This project is an interior renovation of the Tokyo Central Post Office (1933) designed by architect Yoshida Tetsuro (1894-1956), who is recognized for fusing the functionalism of modernist arcitecture with the delicate sensibilities of traditional Japanese architecture. We created an atrium between the pre-existing builing by Yoshida and the new building, exposing the practical, structural grace characteristic of Yoshida's architecture, and designing the atrium to reveal the beauty of the building's skeleton to the greatest possible extent.
In the center of the atrium, where the pillars of the Central Post Office once stood, thin lines of metal beads were used to replicate the octagonal cross-sectional shapes of the pillars, reproducing the distinctive beauty of Yoshida's lines. This intermediate expression, between imaginary and real, recreates the past without compromising transparency.
The glass handrails on the new building side are mirror-treated in thin stripes to produce a fantastical relationship in which the present and the past both transparently reveal and reflect off of one another.