Page 8 of 10
Tokyo, Japan
Your sword's grown old and rusty underneath the rising sun, it's locked up like a trophy, forgetting all the things it's done
It took me a while, but I think I finally have a feel for Tokyo. It's a big city made up of smaller cities (Shinjuku, Shibuya, Harajuku, Shiodome, Roppongi, Ginza, Akasaka, etc), each with its own feel and own sub neighborhoods. In the center of it all is Marunouchi (where the main rail station and where Wright's Imperial Hotel once stood) and (more importantly) the Imperial Palace and Garden, a welcome green oasis in the center of the center of it all.
Kenzo Tange's most famous building is the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building (take that, giant silver ball). The twin towers of Tokyo are basically city hall but with twin observation decks, a feature which always seems to draw me in. Give me a high building an a few windows and I'm there, no questions asked, anytime, anywhere.
The view from Kenzo Tange's Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building may be memorable, but the one from the top of Kohn Pederson Fox's Mori Tower beats it hands down. The advantage has nothing to do with the buildings (Tange's iconic building is far better than KPF's competent shiny counterpart) and everything to do with location. Tange's building is way out in Shinjuku (not the end of the world but still farther out) while KPF's is more in the middle of things in Roppongi, or to be specific, Roppongi Hills.
As for the actual practicalities of the observation decks themselves, the Mori Tower is fairly impressive. It has unusually high windows and sweeping views, a real advantage over Tange's comparably claustrophobic observation deck level. The only downside of Mori Tower is the roof. They let you head on up and out if you want, but only after you pay another admission fee (ok) and pay for a locker for your very small backpack (not so ok). All that is understandable I guess, but the real problem comes when you get outside. The walkable catwalk is so pulled back from the edge of the building that the view is actually far worse than the one from one level below behind all that glass. A real shame considering what could have been.
Sharp eyed (or perhaps scarily obsessive) long time slideshow viewers may recognize this building from way, way back in 1998, a magical, long ago time three e-mail addresses ago when dial up internet was considered fast, Northwest Airlines still existed and I used a camera that required something called film, a long since abandoned form of media that resulted in physical prints that I then had to individually scan just to e-mail them back out. Seems like forever ago in so, so many ways.
All that time may have passed, but Rafael Vinoly's Tokyo International Forum remains the same as it ever was, still a shiny oasis between Ginza and Tokyo Station. A billion dollar monument to itself, with walkways and glass and light and shadow and steel and space, just as impressive in 2010 as it was in 1998.
It's hard (but not impossible) not to love the Tokyo International Forum, back in 1998 I somewhat facetiously called it my new favorite building, although (shockingly) such an assessment fades quickly once you're no longer actually there. That doesn't mean it's not a fun space (it most certainly is) but rather that it's a shallow one, something which is great to walk through but loses its magic the more you really start to think about it.
The most impressive single piece of the atrium is it's roof design, a series of structurally over designed white steel ribs that arc down into the space, making it feel as of you are underneath a large ship of some sort, an unlikely design concept for the middle of Tokyo but an effective one nonetheless.
Like all (or almost all) buildings, the Forum has a program and purpose. There are multiple meeting and exhibition halls, some underground, some at different higher levels, all visually connected with a large, squashed (American) football shaped glass atrium. There is then a long ramp that hugs the glass wall, intersecting with bridges that connect to the meeting rooms and finishing on a top level where there are views down to the elevated Shinkansen tracks that slice through that part of Tokyo. And while the atrium is free and fun to walk through, all of the other spaces, theatres and halls are strictly off limits to anyone without specific business there. A real shame and one of the reasons that my admittedly mixed feelings for the building start and stop with just the atrium, as spectacular and shallow as it may be.
