Isozaki's Splash

ARCHITECTURE

Why is this man smiling? Could it be because this month sees the opening of his first building in the U.S., L.A.'s Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), a delicious confection of textures and geometries? Is it that his polished drawings are on show at the Max Protetch gallery? Perhaps it's that "Tokyo: Form and Spirit," now at the IBM Gallery, continues to focus our attention on this tsunami of architectural talent.

There's no telling with Arata Isozaki. He meets the conflicting demands of colorful postmodernism and spare machineage design with the same ease

with which his buildings juggle their globes, cylinders, and pyramids. He's taken the best of the West and added an Eastern edge. Max Protetch. New York. (1213-113) IBM Gallery. New York. (12/9-2/7)

H. ALDERSEY-WILLIAMS

Cinematheque Franqaise has long been a dream palace by the Eiffel Tower

-STEPHEN SCHIFF