By conceiving of urban design as constantly changing, the Metabolists opened architecture up to a narrative dimension. William Gardner details the rich exchanges between visionary architects and science fiction authors in postwar Japan.
William O. Gardner is Professor of Japanese language, literature, and film at Swarthmore College. His most recent work explores the intersection of architecture and science fiction in postwar Japan, which builds upon his earlier research on intermedial relationships in Japanese prewar modernism as well as postwar science fiction. His previous publications include Advertising Tower: Japanese Modernism and Modernity in the 1920’s, and “The Cyber Sublime and the Virtual Mirror: Information and Media in the Works of Oshii Mamoru and Kon Satoshi.”
More about the book: https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/the-metabolist-imagination