Friday The Shinkenchiku Library
The Shinkenchiku Library is a weekly series on au-magazine that introduces out-of-print publications from the 96-year-old Shinkenchiku-Sha archive. This is the second part of Chapter 1 to the book, Architecture of the Shōwa Era (by Hiroshi Sasaki, 1977) – The Status Between 1925 to 1930.
With the cooperation of the Kansai Architectural Community, founded by the architect Goichi Takeda (1872-1938), Shinkenchiku gradually expanded its thematic range. From a publication that solely focused on housing research, it began to also showcase architects and competitions.
About a year after the first issue, Takao Okada (1898-1993), an architect taught under Takeda, with immense international experiences, strongly advised reaching out to European architects for submissions of their latest works and essays. This would then be material published in the magazine.
Beyond photographs and texts, extremely valuable drawings done by architects who resided overseas were also included. This brought about a revamp in the layout of the magazine, creating a format that can be said to have been a prototype of “how to introduce architecture”.
![Shinkenchiku magazine, 1927. In the October issue, the results of the International Design Competition were announced together with the headline, “Is the French wave coming to the new architecture world?](https://au-magazine.com/img/2020/07/vol3_1-1024x716.jpg)
![A special feature on “original architects” was produced based on the materials directly ordered from foreign architects. In a magazine published in 1928, Peter Behrens and Erich Mendelsohn were introduced.](https://au-magazine.com/img/2020/07/vol3_2-1024x713.jpg)
To read the original text excerpt (in Japanese) from Architecture of the Shōwa Era, please visit Shinkenchiku.online.