I'm waiting to meet award-winning architect, Momoyo Kaijima, one of the most enthusiastic and prolific champions of the unique buildings which make up what she calls, 'the real Tokyo.' I expect to recognize her from images in a recent European architecture publication - as a back-up plan I hope she will spot me reading one of the books on the city which she co-authored with partner Yoshiharu Tsukamoto, titled "Made in Tokyo". The book considers the reasons for TokyoÕs unique architectural appearance and offers a perspective which celebrates the sometimes bizarre, eclectic mix of urban typography. She spots me first and we wade out into the sea of people and advertising.
Kaijima begins to explain the nature of Atelier Bow-Wow, the avant garde architecture practice which she began in 1992 with Tsukamoto. Both are in their mid-thirties and are widely regarded as one of the leading firms of a new generation of Tokyo architects. They are not interested in designing gleaming office towers which their predecessors built during the time of extreme affluence in Japan in the 1980s, known as the 'bubble period'. Atelier Bow-Wow concerns itself, almost exclusively, with all aspects of the condition of the city of Tokyo.
The name Atelier Bow-Wow refers to the manner in which culture affects perception. In their home country they are known as Atelier Wan-Wan, which is the way a dog's bark is represented in Japanese. As the pedestrian lights turn green and the street fills with people from each direction, I try to concentrate on what Kaijima is saying, but the surroundings are so full of distractions. One giant media screen is showing, with sound, the horrific spectacle of a one-sided ultimate fighting match - a no-rules form of blood sport banned in most first world nations - while the other screen, also with audio, is a music video of one of many angelic young female Japanese pop-stars. The resulting soundtrack could only exist in Tokyo.
Leaving the busy square we walk along the many side streets which. like the vast majority of streets in Tokyo, have no names. En route to the Atelier Bow-Wow studio we pass by countless examples of diverse building types - noisy, smoky pachinko (gambling) parlours, short term "love hotels", car parks with elevators on which the cars are transported to higher floors and ever-present convenience stores.
When we reach the studio, which is less than two metres wide, I meet Tsukamoto who begins to explain the firm's current and recent projects. In the cramped quarters which house the firm's eight employees, the office is still very busy at 9 o'clock in the evening. The partners teach at different universities during the day and work in the studio in the evenings. When the office is full there isn't even room to lay down a few images of recent projects so Tsukamoto displays them on the floor.
It is fitting that Atelier Bow-Wow's studio be of such minuscule dimensions since the small buildings of Tokyo are one of the firm's preoccupations. They won the Tokyo Architects' Gold medal prize in 1999, for their design of "Mini House", a celebration of all things small. To minimize the effects of extreme density in Tokyo all houses are required to have one metre gap spaces between properties. In the Mini House, they built the second floor out over top of the gap space to allow room for a very small car, a Mini Cooper, to fit underneath. Tsukamoto explains that the second floor flares out over the car, giving it the appearance of a mini-skirt. "It's 86 sq.m, a very positive meaning of small, mini Cooper, mini-skirt, mini-house - three positive smallness".
In this turbulent town even award-winning architecture can go the way of the wrecking ball before very long. The land upon which Mini House is built is owned by the government which plans to build an expressway there at some point in the next ten or twenty years. "The environment around Mini-house is unstable and the house is very small," Tsukamoto explains. "I think it is a good example, or reportage, of what is happening in Japan".
The firm is also interested in 'Da me' architecture - the sort of buildings for which most architects have contempt - thrown together with little concern for aesthetics, form and no interest in architectural history - pure function. A chronic shortage of land and few, if any, restrictions on development has resulted in buildings which are often bizarre hybrids such as a shopping centre with a large roller coaster on the roof, a graveyard which is situated directly over a tunnel, several department stores with freeways on the roof, an auto repair station with bowling lanes for waiting customers, a restaurant directly combined with a multistory golf practice range, and two-level gas stations serving intersecting freeways.
"Tokyo Marine" is a gigantic, ever expanding network of water slides, situated high above a residential neighbourhood, in which sliders are hurtled along in the open air with views of the city on all sides. "Karaoke hotel" in Roppongi entertainment district is a ten storey building of karaoke rooms arranged as if it were an ordinary hotel.
At the other end of the spectrum, Atelier Bow-Wow has recently produced a book called "Pet Architecture - A Guide Book" listing the smallest buildings of Tokyo. In the city, where every square centimetre is put to maximum utility, there exists a multitude of miniature buildings - filling every unused space - often built by amateur builders, which are considered junk by high-brow architects. Examples in the book, some of which Tsukamoto points out in a driving tour, include a one metre wide real estate agency and noodle shop, a 12 square metre roadside shrine with a 27 metre tower and a two storey home which is only 18 square metres. Tsukamoto says that people love the tiny buildings of their neighbourhood and speak of them like pets. "They are very attractive, very charming, so people are very loving with this kind of building in Japan."
The term 'Tokyo size' seems to mean either very small, as in the latest, highly sought after cell phones and electronics, or enormous, as in the city itself, quoted at between 15 and 25 million people depending on where one chooses to draw the boundaries on this ever expanding megalopolis.
On the large scale, Japanese developer Minoru Mori has assembled an A-list of local and international architects and designers, including Toronto's Bruce Mau Design, to propose a new way of living in the city. In contrast to the cramped and pragmatically thrown together 'da me' architecture which Atelier Bow-Wow like so much, Mori is making a mark on the Tokyo skyline by constructing several massive residential skyscrapers in the middle of the city, surrounded by ample green space. In the largest of his firm's central Tokyo developments, U.S. $2.5 billion dollar Roppongi Hills Development. Mori is also building the largest contemporary art and culture museum in Japan.
Mau has recently produced a video titled "Tokyo Countdown" currently installed at Toronto's Power Plant gallery and a book titled 'New Tokyo Life Style Think Zone' which chronicle the ills of the city, before positing a solution in the form of the Mori corporation model. Mau relates a number of statistics which reveal the lifestyle of the typical Tokyo residents: "More then 70% of Tokyo workers commute for one hour or more each day", "30% of London is devoted to parks. 5% of Tokyo is devoted to parks", "Personal living space in Tokyo is 66% of that in New York", "Will the future take the shape of Tokyo or will Tokyo take the shape of the future?"
To compete for tourism revenue and international businesses as a global city, Mori believes that Tokyo must pay greater attention to quality of life, land set aside for parks, considerably shorter commutes for workers, more leisure time and larger home sizes. In the land of the rising sun and falling yen, cost for foreigners is no longer a central issue as the city is now less expensive to visit than many other world cities. Given a prolonged Japanese recession, even the anemic Canadian dollar has gained 25% against the yen since 1995.
Another of the top young firms busy reinventing Tokyo at the moment is Klein Dytham Architects, chosen in 2001 by World Architecture magazine as the 'Emerging Practice of the Year'. Although the 11 person firm is predominantly Japanese, the partners, Astrid Klein and Mark Dytham are originally from Milan, Italy and London, England respectively but have been working in Tokyo since 1991. In their central Tokyo building, named "Deluxe" which they share with several other design related companies, all furniture is on casters and subject to constant rearrangement and total upheaval, 'like Tokyo' they explain.
The firm is especially popular among the fashion and advertising crowd. They have designed striking buildings and interiors for leading Japanese design house Undercover and the ultra style conscious Harajuku area's top fashion department stores La Foret and Foret.
Their most recent design completed is a five story interior for an innovative new advertising corporation. Japanese advertising giant Dentsu has formed a new four hundred person firm with the American Leo Burnett Agency, named Beacon Advertising. The firm ignores traditional marketing strategies such as branding and product development in order to focus only on the creation of trends which they hope will sweep through the country like a gigantic tsunami causing trend-obsessed Japanese consumers to buy their clients' products.
In KDa's design a giant 'ribbon' ripples and floats between each of the five floors creating startlingly unique shapes of rooms within each floor. In the spaces under or over the ÔribbonÕ there are presentation platforms in which the advertisers present their potential television ads or other media proposals. No two spaces are alike in shape, size or colour - also much like Tokyo.
Atelier Bow-Wow have recently been commissioned to design and build a house to act as a rest pavilion for the Gwangju art Biennale, in Seoul, Korea. They have created a pet architecture building of their own which they call "Manga Pod". A small building, which can be constructed and taken apart in one day, using colourful, recycled, five centimetre thick comics books (manga), which are also very popular in Korea, as bricks. Given the increasing rate of construction and demolition in the city, perhaps this is the future of Tokyo?
Japan Airlines flies from Vancouver to Tokyo five days a week, with two flights a day on Tuesdays and Fridays. The JAL 747s that operate on the route have no First Class, but provide the airline's brand of business class, Executive Class Seasons, with seasonal decor and cuisine and the exclusive Skyluxe seats.
Bruce Mau Design www.brucemaudesign.com "Tokyo Countdown" video exhibit, currently installed at The Power Plant contemporary art gallery in Toronto, runs until May 26th. "New Tokyo Life Style Think Zone" book is available in english translation, also at The Power Plant. www.thepowerplant.org |
