Togo Murano

Although his formative years were between 1910 and 1930,[1] he remained active in design throughout his life and at the time of his death was responsible for over three hundred completed projects.

After serving two years in a volunteer military corps Murano entered the Department of Electrical Engineering at Waseda University in 1913.

The liberal Murano channelled this conflict into an interest into sukiya architecture which allowed him to balance tradition and modernisation in his work.

[7] Unlike his contemporary, Antonin Raymond, Murano courted simplicity, concentrating on the high arts like tea ceremony and conceptual elegance.

[9] The emphasis of the sukiya style on surfaces, the juxtaposition of materials and elaborate details can be found in his work, for example, the mother-of-pearl encrusted ceiling of the Nihon Seimei Hibiya Building and Nissei Theatre in Tōkyō.

[15] Although the sheer volume of his work led him to be criticised as simply a commercial architect,[16] he always gave top priority to the requirements of his clients.

Japanese design magazine Casa Brutus named Murano one of Japan's modern masters in their April 2009 special issue.

The regularly spaced windows sit flush to external face of the wall and this along with the curved corner and expressed eaves-line reduce visual clutter and give the building clean lines.

Six free-standing concrete finned columns (three to each side) frame the main entrance and represent each of the six affiliated companies who donated money for the building.

The volumetric treatment of the design was influenced by Auguste Perret, whereas the inclusion of a circular dome over the sanctuary and small cylindrical chapels on either side of the main volume are echoes of Byzantine architecture.

[25] The post-and-beam concrete frame with internal panels is reminiscent of traditional Japanese architecture as are the shapes of the windows penetrating the tower.

The brick infills in this case were made from earth containing ashes from the atomic bomb and are laid so that their rough surfaces cast shadows across the façade.

Although the overtone of the design is one of the Sukiya tradition, ordered by the principles of the tea ceremony, Murano grafted onto this his own modern interpretation by the use of materials like steel and concrete as the primary structure.

Dining Room of the Argentina Maru, 1939
Former Ube City Public Hall, 1937, main entrance and six free-standing concrete columns
Memorial Cathedral for World Peace, Hiroshima, 1954, by Togo Murano and Masashi Kondo
Kasuien, Miyako Hotel, Kyoto, 1959