AA Visiting Students Lecture: Topos Tokyo

Topos Tokyo

Land - Water - Air

Beneath all architecture is land… Or is there?

Examining layers of Tokyo’s history and geography reveals a city of the land as it is of water — and air.

Arguably the most often destroyed metropolis in the world, Edo (which eventually became Tokyo) has seized the opportunity to reinvent itself time and again, venturing from water to land to water again and in the air… Urban typology is added to almost en passant, as a byproduct. In fact, the constantly recurring destruction caused by often tragic disasters has altered the city’s DNA to a degree that today, deliberate and constantly ongoing destruction and rebuilding is perhaps the city’s most powerful urban generator…