Ingenhoven Architects   Japan   The German office established in 1985 by Christoph Ingenhoven has completed two skyscrapers flanking Toranomon Hills Tower …

Tadao Ando   Japan   Tokyo Midtown is the result of a long redevelopment project on the former site of the Defense Ministry in the Roppongi district of Tokyo. Constructed in a public park in the northwest part of this recovered area, this gallery for exhibitions on the t

Tadao Ando   Japan   Ueno Park, a gift from the Imperial family to the city of Tokyo, is a large public space where several cultural institutions are located. One of them, the old Imperial Library, was transformed into a library for children. The old building has a pseud

Tadao Ando   Japan   The site is located in a quiet residential district in Setagaya ward. It is a three-household residence for the client couple and their respective parents. While ensuring privacy and independence for each family, the housing plan allows the three hou

Suzuko Yamada Architects   Japan   The project is designed to be easily extended, refurbished, and altered. With blurred contours, the steel bars serve as a prelude to the complex forest of timber beams and columns that fills the interiors, where these elements are mixed with books an

OGATAYOHEI   Japan   The house makes the most of the reduced area of the plot and distributes its spaces in mid-heights between two wings that are arranged around the ‘tsubo-niwa’ (meaning small garden in Japanese), which favors ventilation indoors.

not architects studio   Japan   The house blurs the boundaries between interior and exterior to blend with the parks in the surroundings. The perimeter ‘promenade,’ protected by a wire mesh and plants, connects the different rooms and ends in the rooftop garden.

Kazuyo Sejima & Associates   Japan   “The flow of the river is ceaseless; and its water is never the same.” So begins Hōjōki, or ‘An Account of My Hut,’ the poetic diary written by Kamo no Chōmei in 1212 which is a high moment of Japan’s classical literature. These beautiful words on ra

Kengo Kuma   Japan   A temporary space for open-air events in a residential area of central Tokyo features a vibrant lattice executed with oblong panels of cross-laminated cedarwood. Beneath its translucent skin of plastic resin fins, the pavilion features a recreation a

Sou Fujimoto   Japan   Tokyo’s exclusive shopping district of Omotesando has become an architectural showcase with boutique buildings like that of Dior by SANAA, Prada by Herzog & de Meuron, and Tod’s by Toyo Ito. This collection of unique buildings mixes with the green of

Herzog & de Meuron   Japan   The fire that in 1872 devastated an area of the city recently renamed Tokyo was seized by the Meiji government as an opportunity to implant on its streets the European-style model of modernization that it was trying to institute in the country. This

Heatherwick Studio   Japan   Toranomon-Azabudai is the studio’s first built project in Japan. The site is located in the center of Tokyo. The existing piece of land had not been redeveloped since the Second World War and was in a state of decay. The project became an opportunity

Kengo Kuma   Japan   Situated next to Yoyogi Park in the Tokyo ward Shibuya, the Meiji Jingu Shrine is a Shinto temple dedicated to the deified spirits of Emperor Meiji (1852-1912) and his consort, Emperor Shôken (1849-1914). Blending with the surrounding trees, the new

Kengo Kuma   Japan   Built with cypress columns with a cross-sectional dimension of 120 x 120 mm, this house stands out in the suburban environment of Tokyo for its uniformity. The beams, columns, and enclosure are all formed by prisms of the same size in section and dif

Kengo Kuma   Japan   Zuishoji Temple (Minato-ku, Tokyo) is the main temple in Tokyo of the Obaku Sect, one of the three Zen schools brought to Japan from China by the Priest Ingen during the Edo Period. The building, listed in 1992 as jubun or Important Cultural Property

Kengo Kuma   Japan   Located between the gardens of the Meiji Shrine – a Shinto sanctuary – and the Imperial Palace, in the heart of Tokyo, the new National Stadium contributes to preserving the natural environment of this historical area through restraint in size and th

Herzog & de Meuron   Japan   Contrary to expectations for a site that is home to so many luxury brands, Miyuki Street in Aoyama Tokyo is not particularly beautiful or elegant. The architecture is heterogeneous – a hodgepodge of freestanding buildings of different heights and sha

MVRDV   Japan   In contrast with the low-rise traditional constructions in the high-end Omotesando district, contemporary buildings raised recently in the area are minimalist boxes that stand out for their height and for their slender and elegant facades. Many of th

T_ADS-Advanced Design Studies Yusuke Obuchi So Sugita Toshikatsu Kiuchi Hironori Yoshida   Japan   The pavilion’s construction materials are Chinese chopsticks and glue, with bespoke hand-held dispensers to enable consistent feeding of the material composite, and a printing guidance system for workers, with a depth camera and projector... [+]

Ryue Nishizawa   Japan   Aside from domestic spaces such as a room for each owner, a restroom, a living area and a guestroom, this house for two editors also contains several office spaces for professional use. The small size and shape of the plot, a rectangle of 8 x 4 meter

Kazuyo Sejima & Associates   Japan   Located in an urban context, this small museum goes up on a rectangular plot, on the border of a park. To create a harmonious balance with its environment, the building is divided into several smaller size uneven volumes that are joined at different

Kazuyo Sejima & Associates   Japan   The headquarters of Yoshida Printing, located in a business area near Tokyo, house different multifunctional spaces to concentrate, in a flexible manner, the offices of the Japanese company and spaces for special events. The plot, rectangular in shap

Kazuyo Sejima & Associates   Japan   Shibaura district is a dense and cosmopolite urban area with office buildings in the heart of Tokyo Bay. On a small corner plot, this multiuse building establishes a meeting point where the characteristics of a business center mix up with those of a

CNN   Oscar Holland   Junko Ogura   Designed in 1972 by architect Kisho Kurokawa, the Nakagin Capsule Tower stands as an emblematic example of metabolism architecture right in the heart of Tokyo, will be demolished on April 12, 2022. The decision ends years of uncertainty surrounding t

A symbol of Japanese metabolism, the Nakagin block of apartment capsules in Tokyo (1972), a work of Kisho Kurokawa, is a double tower with 140 prefabricated cubicles piled up around two vertical circulation shafts. Having much fallen into disrepair,

The opening ceremony for the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo has taken place in the Japan National Stadium, a work of Kengo Kuma, which presents a sophisticated composition of timber trusses and vegetation in its galleries. Sport events mark our everyday

Fifteen years after the publication of Made in Tokyo, a book-guide by the Japanese studio Atelier Bow-Wow that reflected the hybrid and changing quality of Japan’s capital, the Madrid architect Lys Villalba proposes a new research that brings that wo

In the wake of the shelving of Zaha Hadid’s project, the Japan Sports Council organized a second competition for the design of the new Tokyo National Olympic Stadium in the Shinjuku ward of the capital, and the winner was the Japanese architect Kengo

The design of the Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid for the New National Stadium in Tokyo was one of the strong points of the Japanese capital’s bid to host the Olympic Games of the year 2020, which it won over Istanbul and Madrid. But two years lat

In spite of unfounded expectations, Madrid’s bid to host the Olympic Games of 2020 turned out the loser in a race with Tokyo and Istanbul where the Spanish capital was weighed down, most of all, by the economic and political difficulties afflicting a

The Japanese photographer and editor Yukio Futagawa passed away on 12 March in Tokyo. He was born in 1932 in Osaka, where he studied architecture and took an interest in vernacular construction on discovering photos by Yoshio Watanabe that establish

La propuesta de Zaha Hadid ha sido finalmente la seleccionada en el concurso para construir en Tokio el nuevo Estadio Nacional de Japón. Concebido con el lenguaje recurrente de su autora, el proyecto (abajo) ha sido preferido a los presentados por lo

La casa Room Room, diseñada por el japonés Takeshi Hosaka para una pareja con niños, tiene dos plantas y consta de dos espacios envueltos en un volumen único. Este cuerpo está perforado con más de cien aberturas cuadradas, de veinte centímetros de la

Situada en uno de los barrios más densos de Tokio, la Casa H de Sou Fujimoto juega con las exigentes ordenanzas locales para proponer un escueto paralelepípedo blanco que oculta, tras su sencillez minimalista, un singular y rico espacio interior. La

La biblioteca de la Universidad de Arte Musashino, en Tokio, es la última obra de Sou Fujimoto. Con una superficie de 6.500 metros cuadrados, el edificio alberga un total de 200.000 libros. La estructura está formada por estanterías que van de suelo

El País   Luis Fernández-Galiano   We can’t pretend to understand Japan. Anyone visiting this empire of signs empathizes with the perplexity of Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson in Sofia Coppola’s film. Like them, we know that the essential is lost in translation, and that we are lef

Senhiko Nakata   Puede parecer extraña la palabra ‘colaboración’ aplicada al trabajo conjunto entre arquitectos japoneses y europeos. Suena a algo así como un festival o un evento exótico en el que los participantes establecen lazos de amistad internacional. También

Jin Taira   Gijón  2011  
Satori   - 396 Pages