I just got back from a short trip to Dresden. My parents treated us to the hotel, so we had to go with their choice of location in the fringes of the renovated old town. It proved to be a decent place and took us past the very interesting Pirnaischer Platz each day. Here, two buildings stood out, necessitating some further research.
Category Archives: Architecture
Komazawa Olympic Park
The Tokyo Olympics 1964 have been a recurring theme on this blog (here and here) because they fit in so nicely with the narrative of Japan’s economic miracle and reintegration into the world community. Another architectural manifestation from the Games is the Komazawa Olympic Park in Setagaya. The author of the book’s chapter on politics and avantgarde has chosen the complex as one of the insets. I took a stroll through the park to get a feel for the place.
City views
Today I climbed Atago Forest Tower’s sky deck for the views. Unfortunately, it was a little too bright and hazy towards the south west, where a lot of nice buildings are.
Towards Shinagawa, Tokyo Tower.
Toranomon Hills
Just down the road from where I live (until Wednesday!), a building has been rising to the sky relentlessly, floor by floor since we arrived in Tokyo five months ago. On 1 March, a press release revealed (to me at least) what this is all about: it’s Mori’s new mega-project, now officially christened Toranomon Hills after the area it is situated in. It is the developer’s largest since Roppongi Hills got opened ten years ago and at the heart of the whole area’s redevelopment.
Tokyo map of 60s/70s buildings
Work in progress… a geographical representation of the buildings discussed on this blog to date:
View 60s/70s buildings of Tokyo in a larger map
Yanaka strolls
Taking the south exit of Nippori station, you reach the neighbourhood of Yanaka. Many of the area’s buildings survived both the Kanto Earthquake and the carpet bombing of WWII. Walking the small streets, you get a feel for how Tokyo must have looked like a long time ago.
Old houses refuse to go
Despite the constant scrap and build here in Tokyo, you can find old “normal” buildings here and there. They do look out of place very often, like this one here in Akasaka, right in the centre of town near the government district. Situated next to a McDonald’s, one can only speculate as to what happened (or didn’t) to the wooden building or its owners.
Yebisu Garden Place
Exploring the city with the baby of a visiting friend, one of our trips led us to Yebisu Garden Place in Ebisu. Built in the mid-90s, this is a city-within-the-city complex quite typical of Tokyo (think Roppongi Hills, Tokyo Midtown, etc.): A large hotel, an office tower, complemented by shopping as well as residential units. Yet, at the end of the ensemble, something rather unexpected: a French chateau.
Metropolitan Festival Hall
The entrance to Tokyo’s Ueno Park is marked by two important post-war era buildings. Le Corbusier’s Museum of Western Art (read more here) brought the master’s distinct modernism to Japan and inspired many Japanese architects and urban planners. Across the promenade is Mayekawa’s impressive Tokyo Metropolitan Festival Hall. Himself a student in the French master’s Paris atelier before World War II, Mayekawa gave modernism a uniquely Japanese dimension.
Museum of Western Art
Built explicitly to house a collection of artworks the French government returned to the Japanese people, the Museum of Western Art opened its doors in 1959. With it, the Swiss-born French architect Le Corbusier created his sole work in East Asia. His influence on Japanese architecture, however, was to be far greater than this rather small museum building in Ueno Park.
