tokyo, odaiba
Two views of the Fuji TV building, a rigidly dimensioned megastructure through which flows an excess of public space. The normally shy sphere hosts an observation deck and an apparently ad hoc circulation system.
Sunday, February 18, 2007
Saturday, February 17, 2007
Thursday, February 15, 2007
tokyo, nakameguro
The promenade's lamentably abrupt end as a freeway ramp slices through it (colored in red). The image illustrates what Fumihiko Maki refers to as linear segmentation; fragments of urban development organized along linear topographic features. Often in a case such as this the pedestrian path is reconnected via raised or lowered walkways (you can see from the building spacing that the canal continues into the distance), but here I had to walk about two hundred yards to navigate the barrier.
tokyo, nakameguro
This waterway runs close by the office I'm visiting. Recently revamped, it presents a deftly executed recall of Tokyo's canal-centric past and provides an atmospheric promenade even without spring's blossom effervescence. The water is only about two feet deep and its ridged surface is created by concrete ties lined perpendicular to its flow.
Wednesday, February 14, 2007
sketch 1_hotel room
I'm going to upload a few of my sketchbook pages now that I've had the luxury of getting them scanned. This is a plan of my first room in Delhi; I make a sketch like this wherever I stay....they're not that exciting but it's amazing how many memories they can conjure.
Tuesday, February 13, 2007
tokyo, yamanote line
The image series chronicles the completion and development of Tokyo's crucial inner railway ring, the Yamanote Line (marked in red). The Yamanote ring was completed in 1924. Although it was not preconceived, once in place it provided the mechanism of
tokyo, convenience store distribution
Convenience stores overlaid on Tokyo's transportation network. The commercial catchment area of a convenience store--determined according to pedestrian access--is five minutes on foot. Convenience store distribution closely coincides with population distribution. The main commodities in convenience stores are various pastries and miscellaneous goods for daily life. However, utilizing their network character and walking distance locations, it has recently become possible to use them for bill payment and small parcel shipping (source: The Japan Architect 63 : Urban Design Strategies for Shrinking
Monday, February 12, 2007
tokyo, contents
Two other common examples of information display. On the left is a magazine advertisement hanging in a subway car. It's basically the front page of the magazine combined with its table of contents; all the headlines you can follow up on if you stop at a newsstand and buy the product. On the right is a typical commercial building with a vertical series of signs. Each sign has its respective floor number and the name of the shop on that floor. The signs align with an elevator core, which opens to the street.
tokyo, wayfinding
Tokyo is a confusing place and it's reassuring to know that other people need help as well. Directional signage proliferates and the Japanese tend to be graphically savvy. Maps, floorplans, and building sections proliferate in cartoonized and diagrammatic form. The image on the left is a diagrammatic section of a large department store showing what is sold on each floor and placing the vertical circulation. It seemed to be legible to the lady reading it although she did spend an awful long time looking at it. The image on the right is an interactive touch-screen map of the area around Shibuya. These are new. I filled out a questionnaire and got a free bottle of tea for trying it out. It works in English, Chinese, Korean, and Japanese and can even download directions to your cellphone. It didn't help me find the bookstore I was looking for, but it did have all the convenience stores marked according to seven or eight different companies. There's a veritable cloud of convenience stores in Tokyo so that's the one category I can't imagine people would need help with, but its inclusion fits the culture perfectly.
Thursday, February 8, 2007
tokyo, yokohama
Another excellent example of Tokyo's layering. At the top of the picture is a raised highway. Under that is a raised pedestrian walkway. Under that is about twelve well-spaced lanes. And the man in the center of the image is cleaning skylights to a shopping center below, called Yokohama Porta, that spreads beyond the sum of those roads. I've colored the skylights and passageways red that connect below to the veritable city of consumption teeming beneath the ground.
tokyo, yokohama
Today I visited FOA's International Passenger Terminal. It's an odd pier-boat made of land with a mouth like a manatee and a belly like a whale. Conceptually ambitious, it melds infrastructure, architecture, and landscape.
Wednesday, February 7, 2007
tokyo, ueno
Tokyo is a layered city. The golden light to the left comes from a collection of stores embedded in the above-ground Japan Rail's Ueno Station. The small white tower to the right is a ventilation shaft from the below-ground Tokyo Metro Station. The round, red sculpture toward the center of the image rises from a broad, raised public walkway that spans several directions over the busy intersection below. Behind the sculpture is a raised highway that, in turn, spans the pedestrian walkway. In the upper left corner of the image is a typical highrise practice--atop most slim city buildings sit glowing billboard boxes to project products in every possible direction. Let's review that vertically: metro to road to station to walkway to highway to highrise to advertisement. Extraordinary.
tokyo, ueno
Conspicuously constructed transportation infrastructure is ubiquitus in Tokyo and the city fabric either ignores it, commandeers it, or celebrates it. I think there might be a little of each in this case.
Tuesday, February 6, 2007
tokyo, ginza
Tokyo International Forum's Glass Hall, a tour de force of...well, force. I'm not sure why it's doing any of the things it's doing, but it's certainly doing the hell out of them.
tokyo, ginza
This use of an underpass as a galleria is one of several ways in which the urban fabric addresses infrastructure in Ginza between the upscale shopping boulevard of Chuo-dori and the cavernous convention spaces of Toky International Forum.
tokyo, ginza
I just had to put this image up for a little while. For years I've seen the word "air" pillaged by the beauty salon industry for its resemblance to "hair." I've passed many a "Hair Port," "Hair Force," and and the like along the generic American road. This is the first time I've ever seen that relationship reversed and I find a certain beauty to that. The sign marks a travel agent's office and Air DO is apparently a commercial airline. I have no idea if any intention was involved.
Monday, February 5, 2007
tokyo, shibuya station
Spectacular by day, phenomenal by night. The streets beyond the plaza are narrow, pedestrian-scaled, and comprehensively lit by streetlights, advertisements, and shopfronts. With its tightly packed restaurants, gaming arcades, and electronic stores, the network handily diffuses the plaza's momentary mass.
tokyo, shibuya station
Tokyo's great urban spaces are just outside the stations rather than in them. Gluts of technologically-savvy advertising address arriving passengers from across the intersection, where they accumulate until the green light glows behind the silhouetted man with a hat. Then, for thirty seconds or so, the space is flooded with people moving in every direction. Cross-walks criss-cross the space as well as skirt it.
tokyo, shibuya station
The station lies beyond the eye-shaped panels, sandwiched vertically between lanes of traffic. I took this picture from a raised pedestrin walkway that negotiates the expanse of the intersection's distended geometry. The station's vaulted roofs are about as unified and monumental as its architecture gets, compressed and interpenetrated as it is by the city around it. This not by the miraculous machinations of urban dynamics--train stations are often private developments and coupled with department stores at their inception. Commerce, packaged to maximum efficiency, dominates transit space.
Saturday, February 3, 2007
delhi, chandni chowk
Here is the shrine complex within a 1500' x 1500' square. It's embedded within one of the densest urban fabrics I've ever experienced. I've indicated where the photograph was taken with blue, facing west. Also note the plaza across the street from the complex : this open space addresses the shrine without serving as a gathering space. During the day it creates an eddy in the traffic's flow.
delhi, chandni chowk
This Sikh martyr shrine caught my attention for the way it co-opted Chandni Chowk's portico system to extend religious space into the secular realm. I have colored the shrine's portico--as well as its extension into the street--with red. I made the mistake of trying to walk along the colonnade as if it was public space and was rewarded with a firm reprimand. The basin at far left between the portico pillars is for ritual washing and the platform is where one has to take off one's shoes before entering the complex. To pass by the shrine, one has to walk in the street, as the fellow is doing in the photograph.
Thursday, February 1, 2007
chandigarh, monument to the open hand
I was lucky enough to visit the monument just before a rainstorm and to see it pivot wildly in the changing wind. To give the monument scale, note the children to the left.
chandigarh, high court
Another impressive example of Le Corbusier's parasol roof strategy. Behind the colored pillars rises a monumental ramp. As in the case of the Assembly, the rear of the High Court extends a full story below the central enclosure's ground level.
chandigarh, museum of architecture
Constructed posthumously according to another museum type, the building finds freedom and variation beneath a parasol roof.
chandigarh, museum of art
The most sophisticated of Le Corbusier's museum type, the building is formatted to accommodate unlimited, spiraling growth.
chandigarh, sector 17
A portico in the commercial sector reminiscent of Lutyen's Connaught Circus in Delhi.
ahmedabad, open building
Another common building practice in Ahmedabad : the building proper is lifted two or three stories above grade and small shops fill in the space created.
ahmedabad, open building
A common construction practice in Ahmedabad : the building is fully operational--and has been for some time--but the core far exceeds the usable floor height and rebar is left protruding from columns. The building is waiting to grow.
chandigarh, capitol complex
A view toward the Assembly from atop the Secretariat that begins to show the complexity of the Capitol Complex's landscape. The pavement lined in blue becomes a reflecting pool during the rainy season, and the punched holes to its right screen a series of small rooms that overlook the sunken parking area. The roof of this corridor is flush with the ground behind it and emerges as a bridge connecting to the Secretariat and to the Assembly's flank. The Assembly rises from the lower ground plane without pilotis but its main entrance is above, to the central enclosure. Its monumental curved canopy stands in front, detached from the building. In the distance, one can see the Tower of Shadows and the Monument to the Open Hand. Between the two, Le Corbusier rendered a major roadway invisible by depressing it below grade and bridging over.
chandigarh, secretariat
A view of the Secretariat. The poor girl's seen better days but she's still quite imposing and beefy as ever.
chandigarh, capitol complex
A view of the Tower of Shadows, the Assembly, and the Secretariat. The Monument to the Open Hand is to my right and the High Court is behind me.
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