Toyo Ito & Associates 1986
In the Tower of Winds, Toyo Ito represents the visual complexity of Tokyo metaphorically in terms of a never-ceasing, ever-changing wind.
In contrast to the west, where the city is perceived as a permanent museum of monuments and spaces, Ito sees Tokyo as ephemeral, articulated not through its buildings, but through electricity pylons and vending machines, illuminated advertisements and traffic signals; it is the small scale, the temporary and the chance encounter that define his city. Light fulfils both a physical and metaphoric role: the city undergoes a complete transformation when after sundown its fictional state is revealed - 'although buildings proclaim their existence in the daytime, they lose their sense of reality at night.'
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Toyo Ito & Associates 1986
Down to page [NCSA Mosaic users only]
Toyo Ito & Associates 1986
The Tower of Winds represents the city through a constantly moving spectacle of light. A 21-metre oval cylinder stands at the centre of a roundabout just in front of the busy JR Yokohama Station. During the day it is a grey part of the scenery of department stores, banks and office buildings. But as the sun goes down, it becomes a sensual device recording the transitory state of the city around it.
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Toyo Ito & Associates 1986
Down to page [NCSA Mosaic users only]
Toyo Ito & Associates 1986
Perforated aluminium panels are supported on a lightweight structure which conceals a ventilation tower for a vast underground shopping mall, transforming a mundane chimney into an elegant column.
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Toyo Ito & Associates 1986
Down to page [NCSA Mosaic users only]
Toyo Ito & Associates 1986
The tower is covered in acrylic mirrors with more than 1000 mini-lamps and twelve neon rings set between them, with aluminium panels and thirty floodlights at its base. The lights are computer-programmed to produce changing patterns derived from information collected from the environment. At dusk a symphony of light transforms the tower into a shimmering spectacle of dancing lights and shifting transparency. Neon lights travel up and down the height of the cylinder and the surface of the panels appears and disappears, alternately solid and diaphanous as the floodlights change in response to the wind direction. The myriad of mini-lamps, which react to the surrounding noise, create patterns of stardust.
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Toyo Ito & Associates 1986
Down to page [NCSA Mosaic users only]
Toyo Ito & Associates 1986
With its prosaic daytime presence, reference to temporary structures and spectral nocturnal life, the Tower of Winds presents the city of Toyo Ito's imagination.
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