Japanese Architects and Global Modernity in the Middle East and Africa

Abstract

The question posed by the paper is if the architects in Japan, particularly the Metabolists, presented a distinct form of modernization in the world scenario, which was different from that of the West. Metabolism, which was conceived in Japan post World War II, was a concept wherein architecture was regarded as a flexible infrastructure system. It also established itself as a model that could potentially be transferred beyond its original context. Due to the oil crisis in 1973, leading to recession in Japan and the West, and coincidentally, the decolonization across the Middle East and Africa, led Japanese architects to become active players in projects for newly independent nations and fast-developing states in the Middle East and Africa that were looking for new forms of architectural and urban identity. However, it is essential to determine whether their work was indeed a non-Western, global modernization in both situations, as is widely acknowledged at present.