Category Archives: architecture

Birth of a Building

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There seems to be at least one construction project going on in my neighborhood at any time. That’s Tokyo. Buildings disappear and new ones come up constantly, all within a couple months.

Last year an old wooden house was demolished to make way for a new building. This one happened to be right in front of my apartment building so I took pictures of it through the whole process.

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I remember the day when they removed the roof. There were great plumes of dust and debris from the crumbling shingles. I felt sorry for the people who lived downwind. Hopefully they didn’t hang any laundry that day. Continue reading →

La Zona, Best Suburban Mall Ever

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La Zona, Kawasaki

I recently went to watch Avatar on an IMAX screen in 3-D, but I won’t be reviewing that movie in this post. That’ll come later. Instead, I want to share some pictures I took of LaZona, the shopping center the theaters were in. It’s the second highest earning shopping mall in Japan. Only Narita Airport beats it. That’s pretty remarkable, since it’s in the suburbs, in Kawasaki city.  Although, Kawasaki is a pretty big city in its own right.

I thought that more famous shopping centers in Tokyo, like the soulless and labyrinthine Roppongi Hills or the subterranean Omotesando Hills would be up there. But it’s a suburban mall that beats them both.

La Zona, Kawasaki

I have to admit that I was impressed with the design. The central feature is an outdoor oval plaza with a stage, water features and funky mood lighting. The circulation patterns are intuitive and it was easy to view at one glance all the shops and restaurants around the three floors of the rotunda. There was a more conventional layout for the indoor part of the mall. It was family friendly and spacious.

La Zona, Kawasaki

Despite being in the suburbs, the restaurants were as stylish and hip as any in central Tokyo. We had dinner at this place called California Pizza Kitchen. The decor was very authentic, reminding me of the West Coast. Even the pizzas had the fluffy lightly crispy crust that Left Coasters love, without any of the locally adapted nonsense like the copious mayonnaise that Japanese slather on their pies. Also, I appreciated the free refills of their fruit lemonades served in big glass tumblers. Americans like to hydrate.

A movie on IMAX and some home cooking. I’m definitely going back.

8 Views of the Petronas Towers: Missives from Malaysia no.1

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I recently spent a week in Malaysia. The first couple of days were in Kuala Lumpur, a surprisingly laid-back easy city to be in. In contrast to other South East Asian cities, KL doesn’t have the crazed non-stop action, the aggressive shop-keepers, the hustling taxi-drivers. I didn’t see any tuk-tuks, the moped driven taxis, nor did I see any mopeds or scooters. I kind of missed the chaos of these other cities, but it was extremely pleasant to be in a more relaxing atmosphere.

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Thanks to my Malaysian friend’s recommendation, we stayed at the Traders Hotel, which squarely faces the Petronas Towers. Here’s a view from the KL Tower, which has the best view of the city. You can see our hotel on the right. The picture on the right is from the rooftop pool of the hotel.
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I must say, the towers are underrated. For one thing, they don’t mimic the boxy towering behemoths of other famous skyscrapers. Instead, they use a lot of native cultural elements. The overall shape reminds me of the minarets that flank most mosques. Yet the texturing of the surface reminds me of Buddhist stupas that are everywhere in Southeast Asia.

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The best time to see the towers are at night. With the beehive facets, the shimmery steel and the lighting, the towers looked like crystal minarets. It’s a stunning effect.

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And here’s another shot closer to the base.

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One final shot, to show how tall this building is, once the tallest in the world. Like a mountaintop, it’s got it’s own micro-climate at the top.

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Yoyogi National Stadium

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Yoyogi National Stadium

The Yoyogi National Stadium is another of Kenzo Tange’s brilliant works.  When I first saw the building, it reminded me of the curving roofline of traditional Japanese architecture. In particular, it resembles the sloping straw roofs of farmhouses one finds in northern Japan.  

Built for the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, the roof is made possible through a suspension system. Nowadays, it’s used as an ice rink and a basketball arena.  As far as major sports venues go, it’s quite small, seating only 10,500, so the FIBA World Championships were held outside of Tokyo. But it did host an international skating competition just over a week ago. And I notice lots of high school events taking place there.

Yoyogi National Stadium

Even though it’s right across the street from well-used Yoyogi Park, and near bustling Harajuku, very few people walk through the grounds to admire the building. Which is a shame, because it’s one of Tokyo’s lovelier structures.

Although the top picture on this post make it seem like it has a very sharp verticality, you can see from the second picture that it’s actually a very long gently sloping building. But I liked this angle with the sun behind it because it reminded me of another of Tange’s masterpieces, St Mary’s Cathedral, which is nothing but verticality, but with a similar sloped roof. You can read about it on this post, strangely enough, one of my most popular.

A Side of Frank Lloyd Wright with my Crepe

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This past week, I stumbled upon a Frank Lloyd Wright building. Who knew that Mejiro, one of the minor stops on the Yamanote Line is one of the hotbeds of architecture in Tokyo. There are a lot of gems in this neighborhood, most notable is Kenzo Tange’s St. Mary’s Cathedral, which strangely is one of the most popular posts on my blog.

Hana Yorozu Café and Gallery
Anyway, this is how I came upon the Wright building.

I decided to wander off into a small street off Mejiro street that seemed intriguing and was drawn to a café that was a gallery and flower shop, called Hana Yorozu.

Plants, art and crepes? It was an irresistible combination so I stepped inside. The gallery was mostly beadwork. Nicely done, with some unusual beads in the necklaces and bracelets. But it was the kind of stuff most anyone could have put together at a bead store for a fraction of the cost.

Connected through the wall was the flower shop/nursery. A nice collection of herbs and flowers, but the prices were also a bit inflated.

Thankfully, the crepe lunch set was more affordable. It came with decent coffee, a tiny plate of crunchy salad and a bowl of tasty tomato cheese soup. And my egg and ham crepe was very yummy. I chuckled when I realized how typically American I was to choose basically a glorified breakfast slam.

The staff seemed a little frazzled and disorganized, even though there was only one other table of people. I imagined that the business was run by a few friends who went to France together, really dug the crepes, took a cooking class to learn how to make them and opened up the café. One of them makes beaded jewelry and wanted to sell them. The other one wanted to grow lavender. Et voila! What was meant to be a lovely vacation dream had turned into an overwhelming business!

I’m being unkind. Luckily, I wasn’t in any hurry and I really did appreciate the care that was put into the atmosphere and the food.

Who to take: friends from your French cooking class.
What to do: write postcards to people you met while traveling in Provence.
What to read: The Little Prince

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Jiyu Gakuen Myonichikan, 1921
At the gallery there was a stack of little pamphlets that unfolded into a map of all the other galleries in the area. On the map I noticed there was a note in katakana of a landmark of a Franku Roydo Wrighto building. Since it was only a few blocks away I decided to take a stroll over there.Frank Lloyd Wright community center

What I found were two buildings, one by Wright and another designed by Arata Endo in the Wrightian style. The one by Wright is a single storey U-shaped complex that encloses a courtyard. It appeared to be privately owned and was used as a wedding event place. It had a great example of Wright’s glasswork. Dramatic vertical panes were set in a typical Prairie style horizontal façade. Unfortunately, the inside was closed to the public that day. I’ll have to go another time and snoop around more closely.

The other building, connected by an alley seemed to be some kind of community center. There were many kids with their mothers. This building seemed to be designed to be a church.

I later found out that it was a lecture hall for the Jiyu Gakuen, or Freedom School. Wright was asked to design the school while he was in Japan overseeing the construction of the Imperial Hotel. The gorgeous Imperial Hotel has since been dismantled and replaced with a high-rise style Imperial Hotel. So the Jiyu Gakuen is one of a few works of Wright still standing.  

I was heartened to see so much activity in and around the buildings.  They were living, vital parts of the community, instead of calcified structures cordoned off to the public.