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'Artelligent' Living: Japan's New Roppongi Hills Complex
| Article
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23305 |
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Section : |
THE ARTS
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| Issue
Date : |
9 / 2003 |
2,308 Words |
| Author
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Iris Brooks
Iris Brooks, based in Upper Nyack, New York, has written about
music festivals on five continents. Her book New Music Across
America, celebrating contemporary American music festivals,
was published by the California Institute of the Arts. |
Imagine a television studio with a six-story glass atrium overlooking traditional Japanese gardens, or a nine-screen cinema complex with an earthquake-resistant roof planted with rice paddies, or an elevator whose floor lights change color on every story as you ascend to an art museum at the top of a towering skyscraper. The newly opened Roppongi Hills in Tokyo--just a fifteen-minute walk from the Imperial Palace--offers all this and more. An impressive urban redevelopment project and cultural mecca that covers 28.7 acres, the multiuse complex is a place for living, working, playing, shopping, thinking, learning, and creating.
"People want to get involved in art of their time," says David Elliott, the director of the Mori Art Museum, part of the Mori Arts center that occupies the top seven floors of the 54-story Roppongi Hills Mori Tower. Elliott, the first non-Japanese to direct an art museum in Japan, is the former director of the Museum of Modern Art in Oxford, England, and National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Stockholm, Sweden. He is interested in the dynamic relationships between art, culture, and life, and seeks to stimulate lively critical discussions and new ways of thinking about art. "My feeling is that people are hungry for something to happen," he says. "We are trying to find a new way to put people in touch with the art and culture of our times." Indeed, as the Mori has no permanent collection, there is no choice but to have a novel approach. Elliott, however, seems up to the task. His museum, like the rest of the Mori Arts Center, plans to remain open late every night. He believes, moreover, that a museum is not limited to four walls or an ivory (or metal-and-glass) tower, observing that "a museum is an attitude, an opening up, and a platform for artists."
This philosophy is a natural fit for Roppongi Hills, virtually a city within a city that brings together high arts and an academy with popular culture and entertainment in a sophisticated urban setting. Roppongi (literally, six trees) includes the contemporary Mori Art Museum, a cultural academy, a state-of-the-art cinema complex, a television broadcast studio, an outdoor performance arena, a number of gardens both large and small, and many public art pieces. The complex also houses about eighty restaurants and 120 shops, an upscale hotel, offices, a large members-only club, and a variety of low- and high-rise living spaces that are only for lease. During opening week this spring, more than three thousand people a day arrived to view different aspects of the sparkling new center. Many went to the top of the skyscraper, where an observation deck offers a 360-degree view of Tokyo.
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