In the French writer-director Jacques Tati's superb 1967 film "Play Time," people are like prisoners condemned to roam about in and amid the glass cages of high-rise office blocks. They are lost, both to the world and themselves. In the world of Tati, who died in 1982 aged 75, all cities look alike; all humans are the victims of an insipid sameness.
How do we turn away from this self-inflicted condemnation? Where do we reconstitute our link with our natural surroundings and, by doing so, reclaim our humanity?
One man, distinguished architect Kengo Kuma, has an answer, and he set it out in "The Principles of Place," a book published in January by Ichigaya Shuppansha.