);
Jodidio (1997a);
Jane Turner (1996)