Bubble Kenchiku Go! Magazine
Last weekend I went into my local bookstore after work and found a great new magazine there called Baburu Kenchiku Go! It’s all about architecture made around the time of the Japanese Bubble years, from the mid-80s to the early 90s. The buildings built then show a great optimism and willingness to experiment, but also a lot of excess and kookiness for the sake of it. Here’s the front cover:
The first thing that I noticed about this magazine was the strange spine stitching. It’s stitched so that the red thread used to hold the pages together is showing. There’s even a little bit of it sticking out at the end. It’s original, but messes with the design inside a bit, as they didn’t seem to allow enough space for the extra width this takes out of the inside pages. The next thing I noticed was the price (as I had started thinking about buying it) a crazy ¥1600! Well, it’s printed on nice paper I guess. There was only one of them in the shop, obviously the buyer didn’t have much confidence in it being a big seller. There was one copy in another magazine shop I went to later. Maybe they’re going for coolness-by-rarity.
In the end, the reason I ended up plunking down a big chunk of cash for it was the big page spread of the Egg of Wind, one of the places I’ve put into my map of japan. It’s part of a tour you can do around Tokyo, which is mapped for you a few pages on. Other places on the tour include Scala, Beam, Cinema Rise and what looks like a Koban in Shibuya. I’m looking forward to doing the tour.
They also have a piece about Terazza, which as far as I can remember is in my little Tokyo Architecture book. I’ll have to dig it out and have a look.
No Comments Yet