::Metropolis Tokyo :: INTERIORS

Trina O'Hara ponders the latest interior design trend and finds the answer is clear.

There's no need to play the Xbox action arcade game "Superman: Man of Steel." Architects and interior designers have already unleashed their super-hero powers to bring you X-ray vision. That's right, the hippest design innovation to hit Tokyo is see-through buildings and furniture.

You may have met the transparency trend already. It started with see-through watches and bra straps, the Apple computer and who can forget Alexander McQueen's see-through skirts. But we're not talking about small doses of lightweight clear. We're talking cutting-edge, heavy doses of see-through imagination, as complex as the architecture and engineering of a flagship Prada or Hermès store.

While we bathe in the newest luxury of all-glass architecture, its creators are choking Internet chat rooms with questions on structural capacity, wind load, earthquake resistance, and see-through components for unusually shaped venues. So why are they going to all the trouble to create these clear, colorless, weightless-looking spaces all over Tokyo?

Through the looking glass
Architects design all-glass buildings in the quest for vitality and lightness. It so happens transparent buildings spark the interest of modern Japanese because they are the exact opposite of traditional architecture. Historically speaking, Japanese architecture and shoji-screened windows focused our attention on the inside. As recently as the '60s and '70s buildings were clad in stone with few windows; in the '80s residential building laws required frosted glass for privacy. All this left residents unable to see out.

The transparency trend also has to do with retailers desperate to grab our attention. It's not enough to lure fashionistas into stores with a funky interior. Today buildings need to be a novelty, a fashion statement and an architectural icon. Herzog & de Meuron, architects for the Prada store in Minami-Aoyama spent a full year carrying out tests to create an extremely complex, yet see-through building of bubbles using four different types of glass: flat and transparent, etched, convex and concave. They achieved iconic status. Their mini-bubble economy, with its rounded glass and frameless glazing is an architectural first.

Incidentally, Herzog & de Meuron won the competition to design the 80,000-seat main stadium for the Beijing Olympic Games. Their design is inspired by and looks like a bird's nest of twigs and consists of transparent, plastic cushions, through which the stadium lights will shine. Judges on the selection panel chose the design because it presents an image of pureness, elegance and simplicity.

Another example of clear thinking is the Herms headquarters in Ginza, designed by the Renzo Piano Building Workshop. This building is an exercise in 13,000 clear, uniquely handcrafted glass blocks. The building's high-precision engineering includes innovative curved glass corners and joints supported between thin steel bars to allow movement during an earthquake. Why? This glass structure gave architects the ability to deal imaginatively in Asian heritage. Herms glows as softly as a paper lantern at night.

Clear logic
You could be forgiven for thinking transparent buildings are a bit like the packaging on designer products. You might be right. Look at your newest bottle of perfume or bath oil. Like packaging designers, architects are favoring see-through vessels to draw attention to the product inside. Retailers love it because the product inside is given maximum exposure.

There are many reasons why all-glass buildings are such a hit. These buildings' help us understand the internal structure of spaces and can provide restful, heavenly spaces. This is the case for the exceptionally beautiful, shingle-style glass stairwell in Roppongi Hills, designed by Richard Gluckman for Gluckman Mayner Architects New York. The stairwell is the first contemplative stop for art lovers on the way to the Mori Art Museum.

All-glass buildings blur the boundaries between outside and inside so it is only natural that interior designers have picked up and run with the transparency theme. Transparency satisfies our curiosity about the inner workings of things and assures us of the contents of a room. This could be said of the see-through partitions being incorporated into new office spaces. Japanese businesses are favoring glass interior walls to promote a sense of transparency, which owes itself in part to suspicions in corporate culture.

Interior designers are also specifying the latest in see-through, polycarbonate, acrylic furniture and accessories like magazine racks, umbrella stands or rubbish bins. Philippe Starck's La Bohme acrylic stool, La Marie chair and Louis Ghost chair, based on a baroque Louis XV-style chair, are all destined to become cult products. A surge in new materials technology has meant an explosion in funky clear furniture that looks fantastic in small places, does not block out light and blends into any scheme.
So it seems the true believers in the X-ray lifestyle have made a start on Tokyo's homes, workplaces and stores. Can you imagine sitting up in bed one day to find it has changed from a private place to a very public one?