Octagon Collection

A collection of gorgeous prints, apparel and products celebrating Shin Takamatsu's typically brilliant and strange, looming corner tower in Ebisu, central Tokyo, completed in 1990

Completed just as the feverish economic dream of Japan's economic hyper-boom began to curdle, Shin Takamatsu’s Octagon in Shibuya is a brooding, mechanical sentinel from a future that never arrived. With its sharp, aggressive contours and bulging, opaque black spherical windows, the structure resembles less a commercial edifice than a robotic arachnid lying in wait, or a hermetic fortress protecting its inhabitants from a reality spinning out of control. It is a work of uncompromising architecture, a techno-militaristic artifact that pulses with a dark, cinematic intensity, perfectly encapsulating the delirious, sci-fi excess of the Bubble era’s final, hyper-saturated breath.

Shin Takamatsu is one of Japan’s greatest architects, with an incredibly unique & beautifully executed body of mysterious & pregnant work that ought to be far better known, & probably would be if they fit a more stereotypical idea of Japanese design... 

See our blogpost on Japanese Postmodern Architecture

For all our buildings by Shin Takamatsu click HERE

For all our Postmodern buildings click HERE

For all our buildings in Japan click HERE

For all our buildings click HERE

Octagon Collection

A collection of gorgeous prints, apparel and products celebrating Shin Takamatsu's typically brilliant and strange, looming corner tower in Ebisu, central Tokyo, completed in 1990

Completed just as the feverish economic dream of Japan's economic hyper-boom began to curdle, Shin Takamatsu’s Octagon in Shibuya is a brooding, mechanical sentinel from a future that never arrived. With its sharp, aggressive contours and bulging, opaque black spherical windows, the structure resembles less a commercial edifice than a robotic arachnid lying in wait, or a hermetic fortress protecting its inhabitants from a reality spinning out of control. It is a work of uncompromising architecture, a techno-militaristic artifact that pulses with a dark, cinematic intensity, perfectly encapsulating the delirious, sci-fi excess of the Bubble era’s final, hyper-saturated breath.

Shin Takamatsu is one of Japan’s greatest architects, with an incredibly unique & beautifully executed body of mysterious & pregnant work that ought to be far better known, & probably would be if they fit a more stereotypical idea of Japanese design... 

See our blogpost on Japanese Postmodern Architecture

For all our buildings by Shin Takamatsu click HERE

For all our Postmodern buildings click HERE

For all our buildings in Japan click HERE

For all our buildings click HERE

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