January 2025, Tokyo Japan

There's a remnant piece of Frank Lloyd Wright's work from the Imperial Hotel Tokyo in a small bar in the 'new' Imperial Hotel, Chiyoda City. I visited with Tess and two of my sons (the other two had decided to take the subway home, before becoming stranded at Shimbashi station and SOS'ing to be rescued).

The portion at the Old Imperial Bar isn't large and it's paired with other artefacts and some remanufactured furniture. The hotel, dismantled in 1968, can be visited elsewhere having been reconstructed. I'm sure Lloyd Wright did sparse work on either the mural or stonework after it was designed, however to me it possessed a mythical sense. Perhaps nostalgia or a fascination with antiquity - nonetheless it left us feeling strongly for something no longer available.

Sony Park in Ginza appears as a folly in what is an otherwise high gloss urban pocket. It is perhaps an interesting architectural statement for the technological behemoth, rough and seemingly incomplete. I remember visiting the Igualada Cemetery by Enric Miralles and Carme Pinós, and experiencing a similar feeling. There is something about the incompleteness which has stardust. The ambiguity of feeling a lack of finality is probably more true to life than the complete, cleaned and furnished reality which we strive for.

The Okuno Building in Japan is a beautiful relic. The apartments are a piece of historic modernity which has managed to survive wars, earthquakes and urban renewals. Services run exposed along corridor ceilings and walls both inside and out are a play of texture and detail, different in many ways to the contemporary buildings and brands which populate the CBD . Each time Tess and I travel, we tend to sit at these buildings for a while. Although her gig is marketing, she is a design spirit at heart too and she loves the age of these buildings even more than I do. I think she likes to imagine all the lives that were lived in here. So many stories of fleeting lives in a building which only bears silent witness. It’s all a lot of fun.