environment. The socio-economic success of Japan gave architects a chance to redefine Tokyo’s positions. The 1970s ugliness of the city was no longer read and understood as a lack of planning strategies. A new paradigmatic approach was presented in the 1980s – the heterogeneity of Tokyo’s landscape was a continuation of the heterogeneous urbanity of Edo. The Edo-Tokyo metaphor became a leading way of understanding the chaos of Japanese cities. Teruyuki Monnai’s “Glossary of Spatial Concepts” presented some of the key spatial concepts in Japanese tradition and their reinterpretation in contemporary Japan. Monnai talks about: the coexistence of traditional Japanese space with nature; asymmetry (hitaisho) and the juxtaposition of heterogeneous elements and their interpretation in Fumihiko Maki’s work; the ambiguity of boundaries and the use of transitional spaces that appear also in the work of Hiroshi Hara, Hiromi Fujii and Takefumi Aida; the concept of Ma; Oku and Maki’s interpretation of Oku; Utsuroi, the transformation of nature and the moment that captures that change; Miegakure, composition that cannot be visually perceived all at one moment, and Ando’s use of this approach in the Mount Rokko church; Mitate, expressing things through archetypical models, and seeing Itsuko Hasegawa’s concept of “second nature” as mitate; Yohaku, Wabi, and Sabi as concepts that influence minimalism; and finally, a topological structure of urban elements that produces heterogeneity – urban space was not understood as a composition or urban tissue, but as elements connected in a flexible relation. The last article in this part, “The Architect’s Imagination. An Anthology”, is in fact a collection of 5 texts written by Arata Isozaki, Kazuyo Shinohara, Fumihiko Maki, Toyo Ito and Tada Ando. These essays reflect these architects’ long time interests. Isozaki’s text is on the topic city as a ruin; Shinohara’s text is about the beauty of chaos; Maki’s text explains oku; Ito’s text is about ephemerality, temporality and simulation in contemporary Japanese city; Ando’s is about the connection between architecture and nature. This first part focused on spatial concepts in Japan presents a connection between traditional and contemporary Japanese architecture and urbanity. Unlike the first article that gives
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