Friday, October 21, 2022

Former Nintendo HQ in Architecture book (1996)

The book presented below is called "Kyoto Photo Gallery" (京都写眞館), from the series "Modern masterpieces" (近代名建築). The author / photographer is Akihiro Fukushima (福島明博), and it was published in 1996 by the Japan Newspaper Publishing Center (日本機関紙出版センター).

Over a hundred buildings are featured in the book, and we show it on this blog because one of those buildings is the former head office of Nintendo.

In the book, some basic information is provided for each building, and a brief description.

The former Nintendo head office was built in 1933 by the Osaka Hashimoto group (大阪橋本 組).

It is a "three-story reinforced concrete structure" that is "a nice building located on a main street, a little west of Kamogawa. It has an Art Deco style combining straight lines and roundness, but it omits detailed decorations."

The author contacted Nintendo to find out who the architect was. "Mr. A of the General Affairs Division informed me [...] the next day." Unfortunately, the answer was "I still don't know the name. Some people said they were architects who lived around Nanzenji."

A single full page photo of the front view of the building is included. You can see a glimmer of the original wooden structure on left.

As you may have heard, the building was recently renovated and repurposed as a hotel. More on that here.

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