World Observation

Empire, Architecture, and the Global Archive of Itō Chūta

Matthew Mullane

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Hardback

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English

University of Pittsburgh Press
01 July 2025

History of architecture

An Architectural Exploration into the Rich Visual Archive of Ito Chuta.

World Observation pursues a world history of architecture, arguing for an alternative origin point for what we call ""global history"" in the rapidly transforming environment of nineteenth-century Japan. Mullane focuses on the career of Ito Chuta (1867-1954), the most influential Japanese architect, historian, theorist, and colonial bureaucrat, and his mission to create a Japan-centric world history of architecture through translation, field study, and the design of new architecture. Drawing from Ito's rich visual archive, much of which has never been reproduced, World Observation critically examines the political and epistemological connections between his world project, empire, and the prospects of global history today.

AUTHOR: Matthew Mullane is an Assistant Professor of the History and Theory of Architecture at Radboud University in Nijmegen, NL. He received his PhD from Princeton University and was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University's Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies, and Tokyo College, The University of Tokyo.

47 colour, 68 b/w illustrations

By: Matthew Mullane
Imprint: University of Pittsburgh Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 254mm, Width: 179mm,
ISBN: 9780822948445
ISBN 10: 0822948443
Pages: 384
Publication Date: 01 July 2025
Audience: Professional and scholarly , Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Unspecified

Matthew Mullane is assistant professor of the history and theory of architecture at Radboud University in the Netherlands.

Reviews for World Observation: Empire, Architecture, and the Global Archive of Itō Chūta

Thanks to this deeply researched study, readers can at last gain a full and nuanced picture of twentieth-century scholar, architect, and pan-Asianist ideologue Itō Chūta. As Mullane demonstrates, Itō's fascinating and eccentric body of work is equally important to our understanding of global architectural modernity as it is to the history of modern Japan.--Jordan Sand, Georgetown University