Lost In Translation

Hotel Okura

The architecturally impressive Hotel Okura is slated for a massive remodel, so I wanted to see it before they tore it down. A friend happened to be visiting from out of town, so we decided to make a visit. Some views of the lobby.

We were planning on getting a drink in the Orchid Room, but as you can see it was fully occupied.

So we ended up at the Baron Okura, a wine lounge and cigar room, instead.

Tange By Tange 1949-1959: Kenzo Tange as Seen Through the Eyes of Kenzo Tange

Last week I saw in The Japan Times that there was an exhibition on the buildings designed by Kenzo Tange, one of my favorite Japanese architects, near Nogizaka station. Overall it was interesting, however, I would liked to have seen more pictures blown up like these in an outdoor exhibition. The exhibition at Gallery Ma is on until March 28th.

Polestar

I was inspired by issue 178 of Brutus Casa magazine to visit Polestar (1971), a bar on the 45th floor in the Keio Plaza Hotel in Shinjuku. It has a great view of West Tokyo at night.

It also has an impressive retro feel to the lounge.

Zingaro

I recently heard about artist Takashi Murakami's new cafe in Nakano, Zingaro, in an NY Times "Food Matters | Culture Klatch" blog entry. I am a fan of the collaborator, Fuglen, so I thought I'd check it out as it is near my campus in the NAkano Broadway mall.

They roast their own coffee beans and have original cocktails and bottle craft beers. It has free wi-fi, but it is a very small space, which is the only drawback besides the location in opinion-I'm not a huge fan of the Nakano Broadway mall, which mostly has game and magna related merchandise and a sort of 60s worn out feel to the premises, perhaps more space like this would change that vibe.

Nissan Laurel SGL

I've never seen a Nissan Laurel before-or at least that I was aware of, but I saw one the other day. It slightly resembles a 70s American muscle car to me.

Phnom Penh Architectual Tour

This is the unique domed art deco central market structure built in 1935-37 known as The Grand Market.

The former Cambodian People's Party Headquarters.

The backside of Wat Phnom.

The entrance to Wat Phnom.

Former Colonial Port of Authority.

Former Central Police Station constructed in the 1890s used in the film City of Ghosts.

More French colonial architecture.

Former French Colonial Chamber of Commerce.

Former International Hotel.

1960s office block.

Colonial period apartments from the 1930s or 1940s displaying a unique Mediterranean style.

1935-45 apartments in art deco style attached to Lux Cinema hidden mostly by a modern facade.

Block of apartments constructed in 1905.

A late 19th century Sino-Khmer villa, displaying a mix of western architectual styles currently the offices of UNESCO.

Dilapidated villa from 19th century.

Old royal villa constructed in 1905.

Architecture In Tokyo

There's an interesting article on contemporary architecture in the latest edition of Metropolis. The picture above from the article is the new Nezu Museum which I will try to visit this winter break.

 

Just as Tange’s attention-grabbing style set the tone for the late Showa period and influenced countless lesser architects to design their offbeat office buildings, puerile pachinko parlors, and ludicrous love hotels, the present generation has found its guiding light in Kengo Kuma, a kinder, gentler architect whose ideas and growing international renown are exerting an influence far beyond the handful of buildings that he has designed in Tokyo. While Tange and his cohorts expressed the madness of a frenetically growing Japan, so the 55-year-old Kuma and his followers reflect the saner, more somber mood of a post-Bubble—and now post-credit crunch—Japan.

The key points of this new, unselfconsciously Japanese style can be seen at Kuma’s latest building, the redesigned Nezu Museum, located at the front of a large traditional Japanese garden at the far end of Omotesando. The first impression is rather dull—all you can see from the outside is a large tiled roof, surmounting a thick hedge of bamboo. But this effect is entirely intentional, as the architect explained in a recent sit-down with Metropolis.

 

Terunobu Fujimori's Natural House Designs

I came across an interesting article by Bruce Wallace in The LA Times about a Japanese architect, Tadanobu Fujimori, who uses natural materials like mud and grass to make his designs:

Fujimori says his inspiration springs from his knowledge and love of history. He argues that the 20th century was actually the second era in which architectural style was internationalized. The first occurred several thousand years ago when people in traditional societies in different parts of the world set about building shelter for themselves and all came up with about the same style of architecture: roughly speaking, the hut.

"I finally realized that if you go back far enough everywhere in the world, whether Japan, Europe, native America or sub-Saharan Africa, people were making pretty much the same thing," he says. The search for the primitive in Japan sent him back before the age of tatami and bamboo to the Jomon period that began more than 10,500 years ago, a time when some of the world's first sedentary peoples lived in pits or small above-ground buildings.

Fujimori says his interest is piqued by what followed that primitive stage: the local variations in building styles that emerged when different peoples "came out of this native phase to the start of something more sophisticated." The result is a body of work that could spring from Tolkien's Middle-earth, influenced by such diverse abodes as the Paleolithic caves of Lascaux, France, a treehouse in Shropshire, England, a Portuguese stone house and the sun-dried mud bricks of the Great Mosque in Djenne, Mali.

He is especially influenced by mud. Fujimori loves mud. "Mud blends into nature," he says.

When Fujimori received his first commission, the Jinchokan Moriya Historical Museum on the grounds of a Shinto shrine in his hometown of Chino City in Nagano Prefecture, he sought out traditional artisans, including a retired craftsman living in a rest home whom he describes as the last man then alive who knew how to split wood by hand. He still describes the finished museum as his best work from a purely architectural perspective.

That was followed by teahouses, where his only adherence to tradition is that the rooms are small, have low entrances and a fireplace to boil water. One sits in the corner of a Buddhist temple in Kyoto, with an arch in the garden in tribute to Le Corbusier. Another, designed for a former Japanese prime minister, is covered in cedar bark and sits independently in the woods.

Muji Comes To America

Muji is sort of like The GAP before it became a brand, that is if The GAP sold stationary, furniture, kitchen appliances, bicycles and that sort of thing besides clothes. It is one of my favorite stores in Japan-I ususally buy stationary and home furnishings there. This article from Slate discusses the beauty that is Muji, which is on its way to New York and beyond:

The rabid excitement over Muji is very much deserved, but the most innovative aspect of the company's products isn't the quality of their design; it's how fundamentally they redefine the idea of the design object. While other companies apply design to a product to get it noticed, Muji designs a product to be, essentially, invisible—so useful and so natural that you don't realize that it's there. More than 2,000 of the company's impeccably designed objects will arrive stateside in the next few months, and they are our best shot at being set free from design rather than tyrannized by it.

Boxer Briefs

Slate's Seth Stevenson sings the praises of boxer briefs, and I agree with him. And like him I experimented with boxers in high school and college, but boxer briefs are the only way to go for these reasons listed as advantages by Stevenson:

Support. The obvious, yet oft-unspoken flaw with traditional boxers is their lack of cuppage. They are useless for athletic events, and can even be a hindrance. (An acquaintance refers to the "tunnel" created by wearing boxers under soccer shorts. Via this tunnel, one's testicles can gain sudden and direct access to the world outside.) Boxer briefs hold your goods in place and out of sight.

Stability. Traditional boxers never sit still. They are forever riding up above the waistband of your pants, or slipping down below it. That loose fabric tends to twist, and bunch, and wedgify. Constant realignments are required. (This is especially true with the "bubble-butt" cut of boxer, which uses a spinnaker-like central back panel. The idea is to avoid having any seams line up with the butt-crack, but all that extra cloth just crawls up in there anyway, to disastrous effect.)

Containment. That simple slit of a fly on traditional boxers encourages a phenomenon I will term "flop-out." Some boxer shorts seek to rectify this with a button enclosure, but a button is the last thing you care to deal with when you urgently need to urinate. Boxer briefs use the much more effective and user-friendly Y-front.

Aesthetics. My unscientific polling suggests that ladies dig 'em. While it has all the comfort, support, and fit of a knit brief, the boxer brief's full-cut thigh lends it the modesty of a traditional boxer. And that thigh is functional, too—its snug, ribbed cuff serves to hold the garment in place. This prevents the boxer brief from riding up or (worse) burrowing into one's posterior cleavage. (The Calvin Klein boxer brief is particularly well-tailored, and is my personal choice. I own one pair of boxer briefs from 2(x)ist, bought at the little store in my gym when I forgot to bring a change of underwear, but I find they take an overly presentational approach to the genitalia. Sort of a push-up effect.)