I wrote a short piece on Tokyo for the UIA World Congress of Architecture which will be held here in Tokyo in 2011.

A visiting architect-friend of mine described Tokyo colorfully as “an urban disaster with shit-piled-upon-shit”. Seeing my slightly annoyed face, he thoughtfully added “but it is fascinating shit”. This is a stereotypical reaction I have heard many times over, and not only from visitors. The Japanese themselves, architects as well as non-architects mutter an apologetic reference to European cities when we talk about Tokyo. Kenzo Tange once said that Tokyo has had many times over the chance to rebuild itself: after the Great Earthquake of 1923 or after the World War â…¡ bombings, but according to Tange the rebuilding from an urban design’s point of view always failed. Did Tokyo, the world’s largest urban entity, really fail?

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