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TUESDAY
Say “Japanese architecture” and most people think of wooden pagodas, paper sliding doors, and austere gardens. Yet the characteristic postwar Japanese structure is a blank five-story ferro-concrete office or apartment block with a bar, convenience store, or noodle shop at street level. Still, the traditional is a powerful force in Japan, and reconciling the ancient and modern remains an issue in the country that has produced such wild-eyed modernists as Arata Isozaki. In his lecture “The Struggle Between Tradition and Modernity in Japanese Architecture,” University of Southern California professor Jonathan Reynolds discusses the tension between established Japanese notions of harmony and the asymmetrical futurism of the country’s most radical structures. At 7:30 p.m. at Catholic University’s Crough Center, in the Locraft Room, 620 Michigan Ave. NE. Free. (202) 319-5188. (Mark Jenkins)