I have mixed feelings about it. While it’s really cool to see something so quirky in the middle of Ginza, and it’s a shame to replace it with some generic building, the owners have realistic concerns about asbestos and mold, and I’m sure the building is not up to current earthquake code. Buildings are not meant for permanence there. It’s a shame because renovating the building would cost more than it’s worth.
And yet, I’ll miss the chance to travel to the future through the lens of 1972.
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I’ve had the full run of Japanese bathtubs from the showa era stainless steel model with the place in the wall to light a fire and heat the water to a molded unit with an auto fill function and beer intercom in the kitchen.
I’d love to build a cedar bath someday, but I have to admit I do miss that beer button.
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Mmmm… Autofill and beer button… [Homer gargle]
I really want a cedar bath someday, but it’s kind of lost in Florida.
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The outlook is not good. Tokyo is infamous for ripping down key architecture.
There was a big push in the 2000s to save the beloved dojunkai apartments in the posh Aoyama shopping neighborhood. This post was made before the demolition:
Rather unusually, the developers kept a portion of the old building for posterity. You hardly notice it as you walk by the glossy glass faced building it was replaced with.
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I think the base64 images are placeholders and the real images are meant to be lazy-loaded from the data-sco-src URLs. But something’s not set up right so any security plugin seems to prevent them loading (for me I had to disable Disconnect).
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Not quite the same, but a lot of US RVs have very similar bathrooms. So there are domestic sources of wet baths…
(In fact, when I was looking at the photos, I was struck by how much functional similarity this apartment shared with a RV. RVs just have a very different decoration aesthetic. I really wish that more RVs had this minimalist with tons of storage aesthetic going on. It feels like most RVs are about 20 years behind the trend for interior colors, and have a weird “rustic cabin in space” feel.)
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Good idea. I need to start digging through some RV brochures and see what I can find. Thanks!
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In a place like Tokyo most of what you need food wise is close at hand…a fridge would be good so you can store your takehome boxes. Those wall mount water heaters would be useful in a situation like that.
Wall mount on demand is the norm in Japan for apartments and houses. The fact that this building doesn’t have individual on demand water heaters is odd.
You’re no doubt right on a price-per-square heibei basis, but because this building is so unique and the plot size is relatively small (well, by global standards), I’ve always thought it would be best utilized as a hotel/tourist attraction. If well run, it seems that it could generate far more revenue than a generic building that only could command market rent in the same spot. Real estate developers can be less imaginative than you might like though!
Indeed, but the Aoyama Apartments were on Omotesando, and with such a long frontage on such a prime retail street, I never held out much hope for that one. I’ve always admired the architect’s effort to at least keep the one old bit with the coffee shop as a modest nod to the past. You’re right that it blends in so well that it is easy to overlook entirely.
For Nakagin, I always hoped that its relatively mediocre location by the freeway and its relatively small plot size and frontage relative to height would make it more likely to survive. Let’s face it, if it were on Omotesando it would have been torn down decades ago! It looks like the current owner managed to also buy the two lots behind it, though, and that almost certainly means that it is game over. 
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Well, crap. 
When I lived in Auckland NZ in the 90s, the airport renovation was greeted by one critic with the line “It’s good that they made it look like the future, so when the future gets here it won’t look dated.”
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I disagree. It’s bulky and not futuristic enough. In 1972, hot water supplied by the building would have been unique and attractive.
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