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Architext.

Informal Japanese architectural group founded in 1971 by Takefumi Aida, Takamitsu Azuma, Mayumi Miyawaki, Makoto Suzuki and Minoru Takeyama. The members of Architext emphasized their lack of a common philosophy other than their mutual interest in publishing the magazine Architext in support of highly individual, experimental and sometimes unconventional architecture. While the publication echoed the visionary texts of the avant-garde group Archigram, the name was an ironic comment on architectural doctrines and theoretical writings. All five members of Architext were born in the 1930s and grew up during World War II and the reconstruction that followed. They were particularly concerned with the relationship of the individual to the environment and to tradition, and they advocated pluralism and radicalism. Of the group, it was primarily Takeyama who stressed in his buildings the analogy between architecture and semiology that the name Architext suggested. The magazine was published five times between summer 1970 and winter 1972 as Architext 00, 0, 1, 2, and Extra, designed as a series of five posters (one per architect); these were cut into five 21 cm-square pages and bound as ‘posteresque statements’. Architext functioned as a forum for publishing individual buildings (the group built no collective architecture), philosophies and architectural fantasies in drawings, photographs and texts, mainly in Japanese.

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  Reproduced by kind permission of Macmillan Publishers Limited, publishers of The Grove Dictionary of Art.
  © Copyright 2000 Macmillan Publishers Limited.
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