Letter from Japan

Having arrived in Japan two weeks before the installation of the "Kolonihaven" exhibition at Tokyo Big Sight there has been no time to surf for Headlines.
We are instead visiting lots of buildings in Tokyo, Yokohama, Osaka, Kyoto and Kobe for new arcspace features.

Tokyo is a city of contrasts.....
From the Japanese Garden outside my window on the 7th floor of the Okura Hotel designed by the late Yoshiro Taniguchi; father of Yoshio Taniguchi who won the competition for the design of the new addition to the Museum of Modern Art in New York, now under construction.

Photo: arcspace

To the glass-brick mini-skyscraper Hermes store on the Ginza, designed by Renzo Piano, and the Sony building designed by Y. Ashihara.

Photo: arcspace

From the new Louis Vuitton store, designed by Jun Aoki, in the image of a pile of trunks placed at random.

Photo: arcspace

To the “in need of repair” Dojunkai apartment houses across the street.

Photo: arcspace

From Roppongi Hills, a 24-acre redevelopment project under construction, that includes the Mori Art Museum, designed by Gluckman Mayner, on the 52nd and 53rd floors of a 54-storey tower, designed by Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates PC, scheduled to open in the Fall of 2003.

Photo: arcspace

Photo: arcspace

To Higashi - Gyoen, the East Gardens of Imperial Palace, an oasis in the center of the city.

Photo: arcspace

More to come.....  

P.S. Norman Foster was awarded the Praemium Imperiale prize, one of the world's largest and most prestigious Art Awards, in recognition for his lifetime achievement in Architecture.
Foster will be in Tokyo to receive the award at the end of October.

September 30, 2002