In Asia, contemporary buildings which draw on local cultural traditions are becoming a trend -- one in which the reconfiguration of indigenous design and the creation of hybrid forms reinvent tradition. The rich cultural heritage in Southeast Asia has pushed forward the Asian trend of returning to one's roots, and this lavishly illustrated book showcases the outstanding examples of this contemporary architecture. Projects from nine Asian countries ranging from India to Japan are featured, including private residences and institutional buildings.

What is the modern in Southeast Asia's architecture and how do we approach its study critically? This pathbreaking multidisciplinary volume is the first critical survey of Southeast Asia's modern architecture. It looks at the challenges of studying this complex history through the conceptual frameworks of translation, epistemology, and power. Challenging Eurocentric ideas and architectural nomenclature, the authors examine the development of modern architecture in Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam, with a focus on selective translation and strategic appropriation of imported ideas and practices by local architects and builders. The book transforms our understandings of the region's modern architecture by moving beyond a consideration of architecture as an aesthetic artifact and instead examining its entanglement with different dynamics of power.

This book provides one of the first comprehensive discussions of contemporary landscape architecture practice across the Asian region. Bringing together established designers, writers, and thinkers with those of the new generation, Jillian Walliss and Heike Rahmann explore what it means to design, do business, and think about nature, space, and urbanism with an Asian sensibility. Through a tripartite structure of Continuum, Interruption, and Speed, The Big Asian Book of Landscape Architecture develops ways for conceiving design around these three characteristics that simultaneously influence an Asian practice. A dynamic structure allows readers to dip into content, rather than progress in a linear manner. Each section begins with a positioning essay, which offer theoretical, cultural, and political contextualisation for the more focused academic writing, shorter reflections, practice interviews, photo essays and design projects which are interwoven in a unique graphic design. Featuring over eighty design projects, The Big Asian Book of Landscape Architecture's significance extends well beyond Asia, offering fresh perspectives for a field that has traditionally been dominated by North American and European influences.

This book collects a selected list of peer-reviewed papers presented at EAAC 2017, International Conference on East Asian Architectural Culture, the leading conference on architectural history and built heritage conservation in the East Asia region. While centered around the core issue of globalization and its complex effects on East Asian architectural cultures, the selected papers were arranged into four major sub-topics: Historical & Theoretical Research; Conservation Methodology & Technology; Adaptive Reuse; and Community Design. All together, this collection showcases the most recent disciplinary developments in East Asian countries, as well as the main concerns and prospects of leading practitioners. The wide range of contributions and perspectives included here in English language for a global audience should be of considerable appeal to all scholars and professionals in the fields of architectural and urban design, history of the built environment, and heritage conservation policies and methods.

An Introduction to the History of Southeast Asian Architecture chronicles the architectural heritage of 11 Southeast Asian countries, delving into the major influences and historical development of vernacular architecture and buildings in the region. Accompanied by hundreds of photos, the buildings featured in the book tell the fascinating stories of each country’s developments from prehistoric times until the present day.

Rapid technological, economic, social and cultural changes are transforming the idea of "Asian space." With the shift to a global economy and an urban population explosion, Asian cities have become a mainstay of progress, national pride, identity, and positioning on the global stage. The extraordinary pace and intensity of the changes have created a situation unique in the history of urban development. Despite the immense diversity of Asian countries, "Asia-ness" is often treated as a distinctive quality that has emerged from unique recent circumstances affecting Asian urbanizations as a whole. In Future Asian Space, 15 authors explore broad concepts relating to the creation and re-creation of "Asian space" and contemporary Asian identity, and their examination of different sites and research approaches highlights the difficulty of pinpointing what Asia-ness is, or might become. Appropriate design and planning of cities is a critical element in building a sustainable future and coping with environmental, social and cultural problems. Future Asian Space is designed to stimulate interests and engagement in discussions of the Asian city, and its trajectories in architecture and urbanism, but the authors' conclusions will intrigue anyone interested in the future of cities and urban life in Asia.

Asian Alterity is an interdisciplinary theoretical analysis that vigorously contests the homogeneity of the mainstream Eurocentric values. Part I argues for the need for an alternate perspective to be introduced so as to understand the diversity of Asia's cultural differences at their varied development stages and to meet the complex challenges of the explosive urban expansion and disruptive changes in traditional cultures and lifestyles.Part II of the book consists of nine case studies of Asian major urban cities by well-established academic writers and urban theorists. Each author presents diverse aspects of urban dynamism. The case studies will collectively demonstrate a broad framework to understand the essentiality of the interdisciplinary mode of Cultural Studies as an important lens towards meeting the challenges in Asian Architecture and Urbanism.Highlights of the book:

East Asia's rapidly changing role in international security, the global economy, development and global governance are expertly accounted for in this much-needed, state-of-the-art text. Xiaoming Huang offers an engaging and informed account of the key concepts, issues and actors working in this area. Ranging from the region's history, to culture and a comparative assessment of the region's states, this text is informed throughout by a compelling theoretical framework. In so doing, it unpicks the often complex relationships both at the domestic level and externally. Only with this understanding is it possible to make sense of the region's complex relationships both internally and externally. Structured around key concepts in international relations of war and peace, economic development and increased contemporary security threats, this text offers an empirically-rich, engaging account of the changing fortunes of East Asia.

How did terms like “Asia,” “Eurasia,” “Indochina,” “Pacific Rim” or “Australasia” originate and evolve, and what are their connections to the built environment? In addressing this question,Architecturalized Asia bridges the fields of history and architecture by taking “Asia” as a discursive structure and cultural construct, whose spatial and ideological formation can be examined through the lenses of cartography, built environments, and visual narratives. The first section, on the study of architecture in Asia from the medieval through early modern periods, examines icons and symbols in maps as well as textual descriptions produced in Europe and Asia. The second section explores the establishment of the field of Asian architecture as well as the political and cultural imagining of “Asia” during the long nineteenth century, when “Asia” and its regions were redefined in the making of modern world maps mainly produced in Europe. The third section examines tangible structures produced in the twentieth century as legible documents of these notional constructions of Asia. In exploring the ways in which “Asia” has been drawn and framed both within and without the continent, this volume offers cutting-edge scholarship on architectural history, world history and the history of empires. Written by architectural historians and historians specializing in Asia and European empires, this unique volume addresses the connection between Asia and the world through the lenses of built environments and spatial conceptualizations. Architecturalized Asiawill appeal to readers who are interested in Asian architecture, world architecture, Asian history, history of empires, and world history.