This is a facility built as part of one of the four gates for the Yokohama Expo 1989, the Takashima-cho gate, containing the offices, concession stands, resting spaces - in other words, the Expo’s “backroom”. From the outset, the gate itself was located in a backroom-like area. Given this, we thought of making an architecture that could have some transformative power upon the vague landscape of the site. A tall building that could draw people coming from the station. Using leasing scaffolding material, we combined 42 29-metre-high towers and 13 17-metre-high towers capped with trees to form a colonnade surrounding the pre-fabricated facilities. With this vast wall, composed of small parts, which by day appeared skeletal and transparent, and which at night revealed illuminated trees at its top levels, we generated a kind of landscape. At the conclusion of the expo, the scaffolding materials were disassembled and returned to their origin.
		Yokohama Expo ’89 (1987-1989) location: Yokohama, Kanagawa Prefecture principal use: expo facility building area: 5,500m2 total floor area: 5,300m2 structure: prefabricated unit, tube scaffold; 1 story maximum height: 29,000mm architects: Riken Yamamoto & Field Shop structural engineers: Kojima Structural Design Office mechanical engineers: Otaki E.& M. Office general contractors: JV of Tokai, Wado and Seki completion date: February, 1989 next back top