Page 53 - (DK Eyewitness) Top 10 Travel Guide - Tokyo

Modern and Contemporary Buildings ❮❮ 51

St. Mary’s Cathedral, designed in the shape of a cross
St. Mary’s Cathedral
5 architects for centuries in order to
MAP C1 • 3-16-15 Sekiguchi,
protect temple pagodas against
Bunkyo-ku • 3945-0126 earthquakes (see p89).
After the original Gothic Catholic
Tokyo International
cathedral here burned down during 8
World War II, it was redesigned in Forum
1964 by Kenzo Tange, who was also Rafael Viñoly’s 1996 construction
the architect responsible for the is symbolic of the end of 20th-
Olympic Stadium at Yoyogi. century architecture in Tokyo. The
construction is made up of several
Prada Aoyama Building
6 performance halls and a convention
center hanging off an elliptical
Swiss architects Herzog &
de Meuron made a splash on enclosure made of nearly 3,000
the designer-shopping avenue panels of tempered glass (see p82).
Omotesando in 2003 with this
National Art
six-story boutique for the 9
famous Italian fashion house. Center, Tokyo
Covered in rhomboid-shaped Kisho Kurokawa’s final hurrah is this
green-glass windows, it looks 2007 exhibition space forming one
like it has been bubble- point of the Roppongi Art Triangle.
wrapped (see p104). The undulating glass-and-steel
façade is amazing, but even better
Tokyo Skytree
7 is the soaring lobby dominated by
Hard to ignore, Tokyo
two giant inverted cones (see p95).
Skytree is the world’s tallest
21_21 Design Sight
free-standing tower, visible 0
from many parts of the city. MAP D5 • 9-7-6 Akasaka,
For all its modernity, Minato-ku
it is built along Like an iceberg, Tadao Ando’s 21_21
similar principles Design Site is a building mainly
to those used by underground with its presence
announced only by the sharp-edge
Tokyo Skytree steel plate roofs of two low pavilions.
looming high The exhibition halls are made from
above the city Ando’s trademark polished concrete.
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