Cool Hunting

Tokyo demands your attention. Both the city's appearance and its visual output are impossible to summarize, though they always grab the eye. "TokyoLife: Art and Design" attempts to get a handle on the amorphous style of the megalopolis by looking at the actual players behind it.

The book highlights the work of more than 80 creative minds— including painters, architects, fashion designers, filmmakers and photographers— with the only commonality of pushing their specific art to the limit. Some are well known (like Takashi Murakami and Naoto Fukasawa) and others are rising stars that have yet to get recognition in the West. Authored by Ian Luna (who has produced several books on architecture, urbanism and design) TokyoLife has contributions from a team of art and design professionals on both sides of the Pacific. The excellent essay by Toshiko Mori (architect and chair of the design department at Harvard) attempts to explain how a city with no central architectural icon or cultural aesthetic is inspiring this unprecedented explosion in art and design.

TokyoLife can be purchased in the MoMA store or on Amazon.