It is hard to conjure up a hotel building more emblematic than the Hotel Okura in Tokyo. In contrast to the Japanese avant-garde architecture of its days and the faceless corporate behemoths that came to dominate the city in the 1970s and ‘80s, this 1962 building synthesises traditional Japanese features with modernist architecture.
Reinier de Graaf of OMA wrote an article which beautifully builds bridges between architecture and Piketty’s theses on income inequalities. Time to reflect on some of this, almost exactly a year after I wrote my own review of the economist’s tome.
Neelam Cinema (Aditya Prakash), Chandigarh
One great building in Kampala is Uganda House. Built between 1969 and 1980, it houses the headquarters of the Uganda People’s Congress, the country’s once-dominant political party.
I came across this great website with photos from the centre of Fukuyama, Hiroshima Prefecture, principally taken around the city’s train station. They capture the essence of why visuals can be so powerful a tool to convey the changes that swept through postwar Japan.
1966 postcard with station area and castle in background
I have just returned from a two-week stint in Uganda visiting a dear friend. While exploring Kampala on foot, I managed to gather some material for a future publication. Herewith some impressions from the city.
View from Sheraton Hotel towards central Kampala, with new Bank of Uganda building in the centre
Despite all the work on the Yangon Architectural Guide, I managed to stick to a fairly regular posting schedule on my long-term Tumblr project. Time to look at some of the stats and features of the site.
To escape the (again) cold winter, we decided to hop on a plane and go to Nicaragua for a week in February. Nicaragua is probably one of the first foreign countries that came to my attention as a child. East Germany was a chief supporter of the Sandinistas in their fight against the Contras.
Cinema, Esteli
Since I first blogged about the rise of the super slender skyscrapers in New York, 432 Park Avenue has been growing into the sky. The inequality argument has picked up, and some have likened the building to one giant middle finger the super rich are showing to New Yorkers.
Happy New Year! This blog has become slightly inactive over the past months as the bulk of my writing takes place inside the manuscript for the forthcoming Yangon Architectural Guide. To wrap up the research for the book, I was in Burma for a few weeks in December.
New pedestrian overpass – Strand Road
Now that the writing process for our book is in full swing, I am dealing with some historical puzzles occasionally. Herewith two that I have shared with our Facebook readers recently. One is about a famous high school, the other about a beautiful yet dilapidated official building on Pansodan Street.
