Essay

A lost landmark

By Karen Severns

When the wrecking ball fell on Frank Lloyd Wright's Imperial Hotel in December 1967, it marked the end of rescue efforts that had rallied thousands of supporters around the world. But it marked the beginning of a new appreciation for Wright's genius in Japan — the only other country outside America in which the great architect had lived and worked.

Wright's fascination with Japan had begun with ukiyo-e prints in the late 1880s. Their beauty intoxicated him: He was drawn to their abstract shapes, their unusual perspectives and their vivid colors. From these prints, Wright learned about what he called "the gospel of elimination of the insignificant" — how to strip away all but the essential elements in his own work.

Wright first visited Japan in 1905, when his career as a residential architect in the Midwest was flourishing. His Prairie house designs had philosophical similarities with Japanese architecture — the human scale, the simplicity, the natural materials — but they also had open plans that liberated space and movement, integrating the exterior and the interior in a dynamic, entirely American way.

While touring the Japanese countryside, Wright found confirmation of the organic design principles he had been developing for a decade. By organic, he meant an architecture of unity, reflecting a harmony between man and nature, between building and soil.

The architect returned to Japan several times in pursuit of prints before he was hired to build a new Imperial Hotel for Tokyo. Construction of the enormous project began in 1919, and over the next three years, some 2,000 drawings were produced. Many were resketched on the spot, since Wright found Japanese craftsmen to be "the finest in the world" and couldn't resist testing their limits.

But all the extra labor was worth it. When the hotel partially opened in 1922, it was quickly acknowledged to be the jewel of the Orient, just as its ads proclaimed. Wright had carefully calibrated the spatial compositions to surprise and delight at every turn, transporting guests into another world the moment they stepped into the entry foyer.

Wright had also devoted himself to making the building "doom-proof," and his efforts were amply rewarded. On the hotel's Grand Opening Day, Sept. 1, 1923, the Great Kanto Earthquake slammed into Tokyo, starting fires that leveled much of the city.

But the Imperial sustained only minor damage, allowing its staff to keep the building open and to provide meals to the thousands of homeless who sought refuge across the street in Hibiya Park. The Imperial's magnificence, and its legendary survival of the Kanto quake, made it an international landmark for 45 years. Yet the hotel was not the only Frank Lloyd Wright building to flourish despite the quake. [To be continued]

Shukan ST: Sept. 19, 2008

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