Tokyo Explorer

Views on architecture in Japan can often be split into two camps. On one hand you have the views of those like Alex Kerr, author of ‘Dogs and Demons,’ who point to the ugliness of Japanese cities, with buildings knocked up with little respect for surroundings. On the other hand, there are those who revel in the contrasts that the cities provide, the small shrine sandwiched between tower blocks a defining image of Japan. Whichever side of the debate you find yourself drawn to there is enough to keep you gazing at the Tokyo skyline for a long time.

Some of the most famous of Tokyo’s buildings include the following.

West Shinjuku’s Metropolitan Government Building (1989) forms part of the skyscraper island of West Shinjuku, with its twin towers and plaza based on the Campo in Sienna. It was designed by Kenzo Tange, the father of Modern Japanese architecture, who also designed the building next door, the Park Tower 1991. The Park Hyatt building with its three staggered towers and polygonal glass roof gives the skyline that futuristic feel so loved by photographers and film makers. It was the Park Hyatt that proved the location for Sophia Coppola’s film ‘Lost in Translation.’

(Scenes from Lost in Translation)

If Tange, is the Godfather of modern architecture then Toyo Ito is its prince. His most impressive creation is ‘Tod’s Building’ in Omotesando, a man-made structure made to feel natural.  A glass-walled building crisscrossed with concrete braces imitates the patterns made by the branches of the elm trees nearby. The different shadows caused by the changing light means that the interior never seems the same.

In the bubble era, money was no object as exotic creations sprang up all over the city.
Some would argue that the old area of Asakusa was not the best place to build a state of the art building with a golden ‘turd’ on the top. But not the Asahi beer company! Their assurances that the work resembled a flame, or even the froth from a glass of beer did little to persuade locals that designer Phillip Starck wasn’t taking the mickey.

Starck was one of many foreign architects invited to join the party during the bubble years. Another was Rafael Vinoly, who you may feel was more successful with his ‘International Forum’ (1996) building in Yurakucho: a huge glass ship that seems to have temporarily docked among the non-descript buildings that surround it.

The most recent addition to the Tokyo skyline is the Roppongi Hills complex, for which a team of the world’s finest architects was assembled. The Kohn Pederson Fox team designed the 53 storey tower, Terence Conran - the residential towers; and Maki Fumihiko thought up the TV centre.

The idea behind this city within a city was a more practical one than the decorative excesses of the 80s .It presents a blueprint for life in the future, with innovative, glass-walled structures allowing light in and greenery to flourish in an environment where people live, work and play in the same space. The vision sees Tokyo extending skywards rather than extending its urban sprawl, with people commuting down escalators rather than spending hours on the subway.

Although the complex is impressive, and its residents include some of the city’s high rollers and reportedly a former Prime Minister, you can’t help feeling that, given the cost of apartments there, it has as much to do with the reality of most people’s lives as a day at Disneyland.

Indeed, there is something of that atmosphere about the place at weekends when the masses come to shop, eat, visit galleries, watch films before returning to the less salubrious surroundings of their living places.