The Palaceside Building has been featured yet again in a special of the monthly Tokyo-jin, the “innovative urban general magazine,” May issue — the photo at the end is the cover.
The special is titled “Building Walks, 1960s–70s: From retro to skyscrapers.” We say “yet again” because exactly a year ago, in the May 2017 issue, the Palaceside Building opened the special “Tokyo modernist architecture we want to keep and pass on”: architectural historian and critic Taro Igarashi (professor, Tohoku University Graduate School of Engineering) chose it as one of “five modernist buildings to leave behind,” over four pages. (See this blog, April 25, 2017.)
This time a roundtable, “What kind of buildings has Tokyo sought?”, has Terunobu Fujimori, director of the Edo-Tokyo Museum, and Kunihiro Misu, honorary chair of the Japan Federation of Architects & Building Engineers Associations (architect), discussing the Marunouchi Building, Kasumigaseki Building, Sunshine 60, Roppongi Hills and more, as well as urban plant factories and the evolution of offices.
In the following “Ten buildings that make a city,” the Palaceside Building gets a page — the topmost photo.
Opening with the note that many buildings worldwide still work, polished to the cool of the era when they were finished, it calls this building “Japan’s representative of that kind.” Introducing the two white cylinders that define it, it praises the white precast-concrete panels covering them: “As cutting-edge technology of the time they weather easily, and they have been fully replaced. Sensible maintenance by a private firm keeps the beautiful scene beside the Imperial Palace.”
The other nine of the ten are New Tokyo Building, Kinokuniya Building, Otemachi Building, Kokusai Building / Teigeki Building, Shinbashi Station-front Buildings 1 and 2, Shinjuku West Exit Station Building / Shinjuku Subway Building, Yaesu Dai Building, New Shinbashi Building and Aoyama Tower Building. Among them are buildings that, in seismic diagnoses recently released by Tokyo, may collapse in an upper-6 quake. Retro is not enough — that is the fate of buildings. The Palaceside Building has completed seismic work, so there is no fear of collapse; please rest easy.
