Drawings, Imperial Hotel (1916–1923), Tokyo, Japan 日本東京帝國酒店（1916至1923年）繪圖

The American architect Frank Lloyd Wright’s Imperial Hotel in Tokyo began receiving guests in 1922. Initially opened in 1890 on a site near the Imperial Palace, the Imperial was the city’s first Western-style hotel and a symbol of its growing international profile. A Chicago-based expert on Japanese woodblock prints recommended Wright, also an avid collector, for the commission to redesign the hotel, which had outgrown its existing structure.

Wright’s design incorporates characteristics of the Prairie style—layered horizontal planes, vertical windows, and integrated ornament, here in pre-Columbian motifs—into an H-shaped plan. In the centre, a sequence of exterior and interior spaces includes reflecting pools, gardens, lounges, a multistorey entrance, and a large, ornately decorated dining room. The hotel is clad in reinforced concrete, yellow brick, and greenish-grey oya volcanic stone, which was carved on site; columns, cornices, and balustrades take on elaborate, repetitive geometries that seem to encrust its surfaces.

The hotel avoided major damage from the Great Kanto earthquake in 1923, which struck on the day of its official opening, and bombing during the Second World War. Still, weakened foundations prompted its demolition in the late 1960s. Its lobby and entrance have been rebuilt for display at Meiji-mura, an open-air museum in Inuyama.