Tall & Urban News

A luxury hotel in central Tokyo much loved by visitors for its classic Japanese ambience recently reopened after four years of renovations. The Okura Tokyo has reused much of the original decor from its old main building’s lobby, which was considered a Japanese modernist masterpiece, for its new lobby area.

The building was demolished four years ago, to the dismay of patrons of the iconic hotel. And now it’s back, seemingly plucked from the past. During the hiatus, craftsmen recreated and restored the gold-hued space adorned with discreet touches, from the sound-absorbing floor to the pentagonal pendants strung from the wooden ceiling.

The Okura’s JP¥110-billion (US$1-billion) reincarnation is both an homage to the past and a defiant leap into the future. Two new buildings were erected, including one with 18 office floors. Clad in glass, the structures aren’t easy to pick out from the growing forest of skyscrapers, and leave no trace of the original hotel’s worn-out charm. Inside, designers and architects have recreated the ambiance of the old hotel, but with modern rooms, event spaces, and restaurants.

Yoshio Taniguchi, who designed New York’s Museum of Modern Art and is the son of the Okura’s original architect, led the charge, which included measuring the light and sound qualities of the original lobby before it was disassembled. The lattice for the shoji paper windows, assembled without nails, the silk wall tapestry with four-petal flowers, and the chairs and tables arranged like plum blossoms, are utterly familiar, yet new or restored.

“I challenged myself not only to recreate the lobby my father created, but to make it even greater,” said the 81-year-old designer.

“It was one of those rare experiences that transported you to another time, from the quality of lighting to that slightly musty, humid, cigarette-infused scent that was always hanging in the lobby,” says Tyler Brûlé, editor-in-chief of Monocle, of the original lobby. The lifestyle magazine led a campaign in 2015 to preserve the original hotel. “No matter how busy the lobby was, there was this hushed quality.”

“We focused most of our effort on the lobby,” says Shinji Umehara, 60, general manager of the Okura, who started as bellboy in 1983. To comply with building codes, an elevator was hidden in the steps for a wheelchair lift. Sprinklers were tucked into the ceiling’s design. “There were many sleepless nights.”

The original Okura opened its doors in 1962, just before the 1964 Tokyo Olympics that introduced Japan to the world as an economic power. In the same spirit, the hotel’s owners—descendants of a baron who amassed a fortune in the 19th century—made the decision to tear down and reopen the hotel in time for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. For the games next year, the International Olympic Committee will take over every room in the hotel, according to Umehara.

The entire complex, which includes the two new buildings, an older wing and a museum, is located next to the US Embassy. The hotel has hosted every president since Richard Nixon, with the exception of Donald Trump, who was elected to office during the renovation.

Designed throughout with Japanese motifs, the Heritage Wing is meant to offer a culturally flavored experience, from hallways that evoke bamboo forests to oak-floored guest rooms with touches borrowed from traditional inns known as ryokans. With its own separate reception area featuring wall panels from the original hotel and a chandelier of raindrop-like glass, the hotel-within-a-hotel is a departure from the more Western parts of the establishment.

The rebuild also gave the Okura a chance to upgrade its old facilities. The fitness, spa, and 25-meter pool take up two floors in the larger building. The Yamazato restaurant, with its own dedicated entrance for VIPs, is back, with walls of Japanese cedar and cherry-wood tables.

At the lowest levels of the Heritage Wing are 19 banquet and meeting rooms, including the cavernous Heian no Ma, which has hosted everything from IMF meetings to Group of Seven (G7) summits over the years. The hall is decorated with handcrafted ornamental Japanese paper. The original ringed-leaf design door handles were restored and reused from the old hotel.

The opening ceremony was attended by Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike and Princess Takamado, widow of former Emperor Akihito’s late cousin, among others.

Even with the extensive rebuild, a relic of the older Okura still exists, just across the street. The South Wing, which opened in 1973, remains open for business. The building still retains some of original flavor of the old hotel. The museum, which holds the baron’s Oriental art collection, was moved 6.5 meters to a new location.

Within the newly built 41-story Okura Prestige Tower, the 368 rooms and suites are designed with more of a Western flavor.

“The original Okura was a reminder of the arrival of the jet age—there was a romance and fixation that we have of that era,” Brûlé says.

Indeed, from the spare-no-expense facilities to adding 100 new rooms, the rebuild comes at a risk. That’s because the $570 billion global hotel industry is sensitive to economic swings. Although Japan had the highest hotel occupancy rate in the Asian region last year, at 84 percent, that won’t always be the case. By including offices, the Okura will have a cushion for when times are bad.

Mixed-used real estate makes sense because the area surrounding the Okura is about to be reshaped over the coming years. The just-announced US$5.4 billion Toranomon-Azabudai city-within-a-city project by Mori Building Co. will be just a 10-minute walk away when it’s completed in 2023. It will have shops, restaurants, 213,900 square meters of office space, 1,400 residences, a hotel, an international school, and the city’s biggest food court.

While the Okura’s anodyne office-building exterior might make it less of an architectural landmark, what really counts is what’s inside, according to Davide Agnelli, managing director of design consultancy IDEO’s Tokyo office.

Back in the new Prestige Tower, there’s a spot that offers an uncannily familiar experience. Right outside the elevators that bring guests up from the banquet floors, the low height of the ceilings before they open up into the lobby is exactly the same as the old hotel. That’s not a coincidence, the general manager says. Also faithfully restored and brought over is the Seiko world clock hotel, with a world map on silk-screen styled panels. This time around, however, its digital display is in a more muted blue and white, instead of the original LED red.

The reopened Orchid Bar is a storied gathering spot for travelers, politicians, and business executives. Its original tables and chairs, reupholstered, are back, as well as the bottles of Macallan dating back to the 1930s. The bar will still hold personal bottles of whisky for patrons, as well.

For more on this story go to Bloomberg.