 |
|
As huge Western-style developments near completion, two conflicting visions of the city are emerging.
By James Culham
April 2003
 |
 |
Courtesy Tokyo Institute of Technology, Tsukamoto Architectural
Laboratory, and Atelier Bow-Wow.
|
|
|
 |
|
View a selection of
web exclusive images from the book Pet Architecture Guide Book by
Tokyo Institute of Technology, Tsukamoto Architectural Laboratory, and
Atelier Bow-Wow. |
Driving on a Tokyo expressway with Yoshiharu Tsukamoto, a leading architect
of the 30-something generation, I begin to think I'm in a dystopian vision
of the future. He's wearing a leopard-skin face mask to protect himself
from pollution, pollen, and communicable diseases. Clusters of mismatched
buildings line the streets outside our windows, and color-coded traffic
warnings flash overhead. "We have a very strong cultural tradition
of acceptance," Tsukamoto says. "People don't really care what
a building looks like." From neighborhood to neighborhood, there's
no discernable pattern of scale, materials, or form. Neon collides with
concrete; building slivers are squeezed into improbable sites. Few structures
appear to be more than a decade old.
|
|
 |
Tokyo architecture firm Atelier Bow-Wow celebrates existing low-rise buildings
in a city that's rapidly undergoing high-rise construction. For example,
this three-story building (opposite page)--which contains a noodle shop
and a residence--is only six-and-a-half feet deep.
Courtesy Mori Building Co.
|
Several times during the tour we run into traffic congestion caused
by construction. Even in Japan's dismal economy, Tokyo keeps demolishing
and rebuilding itself. The capital of the world's second largest economy
is clearly an international city, but its built form remains utterly unique
and defiantly Japanese. Tsukamoto, 38, and his partner Momoyo Kaijima,
35, have written (with Junzo Kuroda) an influential book on the subject,
Made in Tokyo, extolling the virtues of what they call "the
real city." In the introduction they explain the origins of their fascination:
"The buildings we were attracted to were ones giving a priority to
stubborn honesty in response to their surroundings and programmatic requirements,
without insisting on architectural aesthetic and form. We decided to call
them Da-me Architecture ("No-good Architecture"), with all of
our love and disdain. Most of them are anonymous buildings, not beautiful
and not accepted in the architectural culture."
|
|
 |
|
 |
ROPPONGI HILLS
The $5 billion project includes a 58-story tower, a 390-room Grand Hyatt,
a television broadcast center, residential buildings, a theater for the
performing arts, and the Mori Arts Center, the first institution affiliated
with the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
Courtesy Mori Building Co.
|
Partners in the firm Atelier Bow-Wow, established in 1992, they produced
the book as an antidote to the many Japanese publications dedicated to the
extravagant buildings of the prosperous "bubble" period. Before
it burst in 1990 with the Asian economic crisis--plunging the country into
a long recession from which it is still suffering--the era produced a number
of large projects that they feel do not accurately represent the city. "I
wonder why architects," Tsukamoto asks, "are interested in buildings
that do not tell the real story of Tokyo?"
|
|
 |
MORI ARTS CENTRE
The ground-floor entrance to the Mori Arts Center; the museum is located
on the 53rd floor of the tallest tower at Roppongi Hills. "For symbolic
and pragmatic reasons, there needed to be a separate museum entrance that
bypassed the commercial entry," says Richard Gluckman, whose firm designed
the sleek cylindrical structure. "A place that provided a drop-off
for buses, taxis, and cars, as well as an element that collected all the
pedestrian movement through the site."
Courtesy Gluckman Mayner Architects
|
Among the hybrid building types in Made in Tokyo--their version of
the city's architectural record--are a department store with a rooftop roller
coaster, another one with an expressway on the roof, a taxi company annexed
to a driving range, a tunnel topped with a shrine, and a horse stable at
the base of an apartment building. Each building function is unremarkable,
but their inexplicable combinations are pure Tokyo.
"One of the most interesting things about the city is it's constantly
rebuilding itself," says Ken Oshima, a lecturer at Columbia University
on Japanese Modernism and architectural history. "Even in its bleak
economy the construction continues." Most of Tokyo is low rise. For
decades it resisted high-rise development, but a new vision of the city
is rapidly taking shape. In the Shiodome region overlooking Tokyo Bay, a
skyscraper district featuring towers by Jean Nouvel, Richard Rogers, and
Kevin Roche has taken form. Across town Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates has
transformed the Roppongi neighborhood with a 58-story tower. The KPF building
is the centerpiece of one of Japan's most prominent developers, Minoru Mori.
Mori's $5 billion mixed-use Roppongi Hills project represents a bold departure
from the status quo. Rejecting the sprawling low-rise density typical of
the city, the plan proceeds on the assumption that Tokyoites are ready to
abandon their "rabbit warrens" for more spacious centrally located
developments surrounded by modest public green spaces (a rarity in Tokyo).
Mori has hired a number of internationally acclaimed designers to assist
in the creation of dozens of new buildings and landscapes. They include
Pritzker prize-winning architect Fumihiko Maki, Terence Conran, Richard
Gluckman, Jon Jerde, and Bruce Mau, who's designed and coauthored a book
on this new approach to urban living called New Tokyo Life Style Think
Zone.
|
|
 |
CARRETTA SHIODOME COMPLEX
Part of a flurry of new development in the Shiodome area, Dentu advertising
company's new corporate headquarters (pictured above on the right) was designed
by Jean Nouvel. The complex includes 56 shops and restaurants, a theater,
and a 48-story office tower. Also in the area is Richard Rogers's headquarters
(below, center) for NTV.
|
|
|
 |
Kurt Handlbauer
|
Most of these large projects were hatched before the Japanese economy began
its long meltdown; a few are now nearly finished. "And what's
happening is that they're talking about it as the '2003 Problem',"
Oshima says. "A lot of companies are moving into these new spaces,
and the old offices are emptying out." The Roppongi Hills project,
in particular, has a towers-in-the-park configuration reminiscent of
midcentury planning schemes that have since fallen out of favor in the United
States.
"These large projects are quite controversial," Oshima says. "Many
people are up in arms with the high-rise buildings because they completely
change the character of the neighborhoods. They're going to change Tokyo
from a horizontal city to a vertical one--but whether the land and infrastructure
can sustain that much density is another question. And whether they're truly
going to make it a better city is also going to be highly debated."
To understand how dramatically this type of development breaks with Japanese
tradition requires a look at the city's history. It was built on the former
feudal capital Edo, which remained isolated from the west until the nineteenth
century. A trade agreement with the U.S. in 1854 precipitated political
upheaval and a competitive push to westernize. Fourteen years later the
newly installed Meiji regime moved the imperial throne from Kyoto to Edo,
and the city was renamed Tokyo. Accompanying this shift, a series of sweeping
reforms abolished feudalism and paved the way for the city's rapid industrialization.
But while new policies transformed nearly every sector of society in the
span of a few decades, the agrarian culture of the preceding centuries made
for a city of reluctant urbanists.
|
|
|
BACK TO TOP
