Assembling Sony's presence in Ginza

This paper offers a critical re-evaluation of what is arguably the clearest representation of a Japanese consumer electronic and media corporation in architectural form: the Ginza Sony Building. The paper argues that architect Yoshinobu Ashihara's 1966 modern masterpiece can be seen as a multilayered assemblage through which a number of distinct modernist traditions have evolved. This aspect of the building, we argue, is clearer in the present, ironically, after it has been demolished; in its absence. The building's status as a modernist icon and, consequently, fame, developed gradually since it was opened. But a series of recent events and the resulting dynamic encouraged us to revisit the building to construct a wider, more satisfying understanding of its value. The renewed relevance of the Sony Building, we know in hindsight, was determined when Tokyo was announced as a host of the 2020 Olympics. That announcement in September 2013 was a catalyst for a chain of events that revealed four distinct 'evolutions' in which the iconic building plays a distinct role. We discuss the change over time of: (1.) the emergence and presence of Sony in Ginza; (2.) the employment of modern architectural traditions and ideas; (3.) the linkage between Sony's flagship products and the building; and (4.) the representations of Sony as an architectural form and how it evolved from building to park and the expected building-park. The paper, then, offers a re-reading of the modernist building as a non-discrete urban assemblage at the intersection of new technologies in consumer electronics, novel architectural ideas, a Post-War nascent consumer society, and, an urban district that transformed because of the 1964 Olympic Games and is currently re-transforming through the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. The paper recognizes the Sony Building as a relevant object of study and repositions it in the current context. It accounts for the main evolutionary traditions and shows how the building encourages their composition.