Tokyo Big Sight, Odaiba

Mike Grist Architecture 7 Comments

Tokyo Big Sight in Odaiba is one of the biggest exhibition spaces in Tokyo, featuring two huge halls East and West plus several conference rooms and a 1,100 seater auditorium in the main building- which is curiously shaped out of four upside-down pyramids.

Why is it shaped out of four upside-down pyramids? Nobody knows. I suppose this is another case of function being completely unrelated to form, with form taking off on a flight of fancy to Never-Neverland. The last time we saw this was with the Edo-Tokyo museum, which got me ranting about WASTE! and VACUOUS DESIGN! and GOVERNMENT CORRUPTION!

But not this time. Tokyo Big Sight, meh. I dig it- no need to rant. It’s a conference space, the function is amorphous, let them eat cake!

Amorphous function equals inverted quadra-pyramidal form. Obvious.

I went out to Big Sight this past weekend with SY, chiefly to check out the International Anime Fair they hold there every year- I’ll post on that soon.

Crowds stream in for the anime goodness.

.

There’s also some modern art around the building. Look- a saw!
.

What is this saw for? Nothing! It’s modern art, it doesn’t have to ‘be’ anything.

Writing about this saw now makes me feel like I want to go off on a diatribe about what a waste of money, time and space this saw is. But also I think I like this saw. But also it is completely purposeless. Hmm. Perhaps if it in some way chimed with the pyramidal structure I could roll with it more- but there isn’t even any theme! It’s just a bunch of stuff…

Rolling on in.
.

The Conference Tower is built of aluminium and glass.
.

Big Sight!
.

SY warming up her camera for the anime goodness to be found inside.

Anime goodness coming shortly.

FACTFILE

Location – Odaiba, Tokyo.

Entry – 1,000 yen for anime festival.

Facts – Aluminium and glass, bigger than Makuhari Messe, no rhyme or reason to the design.

Architect – Somebody self-indulgent.

Highlights – The building being so crass as to almost rouse me to anger, but not.

TOKYO

You can see all MJG’s Tokyo content here:

[album id=5 template=compact]

Comments 7

  1. Post
    Author

    Billy- I don’t know about that- is it remarkable some way?

    Jason- Cheers, and the deck in the middle will be the main auditorium, seats 1,100 people.

  2. I was searching through Google doing research for a blog article, when I found this article, I’m not sure how you appeared for this term – quirky wedding cakes. Thought I would let you know! Thanks Lynette xx

  3. Post
    Author

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *