A ribbon of glass, steel, and wood floats through a hilly landscape, serving a nonprofit foundation dedicated to bringing people closer to art, nature, and faith.
Located in the Akasaka area, near the U.S. embassy, the Midcentury classic—which opened in 1962 and was designed by Yoshiro Taniguchi and Hideo Kosaka—closes this month. Much of it will be torn down.
An acronym for Universal Innovative Design, UID is an unlikely title for a firm founded by a non-English speaker and located in Fukuyama, a regional city in the hinterlands of Hiroshima Prefecture.
Tokyo may be among the world’s largest cities, but it has some of the smallest buildings. At critical nodes such as Roppongi and Shinjuku, the city has plenty of skyscrapers and hulking commercial complexes, yet its character is mostly defined by dense, low-scale neighborhoods where the majority of buildings are no more than five stories high.