views from a flood wall

Along the flood wall separating the Arakawa (a large river in Tokyo) from the city a series of low views can be obtained. Here I focus on looking towards the citys dense low rise developments. The height of the view from more or less the 4th story level makes for an interesting angle of the city.

Nihon Minka-en

The space between inside and outside.

 A few pictures from Nihon Minka-en (Japan Open-Air Folk House Museum).

the negative effect of scale shift

This is not the usual small scale big scale Tokyo conflict. This makes me more sad.

from 1st

 a favorite

a showroom disguised a house

with an office on the first floor.

metal screen

at night, with light.

transformer

ban, shigeru. the performative aspects of transformation in a building. the parking entrance

inspirational modernism

Concrete. Setagaya-ku. ward office. another favorite.

wall, green

ban, shigeru. house of a dentist

a window

a shinohara window. bad white balance on camera.

Recommend Tokyo Architecture

The list of buildings. See all posts click here.

• Saint Marys Cathedral - Kenzo Tange - 1964
• Nagakin Capsule Tower - Kisho Kurokawa 1972
• Tokyo Institute of Technology Centennial Hall - Kazuo Shinohara 1987
• M2 - Kengo Kuma - 1991
• Sumida Culture Factory - Itsuko Hasegawa 1994
• Tokyo International Forum - Rafael Vinoly 1996
• Saitama Prefecture University - Riken Yamamoto 1999
• Mutsukawa Daycare Center - SAANA  2000.
• Yokohama International Ferry Terminal - FOA 2002.
• Fuji Kindergarten - Tezuka Architects 2007
• Tamagawa Art University Library - Toyo Ito 2007
• KAIT Workshop - Junya Ishigami 2008

Show Tokyo.parallellt.se Architecture list on larger map.

Tokyo Institute of Technology Centennial Hall

Tokyo Institute of Technology (TiTech) Centennial Hall, 1987 - Kazuo Shinohara. The role is the hall is to provide exhibition space, meeting rooms, a small exhibition about the history of Titech and to serves as a landmark situated on the edge of the campus dominating the (taxi) plaza in front of Ookayama station. The other key buildings of this square are the Tokyo Tech Front by Kazunari Sakamoto and a the Tokyu Hospital[Tokyogreenspace] by Koichi Yasuda.
Kazunari Sakamoto was a student of Shinohara as noted in the Sumida Culture Factory post by me this genealogy is important in the understanding of Japanese architecture. Another famous architect from Titech is Tsukamoto of Atelier Bow-wow.
Kazuo Shinohara has deep influence on the development of Japanese architecture and has recently come to international attention again, partly because of being awarded the memorial golden lion in 2010 Venice Biennale.

fantastic structure

Forum 246 as seen from Odakyu-line. A fantastic structure is visible in the facade.

curtain wall house

Curtain Wall House, Shigeru Ban, 1995. On windy winter day.

A curtain wall is an outer covering of a building in which the outer walls are non-structural, but merely keep out the weather. - Wikipedia.

mies invented the glass curtain wall, but I just used a curtain. Shigeru Ban - Designboom

What is notable is the tree missing in the old photos. If must affect the second floor deck space deeply in summer. Also the four cars crammed into the plot.

More information with plans from a Moma exhibition. Shigeru Ban Architects website about the project here.

Edo Tokyo Museum

Edo Tokyo Museum - Kiyonori Kikutake - 1993. The grand exhibition hall lifted from a giant podium on four giant legs which provides vertical access. The main access is through a disturbing red escalator.

Just the building itself, which looks like it has been spirited from the set of Star Wars, is a wonder. - Lonely Planet Japan

Another bubble project this time the city museum, which covers the history and development from Edo to Tokyo with a story ending somewhere around the Olympics gives a certain insight into the city.
As many bubble projects the cost of this museum was big, and a better end result could surely have been delivered  for the same amount of money. But there still is something charmingly utopian over this whole project. Sadly the podium, the vast outdoor space underneath the museum seems sadly under used. The would be a wonderful setting for a park project.
The architect behind the museum Kikutake is mostly famous for Sky House, metabolism and his various marine city schemes. Sadly the 1994 Tokyo Sofitel, close to Ueno, telling the this story is no longer.
He also worked with the group behind various hyper building schemes.

Access: JR Sobu-line Ryogoku or TOEI Oedo-line
Other works: Sky House

happy industrial postmodernism

Miyasaka Community Hall, Masamitsu Nozawa Building Workshop, 1990. Gable shapes lifted by truss.

Nagakin Capsule Tower

Nagakin Capsule Tower. Kisho Kurokawa. This now rundown building is the realised key building of the metabolist project, a dream of handling the explosive growth of Tokyo and other cities (look here).  The capsule were the cells of the metabolist city, movable functional living units. No capsule has ever been moved on this tower. This building should be seen as an alternative dream future that never happened. As many utopian futures there are many problems to address.

the political goal of metabolist urban planning could only have meant the erasure of private land ownership and its total re-organization. 

Imagining the organic city p. 172  - M. Schalk.

The idea lives on in the capsule hotels which can be found around major train stations in Japan. But there the capsules fills interior space instead of defining the exterior as here. Also individual movable homes, capable of creating informal cities of course exists, but are mostly ignored because they are the homes of the poor.

Yokohama Int Ferry Terminal

The competition for the new structure above the grand pier in Yokohama was won by Foreign Office Architects 2002. An organically [1] shaped wooden landscape with patches of grass undulation and sliding between the different levels.

[FOAs] Yokohama Ferry Terminal saw them burst on to the international scene with an extraordinary structure which blended infrastructure, engineering, architecture and landscape to create a new typology for transport.

- The Architecture of Hope (introduction about FOA)

Tamabi Library

Entrance floor of Tama Art University Library by Toyo Ito. This is a fantastic building. Restrained and calm. Irregularly space concrete vaults divides space along curved lines.
More to read from Dezeen here and on Archdaily here.

fuji kindergarten

Fuji Kindergarten, Tezuka Architects, 2007. Slide from roof. Located far out in suburbia this kindergarten has simple policy.

Kids first. Help me Do It Myself. 

The Montessori philosophy is clearly visible in both building and staff.
This kindergarten has been selected as the best education building in the world. This project makes me warm and happy.