Jon Jerde is an architect, and he wants to change your life. The world has never been short of architects with ambitions to create a bold new future (designed in their signature style), but Jerde has actually done it -- it has been calculated that the buildings Jerde has designed collectively draw more than a billion visitors a year.
Tokyoites now have an opportunity to join those millions, as the architect has just completed a building in the Shiodome redevelopment zone in Shimbashi, the first of a series of Jerde designs soon to open around Tokyo.
Jerde was recently in town for the Shiodome opening of the new headquarters of Japanese advertising giant Dentsu. This forms one block of the massive redevelopment now rising on the site of a former rail-freight terminal in Chuo Ward, between Shimbashi and Tsukiji.