Digital Archives for Architectural Space: Digital Archives for Architectural Space (建築・空間デジタルアーカイブス)

About the Archives:

The Digital Archives for Architectural Space (DAAS) was created with support from the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport; the Architectural Institute of Japan, The Japan Institute of Architects, and various construction firms. The project has been championed by leading Japanese architect Maki Fumihiko (槇文彦), and other experts in the architectural field and information technologies.

DAAS collected and utilized photographs, drawings, and other materials from the 60s and 70s when Japan was at the height of modernization and rapid economic growth, and thus, a large number of exquisite structures had been created. The DAAS project works with building owners and designers to preserve and make public architectural drawings and visual images of models and built structures making them digitally available for preservation and ongoing research.

Collection Size: 

This rich archive of digital images was established to enable preservation of and future scholarship on major achitecture of Japan, especially that produced during the 1960s and 1970s.  The Digital Archive of Architectural Space (DAAS) contains approximately 6,000 digital images of 1,116 built structures.  The collection includes visual Images, architectural models, and landscape designs provided by Shinkenchiku-sha, Japan's leading publisher of books, journals and magazines on recent architecture. 

Note: The Guide uses the ALA/LC standard romanization, however, it also reflects different romanization system used by an individual institution.

Using the Archives

• Registration (free) required.

• DAAS is a fully digital archive with a rich content of images.  It does not have on-site facilities for users. For scholars inquiring about researching originals from their digital collections, please contact the designated holding institutions of each project.

• For policies on the use of images in the DAAS collections, please go to (url), and also consult NCC's IUP (Image Use Protocol) Website.  Please note that DAAS has its own forms available below.  Some English-language publishers may have additional permissions requirements, check with your publisher on those. The IUP's editable templates for bilingual permissions letters may be useful in crafting permissions letters acceptable to Western language publishers as well as Japanese rights owners.     

• For questions regarding images from DAAS, please use the form in the Inquiry section.

We are constantly improving the guide contents and we want your opinion.

For all comments and questions about the Guide, please e-mail us:

mlaguide@nccjapan.net