Tokyo International Forum
Rafael Viñoly Architects · Tokyo, Japan · 1997
Rafael Viñoly’s Tokyo International Forum is organized around a long glass atrium whose enormous curving steel roof resembles the hull of a ship suspended above a public interior street. Bridges cross the atrium at several levels, linking performance halls and conference spaces housed in more solid volumes along the opposite edge of the site. The project preserves a large pedestrian passage through the complex and treats circulation as urban space rather than a closed lobby. Opened in 1997, it is a major work of late twentieth-century structural expression and one of central Tokyo’s most recognizable civic interiors.