Asian Independence

Asian Independence: Notes on Modernism and Creativity in the Built Environment

Bracken, G. (TU Delft Spatial Planning and Strategy)

2022

This article discusses three recently published books examining the cities of East Asia. The first, Southeast Asia’s Modern Architecture: Questions of Translation, Epistemology and Power (2019), edited by Jiat-Hwee Chang and Imran bin Tajudeen,1 “explores the histories of Southeast Asia’s architecture and built environment in the twentieth century” (p. 2) while actually questioning “the validity and utility of Southeast Asia as a geographic unit and taxonomic device for framing and understanding” it (p. 2). The second, Lawrence Chua’s Bangkok Utopia: Modern Architecture and Buddhist Felicities, 1910-1973 (2021),2 “outlines an alternative genealogy of both utopia and modernism in a part of the world that has often been overlooked by scholars of both” (p. 1), while Creativity in Tokyo: Revitalizing a Mature City (2020), edited by Matjaz Ursic and Heidi Imai,3 “is an attempt to initiate discussion on the partial or nonholistic use of creativity concepts for specific economic and political goals, as well as to show their possible short- and long-term effects” (p. ix).

architecture
Modernism
creativity
Bangkok
Tokyo
Southeast Asia

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:53ece385-371f-4ece-83ce-2eae0d362d03

https://doi.org/10.1177/00961442221084718

2022-10-26

0096-1442

Journal of Urban History, 49 (2023) (3), 691-700

Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository 'You share, we take care!' - Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.

Institutional Repository

review

© 2022 G. Bracken