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In the headache-inducing whirlwind regarding Japan's New National Stadium for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, Zaha Hadid Architects and Japanese engineering company Nikken Sekkei announced their ineligibility to participate in the design-and-build competition for the stadium's redesign. Why? Because they... View full entry
Dominique Perrault is the 2015 architecture laureate for the prestigious Praemium Imperiale International Arts Award, as announced by the Japan Art Association today. Bestowed by the Japan Art Association since 1988, the award celebrates the association's 100th anniversary and honors the late... View full entry
Mitsubishi Estate Co. says it will construct a 390-meter-high building, making it Japan’s tallest, as part of redevelopment project near Tokyo Station.
The structure will overtake the 300-meter-tall Abeno Harukas in the city of Osaka.
Mitsubishi Estate hopes the new building will serve both as a centerpiece of a major business district and tourist destination, officials said Monday.
— japantimes.co.jp
More recent Tokyo architecture news:It's lights out at the old Okura: reconstruction of the iconic Tokyo hotel starts next weekNot over yet: Zaha Hadid releases 23-minute film pushing for Tokyo Olympic StadiumTokyo begins farming produce beneath its subway lines View full entry
Tokyo’s venerable Hotel Okura is getting a remake, starting next week.
Over the course of the past 53 years since its opening on May 20, 1962, the Okura, located in Toranomon, has earned an unsurpassed reputation both at home and abroad as a luxury hotel to represent Japan.
The hotel said in a statement that it will maintain the Japanese traditional aesthetics and the basics of the architecture style of Hotel Okura.
— japantoday.com
Previously on Archinect: As the Okura says sayonara, Tokyo doesn't seem to care muchFarewell to the Old Okura And before the wrecking ball ends an era of Japanese 1960s Modernism to make way for the new, shiny, 41-story, $836M Okura Hotel, here a few more impressions of all its glory on the... View full entry
The government hopes to cap the cost of building the main stadium for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics at ¥155 billion, much lower than the ¥252 billion projected under a recently scrapped plan [...].
The government intends to make sure that the stadium will be built by April 2020. But given the International Olympic Committee’s request that the venue be built by January of that year, it plans to ask a yet-to-be-named contractor to propose shortening its construction schedule, the sources said.
— japantimes.co.jp
Read more about the troubled New National Stadium Tokyo in the Archinect news:Not over yet: Zaha Hadid releases 23-minute film pushing for Tokyo Olympic StadiumAre uncompetitive Japanese contractors to blame for Zaha's New National Stadium budget blowout?Zaha Hadid reportedly not giving up on... View full entry
Kakutani is the main farmer behind "Tokyo Salad," the Metro’s new farming enterprise, farming that takes place underneath the Tozai Line. [...]
Tokyo Metro started hydroponic farming this past January. They’re currently selling the lettuce varieties to a local Italian restaurant and The Sheraton Grande Tokyo Bay Hotel. Over the next couple years, they’re hoping to expand. Maybe they’ll start selling to grocery stores, and maybe Kakutani says, "we’ll make salads or smoothies.”
— pri.org
More innovations from Japan:Japan's largest treehouse is also a high-tech engineering featTurning Japan's golfing greens into solar farmsJapan's simple logic for putting toilets in elevators View full entry
Many school buildings that used to house children now just primarily house debris thanks to a precipitous drop in public school enrollment over several decades. One independent website puts the figure at over 1,000 abandoned schools in states stretching from West Virginia to Indiana. Some... View full entry
According to a statement issued on Zaha Hadid's website, the project-ending cost of the New National Stadium is not the fault of the design, but rather the "inflated costs of construction in Tokyo, a restricted and uncompetitive approach to appointing construction contractors, and a restriction on... View full entry
Completed in March of 2014, Kusukusu [...] is a marvelous feat of architecture, engineering and technology. Working with Hiroshi Nakamura of NAP Architects, the team came in and 3D-scanned hundreds of points on the tree. Based on that 3D data they then created a steel trellis that threaded through the tree, interlocking perfectly [...]. What’s amazing is that the treehouse in its entirety, never touches the tree. It’s completely self-standing so as to not harm the tree. — spoon-tamago.com
Here are a few more images of the stunner of a treehouse in Atami, Japan designed by master treehouse builder Takashi Kobayashi in collaboration with NAP Architects.To learn more and see the complete set of photos, head over to Spoon & Tamago.Photos by Koji Fujii/Nacasa & Partners... View full entry
Japan has been hungry for alternative energy ever since the 2011 Fukushima disaster made nuclear power an unattractive option in the country, and golf courses just happen to be perfectly suited for solar power — they're large open spaces that often get lots of sunlight.
Kyocera's first project, now under construction, is a 23 megawatt solar plant on a golf course in Kyoto prefecture. When it goes live in 2017, the plant will produce enough power for about 8,100 households.
— businessinsider.com
This week on the podcast: Gehry's design for the Eisenhower memorial is finally approved, Zaha Hadid's Olympic Stadium in Tokyo gets cut-and-pasted into some very Japanese situations, and Peter Zellner, Principal and Design Lead of AECOM's Los Angeles architecture division, and founder of... View full entry
World-famous architect Tadao Ando was astonished to learn that the design he chose for the new National Stadium would cost ¥252 billion to build, he said at a press conference Thursday, where he spoke for the first time since the swelling cost became an issue. — The Japan News
According to Reuters, the massive ballooning in the construction costs of Zaha Hadid's relatively unpopular proposed design for Japan's National Stadium are not the fault of the chairman of the design committee, Tadao Ando: "Soaring construction and labor costs, along with a rise in Japan's... View full entry
The price tag for 2020 Tokyo Olympic stadium is now a whopping $2.1 billion. That’s more than the stadiums for the past three summer Olympic stadiums combined. That’s pretty silly! So is the stadium’s new Photoshop meme. — kotaku.com
With the current estimated cost for Zaha Hadid 's stadium design clocking in at more than $2 billion (that's $700 million more than the initial estimate), a recent poll by Japanese news network NHK found that "81 percent of respondents say they disapprove of the plan to build the stadium without... View full entry
Tokyo’s bustling Shibuya district will get a 230-meter high observation deck before the Olympics that could become more famous than its statue of Hachiko the dog or the “scramble crossing” by the train station, plans unveiled by Tokyu Corp. showed Thursday. [...]
Visitors will be able to see the capital’s other landmarks, including Tokyo Tower and Tokyo Skytree, as well as Mount Fuji on a clear day.
— japantimes.co.jp
Two massive arches that form the backbone of the stadium's roof, a feature that critics blamed for raising construction costs, will remain part of the design. — usatoday.com
When confronted with Zaha Hadid's too-big and too-costly design for the 2020 Olympic National Stadium, Tokyo officials decided to go ahead with the designs anyway – or else, add "too late" to that list of descriptors. Any additional major changes to the design (Hadid already scaled back the... View full entry
