1. A collection of villages

    I became a 'border person', as defined by the sociologist and philosopher Max Weber, viewing Tokyo from an outsider's perspective. Observing the city while walking around its streets enabled me to discover a wide variety of location, cultures and people, and that Tokyo is a collection of small villages, rather than one big city.

    ...When I design a building in any city, I believe that the world is a collection of villages, instead of a group of nations.

  2. Occupied by a void

    Roland Barthes wrote that the centre of Tokyo is occupied by a void...it is a quiet forest that lies at Tokyo's heart.

    ...The centre of Tokyo is certainly a void, but one that is protected by a circular train line, the Yamanote, which forms a 40-km (25-mile) loop around it. It seems to me that this ring of steel emphasizes the importance of the void, and the depth of its significance.

  3. Such an enormous machine

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    In cities across the world, industrial zones beside rivers and canals have become the focus of attention, with their unique vivacity associated with places where things are made.

    ...Because the area is designated as a semi-industrial zone, we were able to get away with such an enormous machine inside [the Starbucks Reserve Roastery].

  4. A more spiritual place

    In the centre of the forest is the sandō, leading up to the shrine. It follows an L-shaped curve, and is very different to the straight processional pathways found in religious buildings in the West or in China. Curves ensure that the view changes constantly, helping visitors make the transition to a deeper, more spiritual place.

    1. ​112. Entrance Transition​
  5. The gentle light of shoji screens

    Le Corbusier, the greatest architect of the last century, noted that 'architecture is the learned game, correct and magnificent, of forms assembled in light', demonstrating to what extent light has been prioritized in the Western tradition. Tanizaki, on the other hand, spoke of the important of shadows, of extended eaves. Rather than the light that shines directly into a room, he praised the soft light that penetrates a space after being reflected off the floor, and again from the ceiling.

    ...In Japanese architecture, the gentle light that passes through shoji screens serves a key purpose. It reaches right to the back of the room, so that the space feels bright, even without the aid of artificial light. The soft light filtering through the white film at Takanawa Gateway Station represents a form of light that was forgotten about by Japanese Modernism.

    1. ​In Praise of Shadows​
  6. The thin lip of a teacup

    To give the building a sense of the delicacy associated with such crafts, as well as a feeling of warmth, I designed louvres from white porcelain panels, and used them to cover the outer walls. The louvres are tapered, to make their tips as fine as possible. (In fact, making tips as thin as possible is one of my key design principles: the thin lip of a teacup allows a better experience of the subtleties of tea - this is always at the forefront of my mind when I pay such close attention to edges.)

  7. Skyscrapers are frowned upon

    During the twentieth century, much importance was attached to things that were big and tall, but, as we moved into the twenty-first century, I felt that being big and tall had become embarrassing.

    ...Today, skyscrapers are frowned upon in Japan, and are seen as the product of the mistaken mindset that prevailed during the country is period of enhanced growth.

    1. ​21. Four-Story Limit​
  8. The Metabolist philosophy

    Tange put Tsukiji as the centre of his plan, which now seems grandiose and delusional. His design for the Dentsu building had much in common with the Metabolist philosophy of the 1960s, which maintained that buildings needed to continually evolve in a flexible way.

    ...With [the Nakagin Capture Tower], Kurokawa's Metabolist philosophy was fully realized. After it was completed, however, it became almost impossible to switch over the capsules - indeed, since its completion, not one of the capsules has been moved. As a result, the Metabolist movement has been forgotten. Yet its core principles, which sought to draw architectural lessons from living organisms, has much inspiration to offer society today.

    1. ​How Buildings Learn​
  9. A city of hills

    Many of the stations [on the Yamanote Line] have one entrance on the uphill side and another lower down, and the neighbourhoods around them have a totally different feel, depending on which exit you use to leave the station.

    The hilly areas in Tokyo are mostly made up of quiet, well-to-do residential districts, while the lower sections often have more of a populist feel, with shopping arcades and small urban factories. As a result, the atmosphere outside the entrances are dramatically different in character. Take the wrong exit, and you might find yourself lost in a completely different kind of neighbourhood than you were expecting. In Tokyo, elite and working-class cultures exist alongside one another and mix together. I think the fundamental cause of this is the complexity of the city's topography.

    ...Tokyo is a city of hills, with most of it lying on an alluvial plain between the Tama and Kanda rivers. It is via these hills that the upland, elite neighbourhoods are connected with the more working-class areas down below. The slopes are thus a key part of the co-existence of these two worlds, used by people to come and go between them. Kagurazaka is particularly notable in this respect.

  10. They can smell the wood

    All of the wooden shelves used for storing books were on the warehouse's first floor. We decided to keep these shelves as they were to form a library, and we also created a small lecture hall for holding talks by writers and makers. Although contemporary society is moving away from books and towards computers and information technology, people nevertheless have a strong feeling of connection to – and nostalgia for – trees and things that are made from wood. La kagu is a space where visitors can really get a sense of the culture of books. When they step inside, some even say that they can smell wood.

    1. ​The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses​
  11. As a kind of gateway

    Historically, Japan's shrines have been built in order to worship the gods who live in the sacred mountains or seas; They don't reside in the shrine itself, but in the space beyond it. This belief that the spirits and deities exist beyond the confines of the shrine, and that the shrine itself acts not as a centre, but as a kind of gateway, is very different to the grand, imposing churches and cathedrals of Christianity.

    The majority of shrines are not found in the mountains or in the middle of the fields, therefore, but at the borders of mountain villages – which is to say, at what is seen as the edge of the mountains. The tori gate, marking the entrance to a shrine, indicates that there are gods on the other side of it.

    1. ​An edge is an interface​
    2. ​Paths, edges, districts, nodes, landmarks​
  12. The golden poo

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    On the opposite bank of the Sumida River lies the Asahi Beer headquarters (1989), a strange building with a golden sculpture mounted on top of a granite-plated black box. It was designed by Philippe Starck, and completed in 198g when the Japanese economy was still going strong. The sculpture, with no clearly defined use, is a clear representation of its time. Today, the building is known as the 'golden poo', a reference to the shape of its crowning object.

  13. Like crossing the sea

    The Sumida is a symbol of Tokyo, but is not like the Thames in London or the Seine in Paris, or other rivers that are woven into the geography of the city. Its banks were pushed back, so that the river became extremely wide and travelling across it feels liberating, like crossing the sea.

  14. These thrown-away items

    I decided to furnish the restaurant [Tetchan] with the kinds of discarded items one wouldn't normally use in interior design, from recycled LAN cables to acrylic by-products.

    When using discarded objects in interior design, it gives even brand-new places the feeling that they have always been there. I think this is due to the inherent history of these thrown-away items, which lives on inside of them.