Bruno Taut and Walter Gropius described Kyoto’s Katsura Imperial Villa, built for the emperor in the early 17th century, as a paragon of architecture. A new exhibition at the Berlin Bauhaus Archive reinforces how much the Bauhaus architects were influenced by Japan's clean lines and elegant simplicity. The photographer Ishimoto Yasuhiro, born in 1921 in San Francisco and trained in the New Bauhaus tradition in Chicago, was among the few who were allowed to photograph the villa’s interior and exterior. The exhibition presents Yasuhiro's stunning black-and-white photographs taken in 1954, which place the centuries-old imperial building in a modern context.

Die Villa Katsura: Bauhaus Archiv / Museum für Gestaltung
Klingelhöferstraße 14, Mitte
January 18 - March 12, 2012