a+u — Issue 665: Thomas Phifer

The February 2026 issue of a+u, the Tokyo architecture monthly, given over to the American architect Thomas Phifer.

Twenty-two projects are shown: ten houses and twelve cultural buildings. Among the houses are Ghent House, Elizaville House, Fishers Island House, Taghkanic House and three houses in the Hudson Valley. The cultural buildings run from Glenstone Museum and Warsaw's Museum of Modern Art to the National Archaeological Museum of Greece, the Corning Museum of Glass, the North Carolina Museum of Art and the Moody Amphitheater, as well as Rice University's Brochstein Pavilion, a United States courthouse and a headquarters for Cine Colombia.

The editors describe buildings that treat the landscape with care yet still hold their ground, whether they stand in a meadow or in a city, and they follow that care past form into environmental performance: the movable sunshades of Taghkanic House, the thick concrete eaves over thin glass walls at Hudson Valley House III, the layered canopy of the Moody Amphitheater. In their reading, the calm of Phifer's buildings comes from close study of light, climate and site.

Two essays frame the projects: Susana Ventura's The Poetics of Light, which moves from landscape to the space of contemplation, and Through the Lens of Glenstone, written by Phifer himself.

A+U Publishing, February 2026. 160 pages, softcover, 21.9 x 29.2 cm. In Japanese and English.