Metropolis publisher Mark Devlin has some things to say about the gentirfication of Omotesando. I agree with some of his beefs, but not all of them.
Driven by the false proposition that trendy Harajuku kids will grow up and want more mature brands, fashion houses have been trying to outdo each other with vanity buildings. A walk from Nezu Museum to Yoyogi Park is a Who's Who of contemporary architecture. Some of the more interesting efforts are Herzog & de Meuron's Prada Building, which is now a bona-fide Tokyo landmark. This year's Tod's store by Toyo Ito sympathetically reflects Omotesando's signature tree branches, while Jun Aoki's Louis Vuitton store is a subtle pile of woven metal boxes in bronze. Up toward the park, we even have a gaijin entry in the form of Benjamin Warner's Veloqx 28 Building, a nod to Western high street style. Of less architectural note, the faux-Beaux Arts Anniversaire provides the only open cafe on a street that should be bursting with them.
I guess four years ago there were at least 5 cafes between Meji dori and Aoyama dori, but now there's only one and a lot of brand name stores. It's too bad, because there's nowhere else that has anything like what it had, and I don't see a bunch of al fresco cafes popping up in any one area, any time soon. The new Mori building he is criticizing is accordingly to him:
One would think that on a street that purports to be Tokyo's Champs Elysees, the architect, Tadao Ando, could have created a green space that interacts with the neighborhood. Instead, he has built an unbroken opaque flat glass wall stretching down the entire road and up to the Zelkova treetops. The frontage is crossed by horizontal bands that step up inexpertly with the slope. This wall is capped by heavy concrete slabs holding dark, boxy apartments that weigh down upon the street and block out light.Perversely, the natural light that has been lost will be replaced by garish illuminated panels, creating what in effect will be a 250-meter-long television screen. The only respite from the wall is an angular notch that will lead to an inner spiral courtyard surrounded by shops.
The building's doublespeak-filled PR page says, "The spiral connecting slope will allow visitors to enjoy indoors the sensation of strolling outdoors."
They took away the natural light and replaced it with TV. They destroyed the real experience of strolling outdoors to provide an indoor "sensation." They took away the trees and the ivy and replaced them with concrete. They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.
The old apartments were not all that, so I think almost anything is going to be better. My biggest beef is with the other developers that replaceded the other cafes on Omotesadno dori, there were no cafes near the old apartments, so this shouldn't be allthat bad
Read the rest of this screed here.
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