Imperial Hotel

The imperial Hôtel of Tōkyō (帝国ホテル) is the Japanese realization of Frank Lloyd Wright most known. The initial building had been built in 1890. To replace the timber structure of origin the owners called upon Wright which delivered the building in 1923. The hotel resisted the Earthquake of Kantō of 1923 which reached a magnitude of 7,9. Then time made its work and in 1976 the frontage and the basins were transported to the Musée of Meiji-Walled, museum of architectures (the majority of the parts are era Meiji) to Inuyama close to Nagoya, while the remainder of the structure was demolished to make place with a new hotel.

The version of Frank Lloyd Wright took as a starting point the style Maya, including/understanding a great pyramidal structure , and generally made decorations of Maya copies of reasons. The materials were built Béton and concrete blocks.

The imperial Hotel of Tōkyō is a supreme example of the use of the reinforced concrete. In this building, two considerations were higher important: on the one hand, construction was to resist the earthquakes and on the other hand, it was to be protected from the fires which followed the latter. To ensure a fire-protection, the materials had to be given up traditional - wood and paper - Japanese architecture and to turn to the reinforced concrete, hones it and the brick. So that the building is able to survive the seisms, Wright developed a system of foundations, combined with a frame of support, which was still completely unknown in architecture. The principle was the overhang, the load in balance, evoking the plate which the boy of restaurant holds with end of arm above his head. In the place of the roofs to the heavy tiles of traditional Japanese architecture, the roof of the imperial Hotel was covered with thin copper plates. All construction rested on a whole of thin amounts out of concrete, a depth of nine feet (approximately 2,75 meters) and having an interval of two feet (approximately 60 centimetres), which connected the building to a layer of clay. The flexibility - obtained thanks to the reinforced concrete - was the principle which saved the building at the time of the seism of Tōkyō of 1923.

Whereas the imperial Hotel belonged at the origin with the imperial family, which had partly founded it, the current owner, that of the new hotel located where that of Wright it is one day set up, is Imperial Hotel, Ltd , which manages a chain of luxury hotels in Japan.

External bonds

Site of the Imperial Hotel, Ltd. (株式会社帝国ホテル; Kabushiki Gaisha Teikoku Hoteru ).
Vue entry of the imperial Hotel in the museum Meiji-Walled
Postcards of time of the imperial Hotel

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