KATSURA: IMPERIAL VILLA edited by Arata Isozaki with texts by Yoshiharu Matsumura, Manfred Speidel, Bruno Taut, Walter Gropius, Kenzo Tange and Francesco Dal Co

Phaidon Press, 2011, First Softcover edition, 402 pp., 10" X 11", Softcover

Very good

A detailed history of Katsura, the seventeenth-century Imperial Palace in Kyoto, Japan, a pivotal work of Japanese architecture, often described as the 'quintessence of Japanese taste'. First revealed to the modern architectural world by Bruno Taut, the great German architect, in the early twentieth-century, Katsura stunned and then excited the architectural community of the West. Le Corbusier and Walter Gropius, pillars of the Modernist establishment, were fascinated by Katsura's 'modernity'. This book documents the palace in detail, combining newly commissioned photographs, detailed drawings, archival material, and historical analysis.