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Imperial Hotel & Annex
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Featured Books
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Frank Lloyd Wright's Houses
Fallingwater Rising: Frank Lloyd Wright, E. J. Kaufmann, and America's Most Extraordinary House
Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater: The House and Its History
Frank Lloyd Wright's Robie House: The Illustrated Story of an Architectural Masterpiece
Frank Lloyd Wright's
Taliesin and Taliesin West
Tokyo, Japan, 1915 / 1916
Imperial Hotel & Imperial Hotel Annex
The Imperial Hotel; one of Mr. Wright's grandest, largest, and most detailed designs; it was demolished in 1968; Main entrance lobby survived at the Meiji Village. Mr. Wright spent much time in Japan overseeing its construction. The hotel was built on a special floating foundation, and as a result, rode out the Kanto earthquake of 1923 with little damage. Wright believed that the cantilevered base of the hotel's structure, complete with flexible joins resting on piles driven into the mud beneath (lack of solid foundations to build on), enabled the hotel to survive the great earthquake of September 1923.
In the U.S. where the Art Deco is a general way, Frank Lloyd Wright
(1867/1959) feared for the standardization of forms of architecture.
Wright thought buildings must be organic, as accepted the
industrialism and the rationalism, often used natural decorations.
He is counted as one of the three great masters of architecture in
20th century.
Frank Lloyd Wright's admiration of Japan began in the late 1880s and
continued throughout the architect's life. An avid collector of
Japanese prints and artifacts, Wright designed 12 projects in this
magical country, including hotels, private homes, an embassy, a
theater and a school.. He described Japanese art as “nearer to the
earth and a more indigenous product of native conditions . . .
therefore more nearly modern as I saw it, than any European
civilisation”. In 1916, faced with debt and turmoil in the United
States and with the challenge of a great commission, it was time for
him and Miriam to set out again; for the next few years Wright
divided his time between Japan, Wisconsin and California.
The Imperial Hotel is reminiscent of Midway Gardens in its grandeur
of conception, its symmetrical central volume and the wings that
grow from it to frame the central garden space. Unlike most of his
buildings, however, the entrance is not hidden but is right in the
middle of the structure, open to the street but surrounded both by
the wings and by the light and reflection of the pool he positioned
in the front courtyard. The soft Japanese Oya stone (lava) enabled
an exceptional level of decorative carving to be included in the
design and the three storey entrance lobby (reconstructed in Meiji
village after the demolition of the hotel itself) is a masterpiece
of space, decoration and detail.
The Imperial Hotel & Imperial Hotel Annex was located in Tokyo,
Japan. If you are looking for publications on Frank Lloyd Wright's
work in Japan click
here.