FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT
AND

IMPERIAL HOTEL,TOKYO

This month I'm gonna take part in a design competition-'OYA-ISHI' Architectural Compe.-2006.Infact,oya-ishi is a type of stone which is found in Tochigi prefecture and hadbeen used for construction of Tokyo Imperial Hotel.So,these days I'm trying to collect info. about Wright's works in Japan and studying papers related to Wright's various styles,ranging from 'Preiry Style' to 'Maya Revival'.As a matter of fact,except Falling Water ,I knew very little about Wright's other works.

• In the pict.(from left) : front facad and perspective view of Imperial hotel and the Falling water.
• Tokyo's Imperial Hotel was the best-known of Frank Lloyd Wright's buildings in Japan. The original Imperial Hotel in Tokyo was built in 1890.To replace the original wooden structure, the owners commissioned a design by Wright, which was completed in 1923.It survived the magnitude 7.9 Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923. Time took its toll, and in 1976, the facade and pool were moved to the Museum Meiji-Mura, a collection of buildings (mostly from the Meiji Era) in Inuyama, near Nagoya, while the rest of the structure was demolished to make way for a new hotel on the site.
  The Frank Lloyd Wright version was designed in the "Maya Revival Style" of architecture. It incorporates a tall, pyramid-like structure, and also loosely copies Maya motifs in its decorations. The main building materials are poured concrete and concrete block.
  While the Imperial Hotel was originally owned and partly funded by the imperial family, the current owner of Imperial Hotel, Tokyo, the new hotel on the grounds on which Wright's Imperial Hotel once stood, is Imperial Hotel, Ltd., which runs a chain of luxury hotels in Japan.
• THE MAYA REVIVAL STYLE : The Maya Revival Style refers to modern architecture and decorative arts that use Mesoamerican culture as a source of inspiration. Although the name refers only to the Maya, practitioners frequently blended Maya and Mexica motifs. Two prominent architects that worked in this style are Frank Lloyd Wright and Robert Stacy-Judd. Wright's Hollyhock House copied the shape of temples from Palenque, the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo was in the shape of a Mesoamerican pyramid, and the Ennis House is built from cement blocks that evoke the geometric patterning on the facades of Puuc buildings.