Coming from a town (Edinburgh) in which the relatively ancient architecture of my neighbourhood (confusingly called “the New Town”) is constantly maintained, yet never replaced…
…I find it fascinating to see, in Japan, places where the postmodernism of the 1980s and 1990s is crumbling and decaying like an ancient monument. (This is Festivalgate, Osaka, where a 1990s funfair is being demolished.)
Since land is worth more in Japan than the buildings on it, the Japanese constantly demolish and rebuild. The architecture has a much shorter lifecycle than, say, Georgian Edinburgh, which makes many Japanese buildings excitingly topical, evanescent and volatile.
You could say the recent past here is already dated, but that’s a result of the Japanese having the courage to build in the styles of the present, something the British haven’t done much since the 1970s.
As a result, Japanese streets are a goldmine, a Jurassic Park, for aficionados of pomo. This building in Osaka reminds me of Cinema Rise in Shibuya, with its curtained dome.
Apartment blocks in the suburbs often have enthusiastically early-90s forms going on.
Particularly vulgar in their love of pomo artifice are drive-in pachinko arcades.
Tokyo buildings (this one is in Ebisu) often use SITE-style deconstruction in their facades.
This Daikanyama boutique uses a ripped effect.
Here’s a management company office in a run-down part of South Osaka that takes a leaf from Vito Acconci’s book: the table runs from the inside of the office right out onto the street.
An office block in central Osaka…
…whose squared-off lettering reminds me of the Parco logo and “saison culture”.
A 1980s factory in Tokyo whose facade and doorway reference Art Deco.
Postmodernist architecture of the 1980s liked to reference ancient ziggurats and play with the textures of fatigue and decay. But now a lot of Japan’s pomo buildings really are decaying, they’ve started to look like abandoned monuments from another era. Which suits them.
