Architectural guide curated by Swiss Architect Lukas Gruntz to Tokyo's most worth seeing modern buildings – from Kunio Maekawa to Sou Fujimoto
At St. Anselm’s Meguro Church, architect Antonin Raymond explored the potential of folded-plate construction. The church and adjoining kindergarten, built for a Benedictine priory, face west, away from the Yamanote line. The structure consits of nine pairs of hollow, folded-plate columns of exposed concrete and beams of similar construction. Light enters trough the slits between the columns.
Name: Saint Anselm’s Meguro Church│Type: Church│Architect: Antonin Raymond│Completed: 1954
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The building was originally built as the residence of a businessman. Designed in a modernist style by Jin Watanabe. The reinforced concrete structure, with an exterior finish of mosaic tile, was turned into a museum of contemporary art in 1979. The addition was designed by Arata Isozaki. The unique building which reveals many influences of the European architectural styles of the 1920s and 30s stands today as a rare example of early-modern Japanese architecture.
Name: Hara Museum of Contemporary Art (former Hara Residence)│Type: Residential / Museum│Architect: Jin Watanabe│Completed: 1938
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The Friends School is the only Quaker school in Japan. Today it is a high school for 800 girls. The pleasant and welcoming modernist architecture by Hiroshi Oe consists of a skillful combination of rough brick and painted white concrete. Important elements are the inviting and light verandas on the south facade. The building is registered as one of the 100 best representatives of modern architecture in Japan.
Name: Friends School (Furendo Gakuen)│Type: Education│Architect: Hiroshi Oe│Completed: 1968
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Tokyo Institute of Technology (TIT) was originally located in Kuramae, it was moved to the site of present Ookayama Campus after the Kanto Earthquake of 1923. The 800-seat auditorium was built to commemorate the seventieth anniversary of the school’s funding. The floor of the auditorium follows the slope of the site, but the exterior envelope disguises the building’s bulk. Daylight is introduced from one side of the space and dispersed by a wood lattice screen. An interesting combination of different textures is provided by the wood screen, concrete, glass and brick.
Name: Seventieth Anniversary Memorial Auditorium Tokyo Institute of Technology│Type: Education│Architect: Yoshiro Taniguchi│Completed: 1958
Location
A private non-profit organization founded in 1952 to promote international understanding, the International House is located on the former estate of Koyata Iwasaki, the businessman who completed the formation of the Mitsubishi zaibatsu. Finally, it passed on to government ownership after World War II and was disposed of to the International House.
The building, which includes various cultural and social facilities as well as lodgings for scholars, was designed by an unusual collaboration of three well-known modernist architect. Two of three, Sakakura and Maekawa, had both worked for Le Corbusier. An addition designes by Maekawa was built in 1976.
Name: International House of Japan│Type: Hotel│Architect: Kunio Maekawa / Junzo Sakakura / Junzo Yoshimura│Completed: 1955
Location
In 1967, Yukari Bunka Kindergarten by Kenzo Tange was established. The architect choose the spatial dimension to be comfortable to the children’s scale. The plan of the kindergarten has a radial arrangement. Each roof unit has in a strict sense a shape of a cone rather than a circular cylinder. In the original design the roof was to consist of prefabricated prestressed members. It was found, however, that some parts of the streets connecting the factory and the building site were too narrow to accommodate transportation of the prefabricated roof units. Therefore, we decided to “prefabricate” them in the site.
Name: Yukari Bunka Kindergarten│Type: Education│Architect: Kenzo Tange│Completed: 1967
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The building, facing the Imperial Palace, was at the time of its completion one of the largest commercial complexes in Tokyo. At street level there is a two-story shopping arcade linked to the streets around. The two cylindrical shafts, reminiscent of numerous Metabolist designs, feature stairways and elevators along with their lobbies. Particularly noteworthy is the mode in which the elevations are articulated with delicately designed metallic louvers as wel as drainpipes and spandrels. Such craftsmanship lends this impressive building an aesthetic quality that is akin to traditional solutions of high-level artistry.
Name: Palace Side Building│Type: Office / Commercial│Architect: Nikken Sekkei Ltd.│Completed: 1966
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Architect Togo Murano designed this large complex with a U-shape configuration so as to surround the sunken Japanese-style garden with a small pond and an equally small structure that originally served as a teahouse. The multi-story blocks are charaterized by well-proportioned volumes and the extensive us of cast aluminium louvers in modular system and arranged in front of the glass facades. This modern exterior is contrasted by a delicately “eclectic” interior. The centerpiece of the entrance hall is a curving staircase, which connects several floors.
Name: Meguro Ward Office│Type: Office│Architect: Togo Murano│Completed: 1966
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The Tsuchiura family residence was designed by Tsuchiura Kameki (1897-1996), a successful architect of Modern Architecture, for his own house. Het met Frank Lloyd Wright during his studies at Faculty of Architecture, Tokyo University, and since then studied under Wright who made a great influence on the Japanese architect. Later he came to know the European Modern Architecture, so that he flourished as the architect of Modern Architecture. His own house is one of his rare extant works.
The house is an urban housing of wooden dry construction, characterized by an overall outer appearance of a large white box with large glass windows. The inside is a large single room without decorations, four-layered floor levels which skillfully made use of difference in altitudes within the premises offer a flowing movement to a visual connection and circulation. An excellent spatial construction unites contradictory elements of spatial unity and rhythmical chances.
Name: Tsuchiura House│Type: Residential│Architect: Tsuchiura Kameki│Completed: 1935
Location
When Takamitsu Azuma moved from Osaka to Tokyo in 1966 he built a house for his family. Designed as a continual vertical room for the architect´s own family, the staircase appears as the most significant structure in the house´s interior. It connects the individual rooms, which are “piled” one on top of the other without any doors separating them. Outside and inside, the Tower House is in raw concrete with a visible horizontal texture which contributes to underline the stacking floors. A small public passage is used as well as parking. Once completed, the raw-concrete tower could have been considered the “skyscraper” of Jingumae, overtopping by far the adjacent buildings. The Tower House is a fascinating portrait of how Japan society has dealt with the urban and social changes in the last few decades.
Name: Tower House│Type: Residential│Architect: Takamitsu Azuma│Completed: 1966
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