Positive Olympic Effect, Hareza, Animate Cafe, Higashi Ikebukuro; by Kajima Achitect; 鹿島建設株式会社,

Despite the postponed Olympic event, the preparation has produced a general improvement for public spaces that

could not been possible without the Olympic Games as a desired guest in Tokyo. One, among hundreds, is in this square of Higashi Ikebukuro where the main trade is about anime world. Probably is one of the capital centre in the whole world for people who likes this hobby and all sort of things surrounding merchandise. I am not expert neither interest as you may have guessed.

Here they did this cafe front square with a centered unique design. I think the proposal fit the atmosphere.

 

 

 

Saturday afternoon the square is plenty of young and teenagers who are commercialing freely their goods, caards, games and so on.

Kajima Inc. has realized a massive Urban Development surrounding the plaza; where a tower; a theatre Hall and many Other spaces are born from almost nothing. I have seen even the Tokyo mayor paying visit to one of these one day.

There is free dowanloadable pdf that describe the project here, recently finished; I would say late 2019.

Kajima is one of the mayor Construction Company of Japan; their website here.

The square is called Park, 豊島区中立池袋公園, it is called c

 

 

NICHES in TOKYO land urban landscape 23 wards

I always pass running in front of this little Jinjia and I never noticed since last Sunday I walked instead of run…It was there between 2 properties, probably been there long ago as it is marked with such a respectful vertical column sing. What do you think, is that column appropriate ?

Komazawa renovation by Azusa Architects Co.

Last week it was the last holiday week before going back to work and I took my son to Komazawa to make a bicycle ride together, I really like that open space, with that gym round!

With my surprise the adult rental was close, so only my son had fun with the children bicycle track. The reason for the closure of the rental was this:

Indoor Ball game Stadium

The architects are the Azusa Co. LTD (株式会社　梓設計) , here their website.

Here there is a link (japanese) that describe in detail the project.

The previous situation was indeed a bit on the deteriorating side,

an old Master management plan for the whole park is reported in this( 25 pages pdf). It was evidently before Tokyo won the bid for 2020, not a mention about this renovation.

My previous post.

a nice facade for a Hospital, Kagayaki Plaza, by Ｋｕｍｅ Ｓｅｋｋｅｉ (久米設計)

finished in 2013, according to this article, during the Sakura week I was walking nearby.

It is interesting that with the Sakura excuse I was able to go in places where otherwise I would never step. This road was near the Budokan but just a turn that I never took before. (here the address 九段南1-6-10)

There was even a free shuttle to assist tourists…

and you know what, for the first time the people who tried to pass the lines were not Italians…I bet you know where they were from!

Gunjin Kaikan, by Ryoichi Kawamoto, 1934

It was the time of Imperialistic style, the time of the euphemistic pan-asian sphere, even so, I like it.

His position, gives this building a sort of mysterious aura. When you enter into the Park that surround the BudoKan, in the central area, you cannot miss it.

Here the complete story of the Building.

And here another shot of a detail that needs some attention before Olympic 2020!

I found also a guy/girl on flickr that posted a recent event. During the Tohoku earthquake (2011) a roof collapsed and sadly two people died. Since then it remained closed. This style of thirties was called Teikan Yoshiki

House Vision 2016

I went yesterday, Saturday, the 27th to this wonderful exhibition.

Here some links of video I shot.

It closed on Sunday August 28th.

 

House nr. 9,here. Nippon Design Center, for Toppan Printing.

 

House nr. 1, here. Fumie Shibata for Yamato Holdings.

 

House nr.8, here. K.Kuma, Seijun Nishihata for Sumitomo Forestry.

 

The winner is, Jun Iagarashi and Taihi Fujimori with their Inside Out/Furniture room.

Really lovely, above all the others.  House nr.10,  here. for TOTO and YKK AP

 

IN total there were 12 houses, but not all of them were houses, like 8 and 11, were outdoor

places. nr4. an Office space by Bow Wow.

There is a book already onliune if you`d like to have everything collected. I bought it as a present to a friend in Italy.

Last, I think Kuma, with designing the whole exhibition and 3 years before the House vision 1, first gathering must be considered a leading figure into this productive, architectural environment.

(Also you can see other old posts on this blog about that exibihition, 1,        2,        3,       4,        5, )

So I will put a link to an interesting introduction to his japanese theory book, called defeated architecture, of a blogger also that seems to be one of his

teammates at the studio or just one of his student I do not know really. Here, His ore her name is Zhue, and the article is dated back 2009.

there is a beach in Tokyo

One day, a particularly hot day, we  spent it on the fake bach of Odaiba. not bad.

Fragment MIB、unknown

It was interesting,I thought I have lost these shots.

Although I am not a big fan of exposed conrete, I have to admit that this result is massive and well composed.

 

it is located in the surrounding of the notorius district of Ikebukuro

 

Are you up for Zushi this year?

So here it is, one hour from Tokyo straight to the South, technically one train stop after the famous Kamakura, there is a beach like in the western world.

A reign of youthness and fun, where the crowd ejnoy the crowd….

Suddenly the rainy season has not gone yet!

AOYAMA (青山) does speak British? McCartney Stella store by Takenaka Corporation

From this interesting link , where different projects are ranked, I discovered that the Design is from Takenaka corporation. It is named also a cooperation with the McCartney store planning Office for the interior. They were wise enough to accept a Japanase firm to sing their exterior.

The dseignof Takenaka  might be a spin off of their previous creative successes, but it still playing well with such wild antagonists (Miu Miu and Prada, read Herzog & De Meuron-)

From the web, it seems during nights it even looks more interesting that during daytime.

IN the same day where we enjoyed the new store of Miu Miu, we discovered many stores that has british brands, taht were not there before. I guess it was a positive effect of the London Olympics, and in general of the increased access to English Schools all over the country. Aoyama is the end of Omotesando, so it is quite the same neigbourhour but it has some up class notes here and there. Like for instance if you, one day want to buy a Bugatti, you have to go up there.

Or there is a Noh Theatre space just few steps from this McCartney store. It has performances only once every month on fridays evenings….so there is also the jazz club, called Blue Note if I am not mistaking the name….and so and so…

 

Aoyama Store