Within three weeks of stepping off the plane at Narita, 26-year-old Astrid Klein and 24-year-old Mark Dytham found themselves holed up in an Ikebukuro love hotel, using hastily acquired T-squares to draw up plans for a hair salon in Ginza — one of the most expensive strips of real estate in the world.
Move the clock forward 20 years and the same pair, now the principals at Klein Dytham architecture, are sitting in the offices of Gallery Ma in Tokyo's Roppongi district, telling The Japan Times about the prestigious venue's current retrospective of their two-decades-long careers in Japan. Not surprisingly, they are in the mood for a little nostalgia.
Dytham, who hails from the Mies van der Rohe-inspired "new town" of Milton Keynes north of London, grew up with a fascination for Modernist architecture.