The Palaceside Building appears in the July issue of the monthly Casa BRUTUS (Magazine House, special price 980 yen), a magazine of design information on architecture, food, art, fashion, travel and other aspects of living, for people who enjoy life with an eager curiosity (photo at right is the cover).
It is the serial “Sho Sakurai’s Journey to Learn Architecture,” in which Arashi member Sho Sakurai visits buildings that catch his eye and reports their charm and the impressions they leave. The feature runs four color pages, using many photographs of spots around the building — including Sakurai standing beyond a large hole cut in the marble wall that divides the men’s and women’s restroom entrances on the first basement level just inside the east main entrance (photo above) — to show his tour.
There is also a sharp photo of Sakurai posing in front of the great canopy (commonly called the umbrella) at the west entrance (photo at the end). His visit to The Mainichi Newspapers’ editorial floor on the fourth floor is also shown.
The column is said to be a popular series that began seven years ago, but this was Sakurai’s first visit to a work by Shoji Hayashi of Nikken Sekkei (now deceased), who designed the Palaceside Building. On the day, architect Koichi Yasuda — a junior of Hayashi’s at university and at Nikken Sekkei — guided him and answered questions with a detailed account of the building’s features and highlights. The weather was rainy, but Sakurai energetically toured the interior and completed the shoot.
In his closing note Sakurai wrote, among other things, “The exterior is original, and many people remember it, but there was so much charm you cannot see just by looking. The Stairway of Dreams and the eaves still make you say ‘I see!’ when you hear about them now; I was amazed by that inventiveness and flexibility of mind.”
