1989 – Unhex Nani Nani – Philippe Starck and Makato Nozawa

1989 – Unhex Nani Nani – Philippe Starck and Makato Nozawa

1989 – Unhex Nani Nani – Philippe Starck and Makato Nozawa

1989 – Unhex Nani Nani – Philippe Starck and Makato Nozawa

1989 – Unhex Nani Nani – Philippe Starck and Makato Nozawa

Architect Philippe Starck allegedly conceived this as a green monster rising from the Florida swamps, but it seems more likely he had in mind the rubber-suited Gill-Man in the “Creature From the Black Lagoon”, the 1954 B-movie classic set in the Amazon. Whatever its inspiration, Unhex Nani Nani ist definitely a fish out of water: a copper-sheeted Barbapapa-like blob on an otherwise ordinary street in the middle of Tokyo. A five-story office building with commercial space on the street level, it was intended for Unhex, a construction company eager to project a different image. “Nani nani” is Japanese fpr “what is it?”, and puzzlement has indeed been the general reaction to the building.