Tokyo | Historical Documents, Tokyo Bay
Photo of Tokyo Bay © 1967, Japan Press Research Institute
Photo of Tokyo Bay © 2013, Japan Press Research Institute
Displayed in the same exhibition, the first photo shows a view from Tokyo Bay, taken in 1967. This is the year when the Kasumigaseki Building, Tokyo’s first skyscraper, was under construction after building height regulations had been dropped some years earlier.
Shown in the second photo is an urban landscape of the 21st century that has gone through a sea change. While the 156-meter-high office tower goes hardly noticed in today’s skyline, back then only Tokyo Tower rose to the sky with it.
This Tokyo project is rather fragmented, though these are certainly good and interesting projects. The Metabolists were a group of architects loosely organized around a shared belief in the rebuilding of Japan in more humanistic but unapologetically technological ways. It is important to find a thread through these projects, either by a lead protagonist or the city itself. When a project is too confined to its architectural scale or manifestation, such as the Nagakin Capsule Tower, it is difficult to draw its impact towards a broader urban discussion. Perhaps you can begin by identifying how Tokyo as a city gave rise to these experiments, using qualities of the city itself as a thread to build up the dominant argument.