The Tokyo EDITION
The Tokyo EDITION
Photography & Art Direction: Edvinas Bruzas
Location: Tokyo, Japan
Commissioned by The Tokyo EDITION
“The Tokyo Edition, Toranomon is the fourteenth property from Edition Hotels, the collection launched in 2013 as a partnership between Marriott International and the hospitality guru and Studio 54 co-founder Ian Schrager. Situated in a skyscraper in the fast-rising neighbourhood of Toranomon, there, you’re more likely to pass by the hustle and bustle of commuters in the early hours of the morning than late-night revelers. From the relatively anonymous ground floor entrance, guests are spirited away up 31 floors in a matter of seconds by a smooth, silent elevator, and then released into the expansive lobby, featuring floor-to-ceiling glass walls with unparalleled views over the red and white lattice of the Tokyo Tower and the urban sprawl of Ginza.”
“It’s the perfect vantage point for a sundowner: As day turns to night and the sun dips behind the towering office buildings, painting the sky cotton candy pink, the neon lights of the city begin to twinkle as far as the eye can see. The hotel’s design scheme retains all of the Edition signatures, but it has an authentically Japanese feeling of aesthetic harmony, too, the result of a collaboration with the celebrated architect Kengo Kuma, whose best-known buildings include the sleek Japan National Stadium built for the Tokyo Olympics and the monumental maritime forms of the Victoria & Albert Museum in Dundee. Here, Kuma’s architectural trademarks are all present—natural materials, in particular cedarwood, arranged into slats and lattices that play with positive and negative space; and a gentle sense of integration with the surrounding environment, in this case, the epic views of Tokyo’s cityscape—but also dovetail seamlessly with the glitzier leanings characteristic of Edition properites.”