ODAIBA ISLAND, TOKYO, JP
N
The Fuji Television Building, constructed by Kenzo Tange and Associates in 1996, represents a microcosm, a city within a city on an island within an island through the public image of an entertainment corporation. Odaiba is an artificial island within Tokyo Bay and functions as an entertainment landscape. The Fuji Television Network Building functions as a kind of vertical theme park and workplace with a monumental lattice of mast columns connecting two office towers with a subterranean broadcasting center.
1
FUJI TELEVISION NETWORK, INC. (1996)
2
FUJI TELEVISION BUILDING (KENZO TANGE AND ASSOCIATES)
Through several floors of the building, the entertainment sequence cordons off an influx of tourists and fans of the television programs the center broadcasts, taking visitors from the entrance plaza off the expressway to the observatory sphere on the 25th floor. However, upon the building’s completion, the spaces of labor, the office towers and studio depths of the building have been strictly off limits to public access.
3
FUJI TELEVISION PROGRAM
STUDIO
OFFICE
PUBLIC
4
Inspired by Haruki Murakami’s 1Q84
Tengo and Aomame Lost in Tokyo
FUJI BROADCASTING CENTER AND BATHHOUSE (2024)
7
8
CHAPTER 1: SIGN IN / WASH UP
Tengo Kawana stared at his watch, 8:55AM, just on time. It was a Wednesday, right in the center of the work week and he already felt exhausted thinking about the day ahead. Aomame had decided to take a trip to the baths again this week and Tengo wondered why she couldn’t just make the early commute with him but she was sleeping in. After all, Wednesdays were her Saturdays, she liked to say, and Tengo scolded himself again for selling out and not staying freelance. After leaving the packed Yurikamome train, Tengo entered at the base of the East Media Tower of the Fuji Television Network building with the rush of other office workers.
9
Masami Aomame looked forward to Wednesdays. As a freelance physical therapist, she decided when her weekends were and she found it exceptionally ironic that her weekend finally came in the slogging middle of virtually everyone else’s work week. It was 10:30AM as Aomame rode the taxi over from the mainland and across the Rainbow Bridge to the Fuji Television baths. At first, she thought it strange that such a busy and active workplace should include a bathhouse, but now she was a regular.
10
TENGO
As Tengo entered, he could see the two familiar reception areas positioned at right angles to each other. He looked longingly at the filleted light emitting prism of the bathhouse washroom for a brief moment and then glanced over at the big red eye of the Fuji Television banner, as if it were watching him disapprovingly. Tengo trudged up to Ushikawa behind the reception desk to sign himself in.
Aomame ventured in towards the familiar translucent prism with Sentō written on its front wall. Tamaru, the bathhouse attendant, nodded as she walked up to his counter. “Tengo was looking particularly glum today,” Tamaru quipped. “Yeah, I hope he doesn’t get too jealous sitting behind his desk all day” she replied. Aomame felt embraced by the cool light of the washroom walls as Tamaru waved her along and she made her way to a washing pod. Inside, she scrubbed her body red, relishing the pain of that first purifying step as she looked forward to the bathing sequence ahead.
11
AOMAME
12
CHAPTER 2: HUNCH OVER / FLOAT IN
Tengo exited the elevator at the 14th floor with the press of other suited workers. As he crossed the office floor, he tried to avert his eyes from the strange punctured domes bulging from the floor plate to his right but a faint orange glow flitted in his periphery. The communal pool was the largest parasitic structure now embedded in Fuji TV and Tengo wondered if placing it on the 13th floor was intentional or if it was just a bad omen, reminding him of all the places he’d rather be than behind his desk. After shifting yesterday’s papers into a corner, he booted up his computer and continued typing away at his first draft for the season finale of Mischievous Kiss: Love in Tokyo.
13
After the long elevator ride up to the 13th floor and a quick walk along the covered gangway above the recording studio, Aomame found herself in the large communal pool room. She wondered why more Fuji TV workers didn’t use these baths as she looked at the old folks trying to chat with a tourist in one of the circular basins next to the pool. But then she thought, “it must be hard to relax with the weight of all of those desks pressing in around you”. For Aomame, the thought was strangely comforting now, floating in the cool water of the pool.
14
TENGO
15
AOMAME
Hunched over behind his desk, Tengo kept getting distracted. He was thinking again about the pool and about why Fuji TV had spent so much money to build it. He thought it must have something to do with the case of Miwa Sado, a journalist who logged 159 hours of overtime at the news network NHK before dying of heart failure in July of 2013. Or perhaps news of the 24 year old Matsuri Takahashi, who died on Christmas day after working nearly 105 hours of overtime that month, had caught the attention of his employer. Tengo thought, after all of these cases of over-work in Tokyo and Labor Standards Act No. 36, not much had changed until Fuji TV decided to build its bathhouse. Tengo rubbed his eyes with a sigh and finally got up from his desk. It was 11:00AM and he figured Aomame must be in the building somewhere by now. Tengo found himself near one of the strange concrete mounds and, after a quick look around the busy office space, lowered himself to his knees to peer down at what looked like two women half submerged in steaming water. For a moment, Tengo didn’t feel so jealous but rather like a quiet observer of some parallel dimension.
16
CHAPTER 3: SWEAT OUT
17
18
AOMAME
After a quick swim and a long glass promenade down to the 12th floor, Aomame found herself standing next to another woman who said her name was Ayumi. She was presently chatting Aomame’s ear off as they tentatively stood just outside the hot basins. Aomame had seen the three altered bridges from outside and had thought them quite cold and infrastructural with their pipes and exterior concrete and steel forms. But now she could see what those systems serviced as the two enjoyed their interior warmth. Aomame and Ayumi simultaneously slid into the first bath with a group of three other individuals but just as Ayumi began greeting the others, Aomame apologetically touched Ayumi’s arm and gestured that she would move to the warmer baths further in, alone. As she sat in the dimly lit bath at the end of the bridge, Aomame imagined the long journey the steam from these baths would take to the saunas and solaria at the top of the lattice. Closing her eyes she let the waves of pleasure move through her body as her busy thoughts began to fade away.
19
20
AOMAME
21
Next, Aomame peered from just outside the open elevator doors towards the orange glow of the sauna rooms ahead. Ayumi must have found her way with that same group from before because Aomame could just hear the faint cackle of her laughter somewhere deeper into the bridge. Aomame chose to sit in the wooden bowl of the first sauna room of eight with three others, a man and two women. The first two must have been a couple on vacation, Aomame thought, while the third wheel smiled back at her. With these complete strangers, she almost felt familiar, the awkwardness of their present encounter sweated out by the dense heat.
22
CHAPTER 4: DISCUSS ON / REFRESH BELOW
23
24
TENGO
Back at his desk, Tengo suddenly remembered that he had scheduled a meeting for 2:00PM with his editor and coworker, the intense and ruthless, Komatsu. The only location Komatsu liked to discuss Tengo’s scripts was on the 24th floor of the observation sphere where one could calmly look out at the skyline of Tokyo, knowing that there was definitely a world outside of the massive Fuji Television building. The sphere was coined the “Hachitama” observation room, a 32 meter, 1,350 ton titanium sphere and restaurant which attracted people from all over.
25
AOMAME
One more elevator ride later, and Aomame found herself on the 24th floor. At this point visitors could enter the two solaria capsules to the left to complete their journey. Aomame however, chose to move directly forward and down into the Cold Chamber. The angled prism was nestled into the observation sphere just below the loud bustle of tourists eating in the restaurant on the 25th floor. Aomame always found this chamber especially vital to the entire bathhouse experience, despite its lack of popularity, as the chamber shocks one into a kind of refreshing awareness after the warm stupor of the baths and saunas. From within the chamber, Aomame felt the cold but pulsating air of total silence. The crystalline shimmer of tiny snowflakes floated down into her outstretched hand.
26
TENGO
As Tengo entered the sparsely populated sphere, he looked straight ahead at the Cold Chamber nestled within the concrete floor slab and mused about how much work it must have been to lift that 1,350 ton sphere to the very top of the three bridges and then how much additional work it had taken, 28 years later, to place that tiny agular chamber in the middle of it. Komatsu lounged on the edge of that chamber sticking out of the ground as he looked up at Tengo with a rare smile. “Aah, it looks like your story is coming to an end. Mischievous Kiss has been a long haul but with this finale, I think you might’ve finally written something worth releasing about those melodramatic yuppies,” Komatsu jabbed.
27
AOMAME
Aomame thought it quite apt how the bathhouse structures seemed to oppose their host building in every way, offering communal spaces within office floor plans of isolation and labor and small confined chambers just below bustling public forums. Looking out towards the light filled gangway leading back to the 24th floor, Aomame pictured Tengo behind his desk, feverishly typing away. Just then she missed him and hoped he had remembered their plans to meet after work for a cup of tea in the sun-filled rooms on the bridge at the top.
28
CHAPTER 5: MEET AFTER
29
30
TENGO
Almost two hours later, around 3:45PM, Tengo and Komatsu had finally finished their discussion about the season finale of Mischievous Kiss on top of the cold chamber. Tengo stretched his arms up towards the 25th floor and almost machine-like, began walking back the way he had come with only a brief utterance of “later” in Komatsu’s direction. Tengo took the right turn in the direction of green-smelling air and the overpowering glare of sunlight. In the center of the first solarium, Tengo tilted his head back and basked in the warm light. Just then, he felt a single vibration in his pocket.
31
AOMAME
Aomame sat waiting just down the hallway from the first solarium drinking a cup of barley tea remembering the long day behind her. It was just after 3:00PM and she knew she’d still have a few moments alone with the plants before Tengo finished up with things. “I really hope he feels like clocking out early today,” Aomame thought as she clutched her warm tea bowl. When she looked up again, Tengo was there inside the arched steel frame of the solarium, looking out blankly into space with a freshly lit cigarette in between his fingers. Aomame laughed silently as she took out her phone to send him a text, “Hey, what’s up!?”
32
It was just after 6:00PM when Tengo and Aomame finally decided to leave the warmth of the solarium taking the long elevator ride all the way down to the atrium plaza below, down the winding metal staircase and out onto the orange sunset glow of a concrete street. Aomame hailed a taxi and helped Tengo down into the back seat. “Where to?” the cab driver asked. “Into the city, anywhere, home,” Aomame replied. The sun set and the city metamorphosed into its neon-lit shadowy alter-ego. Back to their apartment all the way back to the little park in Koenji just off the Chuo East line was where they were heading. But just then, home was a faint memory in the enveloping darkness of Tokyo.
33
34
26 m
7.7 m
20° C
23.6 m
25° C
38° C
00 - WASHROOM
13 - COMMUNAL POOL 1.4 m 4.5 m
28 m
2.8 m
0° C
23 - COLD CHAMBER
35
PLAN INDEX
20 m 27° C
4.5 m
30° C
24 - SOLARIA 4.5 m
65° C
90° C
C
18 - SAUNAS 50 m
42° C
38° C
12 - BATHS
36
Thank you for reading! - Architectural Design Thesis by Tom McCormick (April 2021)