MID Kyoto, Kyoto, Japan |
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Located in the beautiful garden city of Kyoto, Japan, the 8-acre project site sits south of the famed Kyoto train station by Hiroshi Hara. A mixed-use multiplex of office, hotel, and cultural theatre space was the result of a masterplan developed by Harry Cobb's team in 1997. MID (Matsushita Investment and Development) approached Dan to create a landscape design that will pull together all of these different buildings into one cohesive design.
For this my very first project for Dan Kiley (straight out of school), I was thrown into a large multi-disciplined and multi-architect project located in Kyoto, Japan. The project aspired to be Dan's modern day milestone project that will amalgamate all of his keystone themes and projects from the past: Miller Garden, Fountain Place (with Harry Cobb), Chicago Art Institute, Oakland Museum and Nations Bank Plaza. The ambition was high and the vision was quintessentially Kiley. I supported our team in every way possible, from model building to drawing plan options. But soon, I realized my best fit was to develop (over and over) variations of perspective drawings to visualize Dan's vision to express the endless garden plaza in different tree spacings and multiple landscape features from different uses of water to gardens that range from the organic to the formal. The result was a rich tablet of paths and gardens that engage buildings and theatre to form a carpet that sweep under the main office building (Cobb) supported by massive columns to allow elevator and stairway access. Unfortunately, this project was never realized and instead, an indoor-oriented mixed-use retail / office building was built. Owner: Matsushita Investment and Development Company Architect(s): Pei, Cobb, Freed / Mario Bellini Associates / Kohn Pederson Fox / Nikken Sekkei Year: 1998 Role: Landscape Designer while at Office of Dan Kiley External Link(s): Project Location |
