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Kengo Kuma champions an ideal of “losing architecture”—intricate buildings that disappear into their environs—although it’s hard to miss the new National Stadium … His stylistic fingerprints can be seen throughout the elaborate project … Greenery dots the facade of the oval-shaped structure, the centerpiece of this year’s Games, allowing a series of wooden eaves—a favored material for Kuma, procured from prefectures across Japan—to better blend in with the surrounding garden. — TIME
Kengo Kuma’s design for the Japan National Stadium served as the centerpiece for this year’s Tokyo Olympic Games. Kuma also recently announced museum projects with literary tie-ins in Denmark and Norway and has been able to add sneaker collaborations and homeware to his portfolio... View full entry
Friday's Opening Ceremony in Tokyo inaugurated the XXXII Olympiad in a dazzling spectacle that drew praise from audiences worldwide even as a growing protest against the games echoed in streets around the city. Kengo Kuma’s National Stadium provided an ample backdrop for this year’s version of... View full entry
Alexis Sablone is bringing her knowledge of architecture to the Olympics, though not in the way you might expect from a professional artist with degrees in the subject from MIT and Columbia. The 34-year-old Connecticut native represents the US during this year’s delayed Tokyo Olympic Games... View full entry
A Finnish architect with hopes for Olympic gold has unveiled her designs for a new log villa whose inspiration she says came to her during training for this year’s games in Tokyo. Finland-based manufacturer HONKA is now offering an Olympic windsurfer’s designs for a cottage as part of a series... View full entry
The first major exhibition in Tokyo dedicated to Pritzker Prize-winning architect Kenzo Tange is opening later this month. Renowned for combining traditional Japanese and modernist forms in his designs, the exhibition features a retrospective of the first half of the influential architect’s... View full entry
Father and son duos have been prominent in the past 50 or so years of sports history. Ken Griffey Jr. and his father, the Ripkens, Curry’s, Mannings, and many others. Now, with the Olympic games coming back to their home country, one Pritzker-pedigreed combination is leaving its mark on the... View full entry
The coronavirus pandemic has forced the Olympics’s first postponement: Tokyo 2020, its name unchanged, will now take place in July 2021 if it takes place at all. Yet all around the Japanese capital is the legacy of another Olympics: the 1964 Summer Games, which crowned Tokyo’s 20-year transformation from a firebombed ruin to an ultramodern megalopolis. — The New York Times
NYT art critic Jason Farago takes a look back at the now iconic architectural and visual design — and its transformative power — of the 1964 Olympic Summer Games in the Japanese capital, 19 years after WWII had ended. "Those first Tokyo Olympics served as a debutante ball for... View full entry
Veteran International Olympic Committee member Dick Pound told USA TODAY Sports Monday afternoon that the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games are going to be postponed, likely to 2021, with the details to be worked out in the next four weeks. [...]
“It will come in stages,” he said. “We will postpone this and begin to deal with all the ramifications of moving this, which are immense.”
— USA Today
While the IOC has not responded directly to veteran member Dick Pound's statement from today, the Committee did signal its commitment to scenario-planning for "changes to the start date of the Games" yesterday amid new outbreaks of COVID-19 in IOC member countries. This development comes only days... View full entry
Construction of all new permanent venues for the Tokyo 2020 Olympics and Paralympics is now complete, organizers said Friday, as preparations continue despite worries over the new coronavirus outbreak.
The announcement comes as the International Olympic Committee insisted this week that a potential cancellation or postponement of the Games due to the virus was "not mentioned" at a meeting of their Executive Board.
— Japan Today
According to Japan Today, the last venue to be completed was the Tokyo Aquatics Center for swimming, diving, and artistic swimming. It will seat 15,000 fans for the Olympic and Paralympic games. "The main pool features a movable wall allowing the 50-meter facility to be converted into two... View full entry
Intel is collaborating with NEC to provide "a large-scale face recognition system for the Olympics," said Ricardo Echevarria, general manager of Intel's Olympics program. The system is designed to let Olympics organizers "ensure smoothly secure verification for the over 300,000 people at the games who are accredited," he said. People using it will register with photos from government-issued IDs, he added. — CNET
Facial recognition will be used by the organizers to keep track of athletes, staff, volunteers, and other individuals involved with the event. The general public will not be involved in the effort. The 2020 Olympic games in Tokyo will mark the first time that the event makes wide-spread use... View full entry
A venture firm and a major taxi company began trials of passenger-carrying autonomous taxi services on Monday with an eye on launching the full service around 2020 when Tokyo hosts the Olympics and the Paralympics.
ZMP Inc., a Tokyo-based developer of autonomous driving technology, and Hinomaru Kotsu Co., said they are the first in the world to offer autonomous taxi services to fare-paying passengers in the test through Sept. 8.
— Japan Times
Other tech companies and automakers have also been testing autonomous driving services in the U.S., Europe, and Japan. If the Tokyo RoboCar MiniVan trial is successful, officials hope to scale up the program to assist with the increased transportation demand during the 2020 Summer Olympics and... View full entry
Dignitaries at the 2020 Tokyo Summer Olympic and Paralympic Games will obviously get the best seats--those made of wood--but ordinary common folk will have to make do with plastic. — Asahi Shimbun
Less than 1 percent of Tokyo's Olympic Stadium seats will be wooden. Those will be allocated for the best views of the opening and closing ceremonies, as well as track and field events. The country's timber industry has been advocating since 2016 to install wooden seats for all the spectators as a... View full entry
Tokyo-based Dynamic Map Planning will undertake the task of mapping out roadways in the highest detail to date (featuring such useful insights as curb location, lane height, and limits on turning), intended to be 20 times as precise as current maps [...]
The company will also lead the effort to equip Tokyo with digital infrastructure that will allow self-driving vehicles to pick up on factors that can change or appear in their surroundings as often as every few minutes or even seconds
— forbes.com
More autonomous driving news from around the world:Airbus promises autonomous flying taxis in the (very) near futureTesla Model S driver suffers fatal crash while using autopilot, in first known death involving an autonomous vehicleWould self-driving cars be useful to people living outside urban... View full entry
Tokyo 2020 Olympics organizers on Monday chose logo A — a stark indigo-and-white checkered circle — as the games’ replacement emblem after the original design was scrapped last year amid claims of plagiarism.
The Tokyo 2020 Logo Selection Committee chose the logo from a shortlist of four following a competition open to any resident of Japan aged over 18. Almost 15,000 entries were submitted.
The winning logo was designed by Asao Tokolo, a 46-year-old artist [...].
— japantimes.co.jp
"The design comprises 45 interconnecting pieces forming a checkered pattern known as ichimatsu moyou. Use of the color indigo is intended “to express a refined elegance and sophistication that exemplifies Japan.”"Previously: 2020 Tokyo Olympics panel launches nationwide call for new logo... View full entry
“In the design, I would like to say there are no similarities at all,” Kuma told reporters when asked about Hadid’s claims. [...]
“The conditions set for the competition mean that automatically some similarities emerge ... the concept is completely different, so it is absolutely a different building, despite the similarities”. [...]
Hadid’s office is reportedly consulting lawyers, and said it would “take legal action if our concerns are not promptly addressed to our satisfaction”.
— theguardian.com
For more on the contentious issue of architectural copyright and intellectual property, make sure to check out:"Never the Same River Twice" – Experimental preservation and architectural authorship with Jorge Otero-Pailos, on Archinect Sessions #47Should architecture strive for originality? Can... View full entry
