Tokyo: The Latest Architecture and News

Private developers in Tokyo have used temples as covers to build cemetery plots which they can sell for ten times the price of land without taxes. This practice results in the unwanted placement of cemeteries adjacent to homes in the already densely populated neighborhoods of Tokyo. Amplifying this issue are the ever-changing demographics of Tokyo. Recent studies show that the city’s average age is rapidly increasing, with nearly twenty-five percent of the population being 65 or older and a large majority over the age of 30. Similarly, more and more rural residents are coming into Tokyo, increasing the overall population. As the age and population increase, Tokyo is being forced to face the issue of burial space.

Following the success of the inaugural HOUSE VISION Tokyo in 2013, the exhibition is set to return again this summer under the theme of “Co-Dividual: Split and Connect / Separate and Come Together.” Once again curated by Kenya Hara, designer and creative director for minimalist housewares retailer Muji, the month-long event will tackle the objective of “thinking about how to create new connections between individuals,” as well as build upon the topics explored by its previous edition, namely the ways in which Japanese housing can adapt to recent demographic, technological and cultural shifts, and the vision of the house as the intersection between industries.

This year’s exhibition will feature house designs by top Japanese architects such as Sou Fujimoto, Kengo Kuma, Shigeru Ban and Atelier Bow-Wow, each paired with a leading company to envision and implement new strategies in housing design. The houses will be constructed at full-scale, allowing event-goers to fully experience and reflect upon each design.

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ingenhoven architects has released its design for the Toranomon Project, a new business and lifestyle development that will include a 175,000-square-meter office tower and a 122,000-square-meter residential tower, which will become Tokyo’s highest residential building at approximately 220 meters tall.

Located in the Toranomon area of Tokyo, the project will be built around the existing Toranomon Hills Mori Tower, with respect for the existing structure, but with its own identity as a set of nodes in the larger urban green network.

OMA has revealed the design for its first skyscraper in Tokyo. A tower with a torqued front-facade, the building incorporates an elevated park and access to a new Hibiya Line subway station in a project that mixes hotel, office, and retail components.

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The team of Peter Bus, Tomas Vlasak, Vaclav Petrus, and Petr Bouril has received an honorable mention for their proposal for the Tokyo Pop Lab Competition, which recently announced its winners. The proposal, entitled "At The Crossroads of Ideas," is designed as a “three-dimensional representation of history and development of pop culture.”

Separated into three parts, one below ground, one above ground, and one in-between, the design is interconnected via cylindrical concrete towers, which act as the main structural support of the building.

SO/AP Architectes has released its proposal for the Tokyo Pop Lab competition, which recently announced its winners. Based on the duality of environmental vulnerability and the omnipresence of numeric technology, the 3,500 square meter design focuses on the battle between mankind and nature.

The three winners of the Tokyo Pop Lab competition, which called for the development of an institution for popular culture, have been announced.

Centered on the phenomena of pop culture, the competition examined how “popular culture migrates and changes from person to person and place to place,” and invited entrants “to critically evaluate fundamental correlations between cultural production and architecture.”

Entrants varied in typology from pragmatic to ideological, with successful proposals including “a well considered and articulated definition of popular culture, clarity in representation of both architecture and culture, and a clear programmatic agenda.”

The three winners of the Tokyo Pop Lab competition are:

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Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates and Leslie E. Robertson Associates have joined forces to propose a vision for a new city in Tokyo Bay. “Next Tokyo” imagines a mega-city that is adapted to climate change in the year 2045. Rising sea levels, seismic activity, and the threat of typhoons have drawn attention to the vulnerability of low-elevation coastal zones in the bay. This design proposes a development strategy that improves the bay’s preparedness for these natural disasters, while also creating a mile-high residential tower and a new transit-oriented district.

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