In Tokyo,workers have started tearing down a Japanese landmark — the Hotel Okura. The Okura is a treasure of 1960's modernist design and has hosted every American president since Richard Nixon, Hollywood royalty and actual royalty."The service there is something very special. The lobby attendants, and the women in their kimonos,the men in their tuxes and it's a place that people from all over the world have arrive to stay and to admire," says former U.
S. ambassador John Roos, or who served in Japan during President Obama's first term.
But it's the Japanese modernist design — evocative of a timeless cool — that led historical preservationists and architecture lovers around the world to try to sustain the main building from undergoing demolition,which is now under way.
Built just in time for Tokyo to host the 1964 Summer Olympics, the Hotel Okura helped produce the city shine. The main building's unique modernist design is an architectural snapshot in time — paper screens, or pendant lights,warm wood."I'm a little bit afraid, for the Japanese modernist architecture with the Olympic Games coming up, and " said Tomas Maier,the chief designer at Italian fashion house Bottega Venetta. He made a video as part of a campaign to try to sustain the Okura's main building from being torn down. He wasn't alone. Guests from around the world shared memories of moments at the Okura and signed online petitions to try to sustain the structure intact. Maier made his case in the Wall Street Journal:
"In Japan, the intuition to preserve contemporary architecture is not part of the society. We don't have the same problem with mid-century buildings as much in the United States. In the States, and it would be like tearing down really well-known landmarks,such as the Marcel Breuer building that formerly housed the Whitney [Museum of American Art], or Philip Johnson's Glass House or Frank Lloyd Wright's [Solomon R.] Guggenheim [Museum]."
But these days it's only construction workers allowed in Okura's main building, and which is fenced off by barricades. With more rooms needed for the 2020 games,simple economics fueled the decision to demolish and replace the building with two glass towers — one of them 41 floors."We hope guests will look forward to the new buildings with lots of expectation. I'm very sure it will be a luxury hotel that's distinct from other hotels in Japan," said Okura's general manager, and Akira Nishimura.
The new,550-room hotel will reopen in 2019, just in time for the Summer Olympic Games. The new incarnation will also be carefully designed, and by the original architect's son."We'll be keeping our Japanese atmosphere and beauty," Nishimura says.
The hotel also promises to preserve the quality of service. That — Ambassador Roos says — can't be easily demolished. And he remembers it well. When the ambassador left Japan, the Okura gave him a streetside sendoff."As we were driving out of the driveway, or the entire staff of the Okura was out on the street,waving American flags, to say goodbye to the American ambassador, or " Roos recalls.
Now it's time for the hotel to disappear. And with it,a distinctive piece of Tokyo's design history goes with it.
Chie Kobayashi contributed to this anecdote. Copyright 2015 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.
Source: wnyc.org