This architecture is extraordinary. A professional walks you through every highlight of the masterpieces!—so reads the belly band of the new Shincho Shinsho title “Japan’s 50 Best Modern Buildings” (by Itaru Ogawa, 880 yen including tax), in which the Palaceside Building appears. It is described as “an utterly distinctive office building that offsets two office blocks and sandwiches a cylinder packing elevators and restrooms into the corner.”
A newspaper printing plant in the basement, a shopping street on the first floor and basement first floor, the mesh-structure stairs linking those two levels, a roof opened as a plaza, large glass windows, cast-aluminum sunshades, rain gutters cut off at each floor.... Ogawa, who spent many years editing specialist magazines and books, calls it “a lucid building in which every part was solved without precedent, on economy and reason, and made clearly visible,” and praises it as “a masterpiece of the office building, achieved by the richly individual architect Shoji Hayashi using the technical power of an organizational firm (Nihon Sekkei).”
He also writes that “organizational firms tend to settle for safe solutions for fear of risk, but Hayashi dared to take an adventure and made it succeed,” and shares anecdotes about Hayashi. Those interested should read the book. Other buildings featured include the National Museum of Western Art, the Nippon Life Hibiya Building / Nissay Theatre, and the Yoyogi National Gymnasium. Among works by organizational firms, the Palaceside Building is the only one taken up.