After a trip to Japan in 1953, Werner Blaser published his landmark book on classical Japanese architecture. His studies of 17th- and 18th-century wooden buildings document minimalist, grid-based structures using stark black-and-white photographs, some color photographs and numerous line drawings. His book, highly prized in terms of design and content, contributed significantly to introducing Japanese aesthetics to Western architecture, art and graphics. Mies van der Rohe, for example, gave it to many of his friends. The reprint is enriched by a text on the history of the book by Christian Blaser, Werner Blaser's son, a contribution by Inge Andritz on Mies van der Rohe and Japanese architecture, and a personal afterword by Tadao Ando.

After a trip to Japan in 1953, Werner Blaser published his landmark book on classical Japanese architecture. His studies of 17th- and 18th-century wooden buildings document minimalist, grid-based structures using stark black-and-white photographs, some color photographs and numerous line drawings. His book, highly prized in terms of design and content, contributed significantly to introducing Japanese aesthetics to Western architecture, art and graphics. Mies van der Rohe, for example, gave it to many of his friends. The reprint is enriched by a text on the history of the book by Christian Blaser, Werner Blaser's son, a contribution by Inge Andritz on Mies van der Rohe and Japanese architecture, and a personal afterword by Tadao Ando.

After a trip to Japan in 1953, Werner Blaser published his landmark book on classical Japanese architecture. His studies of 17th- and 18th-century wooden buildings document minimalist, grid-based structures using stark black-and-white photographs, some color photographs and numerous line drawings. His book, highly prized in terms of design and content, contributed significantly to introducing Japanese aesthetics to Western architecture, art and graphics. Mies van der Rohe, for example, gave it to many of his friends. The reprint is enriched by a text on the history of the book by Christian Blaser, Werner Blaser's son, a contribution by Inge Andritz on Mies van der Rohe and Japanese architecture, and a personal afterword by Tadao Ando.

After a trip to Japan in 1953, Werner Blaser published his landmark book on classical Japanese architecture. His studies of 17th- and 18th-century wooden buildings document minimalist, grid-based structures using stark black-and-white photographs, some color photographs and numerous line drawings. His book, highly prized in terms of design and content, contributed significantly to introducing Japanese aesthetics to Western architecture, art and graphics. Mies van der Rohe, for example, gave it to many of his friends. The reprint is enriched by a text on the history of the book by Christian Blaser, Werner Blaser's son, a contribution by Inge Andritz on Mies van der Rohe and Japanese architecture, and a personal afterword by Tadao Ando.

As architect, designer and especially author, Swiss master Werner Blaser has always asked, ''What is good architecture?'' In this copiously illustrated, comprehensive book, Blaser - author of books on Mies Van Der Rohe, Aalto, Meier, Piano, Jahn and Ando, among many others - offers his answer. Drawing on photographs from his impressive archive, which he accompanies with short explanatory texts, Werner Blaser vividly demonstrates the basic foundations of architecture and perception. In a few fascinating sections, for example, he describes the relation between the Finnish landscape and the works of Aalto; shows how Calatravas uses natural principles in his architecture; reveals how Piano works with light. He also considers traditional Chinese and Indian architecture, and the relation between archetype and image and the element of silence. A brilliant summing-up by one of architecture's great thinkers.

Isfahan is a heavenly city of gardens, mosques and palaces for an open-minded architect. In addition to the artful dome constructions over the prayer halls of the larger mosques, the highpoint of Persian architecture is the multitude of garden complexes, staged as a mirror image of the cosmos or Paradise. With their aromatic shrubberies and trees the galleries of pillars are typical for these geometrically laid out Islamic gardens in which nature becomes a work of art. Every good architecture seeks to create a world, and every genuine building is a unique specimen filled with atmosphere. Now is the time to see with new eyes, with an artistic view. From this standpoint, with ist fascinating two hundred year buidling history, the architectural currents of Isfahan continue to have a lucid effect today.