AGAINST VITRUVIUS. THE URBAN ORDER OF THE JAPANESE CITY

The prints of Hiroshige Utagawa show a peculiar way of seeing, framing only a portion of space, by revealing the Japanese attention to the detail. Similarly, the Japanese city is particularly well-finished from a closer look (i. e. at a small scale), but at a large scale (i. e. from above) the urban fabric does not comply with any type of ordinatio (formal order). In fact, Japan gives a peculiar declination of the urban design: it is intended as a syncretic - not synthetic - mosaic of heterogeneous parts.