Graham McKay posted: " It's not just houses. No building is spared from Japan's memory loss when it comes to its own architectural history. Earlier this year, there was a bit of a stir when it was announced Kenzo Tange's 1964 Kagawa Prefectural Gymnasium would be demolished, t" misfits' architecture
It's not just houses. No building is spared from Japan's memory loss when it comes to its own architectural history. Earlier this year, there was a bit of a stir when it was announced Kenzo Tange's 1964 Kagawa Prefectural Gymnasium would be demolished, the given reason being that the then innovative suspension roof was in danger of collapse. I'd forgotten this building existed but in the late sixties and early seventies it along with Tange's National Gymnasia Nos. 1 & 2 and would appear in books and articles on Tange and modern Japanese architecture. Some very strange stuff that was new in new ways was coming out of Japan in the early 1960s. Does it look a bit like an ark? Or does it look a bit like a Japanese sword on display?
The building was completed the same year as the gymnasia but won't be as lucky. It's not so much the building but nostalgia for that that time makes me mention it now.
Kunio Maekawa
If the Kagawa Prefectural Gymnasium (or even the only house attributed to Tange) can be demolished then it's no surprise that a building of his former mentor Kunio Maekawa is not exempt from demolition.
Tokyo Marine Nichido Insurance Building, Marunouchi, Tokyo 1974–2021
I doubt anyone will miss this office building despite the thoughtful corners. Its recessed windows don't maximize lettable area so perhaps it was showing its age. It may have fallen afoul of updated earthquake regulations that put about 30% of Tokyo's if not Japan's building stock in jeopardy, particularly its historic building stock. Retrofitting aseismic kit seems like something that can be easily said to be prohibitively expensive. In fairness, it probably is.
No. 1, No. 2 and Kumin Hall Buildings 1959–2016
Failing to meet current earthquake codes is the stated reason for the demolition of these two.
Maekawa House 1942–1994–
Maekawa's own house is now a rescue house. In 1973 Maekawa had his house disassembled with a view to rebuilding it in concrete but died in 1986. In 1994, Terunobu Fujimori who was director of the Edo-Tokyo Open-air Museum operated by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government, offered to reassemble the house as an exhibit.*
Junzo Yoshimura
Early modernist houses seem to retain historic value which is appreciated by some for what I imagine is status value.
Junzo Sakakura
Odakyu Department Store 1967-2022
Junzo Sakakura worked in Le Corbusier's atelier from 1929–1936 and was one of the founders of modernist architecture in Japan. He designed the Shinjkuku Odakyu Department Store Co., Ltd. in 1967. In Japan, department stores were built at terminal stations by railway companies to boost travel so Shinjuku has always been prime commercial land. This 2022 demolition and redevelopment is no surprise. A 48-storey office tower will replace it.
So much for the early modernists. Let's see how the former Metabolists fared. The Metabolists were the ones who believed buildings must be designed to allow for change. Usually, this meant megastructures with empty spaces with the potential for additional units to be added and/or others replaced. It was a novel idea that seemed visionary at the time. We never learn that visionary ideas are only visionary because they never come to pass.
Kisho Kurokawa
The Nakagin Capsule Tower we all know about and have an opinion about. 1970–2023.
There was also a store in Tokyo called Aoyama Bell Commons, designed by Kurokawa and completed in 1976. Never knew. The corner location was one of Tokyo's places to be in the 1980s. For a few months in 1991, I used to go to a gym in the building next door. Aoyama Bell Commons: 1976–2016.
Arata Isozaki
The Isozaki building I mentioned last week was his Aoki House, completed in 1979 (Japan Property Central) or 1985 (Designboom) and probably not around for too much longer. This next house is a mystery. It's called S-House and was completed in 1989. I'd never known of this one either, or the circumstances in which it was built. It's not what I thought Isozaki would have been doing in 1989. Sometimes important people ask architects to design something and architects just can't say no. Note 1: US$74,000 for the land and nothing for the house. Note 2: "… the house may be preserved and used for public purposes, but there is a chance it could also become a car park …"
His own Sky House seems okay for the time being, and I can find no news of the impending demolition of his 1974 Pasadena Heights project. [c.f The Building is not Trying to be a Mountain] Some of his other projects haven't been so lucky.
*"On February 2019, the International Council on Monuments and Sites submitted a letter to the national, prefectural and city governments requesting the urgent preservation of the historically significant piece of architecture. Failing that, the Council was prepared to issue an ICOMOS Heritage Alert and launch a media campaign. A farewell open day will be held by the city on June 23, with the application deadline on June 12." News ended in 2019 with that. You don't forget seeing a photograph of this building but it's been about fifty years since I last did. It dropped out of history long ago and was probably never in the Metabolist canon to begin with as it doesn't wear its flexibility on its sleeve. Kikutake can be counted as a core Metabolist architect but projects such as his Pasadena Heights were rigid and inflexible and not in line with what textbook Metabolist architects were promoting.
Izumo Grand Shrine Office Building 1963–2016
This is another building about which the same can be said. It's lovely and how to build a post-modern building next to a traditional shrine is difficult design problem to pull off. I'm beginning to think the real roots of post-modernism are in 1960s Japan with wood-ish but not wood buildings such as this one that, like the Tange one at the beginning of this post, used concrete in ways outside the canon of Western architecture.
Sado Island Grand Hotel 1967–2020
In line with the spirit but not the look of Metabolism, this building had a second floor added to the underside of the superstructure, and possibly that elevator/stair shaft as well.
Architects who weren't part of a movement but simply very good fared no bette, but are not so well remembered. This brings us to Togo Murano. Strictly speaking, he was an early Modernist but in a category of his own outside the Le Corbusier sphere of influence. [c.f. https://misfitsarchitecture.com/2016/04/09/architecture-misfit-21-村野藤吾/]
Togo Murano
Yaesu Dai Building 1967–2022
Construction began in December 1964, just a few months after the 1964 Summer Olympics and the building was completed by August 1967. It's not one of Togo Murano's better known ones but it's still one of those buildings that makes a city nicer.
Industrial Bank of Japan 1974–2016
This one hurt. I understand it was demolished in order to increasing the capacity of the subway system but whether it was the transportation or the retail capacity I don't know. In the 2016 image above, the adjacent building is already being demolished. When I saw it in 2015, I didn't know it'd be for the last time.
Since 1974 when it was published in Japan Architect, I'd appreciated how its polished granite walls meet the footpath in a polished granite fillet, how its mechanical equipment is stacked vertically in the tapered cantilever over the pool with its feature whirlpool. I have a memory of reading that the solitary window in the blank part of the wall was either the chairman's office or a meeting room but I remember wondering if the wall were better with it or without it. I don't suppose it matters now.
Senri Newtown Civic Center Building 1964-2013
New Osaka Kabuki Theatre 1958–2013
Yokohama City Hall 1959–2021 (?)
This building has windows and balconies floating across its facade like clouds. It's thinking on the outside of the box.
Yahata Library 1955–2014
So's this. I thought I knew most Togo Murano buildings but this one I only learned about yesterday. I already miss it. As ever with Togo Murano buildings, not much has been used to create something very special. [c.f. "The Placement of Windows", "Architecture Misfit #21: Togo Murano (村野藤吾)/]
• • •
It's not just 20th century architecture that suffers from this enthusiasm to demolish and redevelop. The Japan Property Central news pages are grim reading. For every happy ending there are at least fifty not so.
And finally, yes, the San'ai Dream Center, a landmark building at the Ginza 4 Chome intersection and a symbol of modern Japan since its completion in 1963. The architect was Shōji Hayashi who was then chief architect at Nikken Sekkei. Before mobile phones hundreds of thousands of people must have made appointments for dates and meetings at this corner. At one time, this corner had the most expensive property in Japan. It was said (around 1970) that if you dropped a dollar bill on the pavement, it wouldn't purchase the area of land it fell on. This seems almost cute now. The buildings current owners claim general deterioration as the reason for its demolition. The Japan Property Central article mentioned that a replacement landmark is expected to be completed by 2027.
Already I'm worried what that new landmark building will be. It's an impossible brief. San'Ai Dream Center was completed in 1963, the year before the Tokyo Olympics, the event that marked the beginning of a different kind of reinvention for Japan and far more symbolic than Expo '70. No mere landmark could replace a symbol of that time. I'd like to suggest San'ai Dream Center be demolished and rebuilt to the same design but with updated construction technologies. If maintenance problems are indeed the reason for demolition, then just rebuilding it better is reasonable. Landmarks don't just mark land but also points in time. San'ai Dream Center has no doubt had its neon replaced with LED long ago, and its single glazing replaced with double glazed panels so I propose rebuilding it completely every sixty years.
Japan has some of the oldest timber buildings in the world. The Horyu-ji Temple (below) in Nara Prefecture was built in 607AD and has done well. The continual rebuilding of Ise Shrine is about the transience of architecture symbolizing the durability of tradition but a twenty-year cycle isn't setting a very high bar for transience. The rebuilding of buildings laden with memory and symbolism but whose time is up is an idea worth considering. It's not noble precedent, but the Apple Fifth Avenue Store (designed by Bohlin Cywinski Jackson) first opened in 2006 but the glass cube was rebuilt in 2011 after only five years. In terms of $/m3, it's probably the most expensive building in the world, largely because no matter how much money is thrown at it, it's impossible to make even a contentless building look like it's not there. The rebuild not only kept its idea of "uselessness+transparency=gigabucks", but only served to emphasize it. The same stars seem to be aligning at Tokyo's Ginza 4-chome intersection.
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