Tokyo wakes up quietly. From a 19th-floor balcony at the Janu Tokyo hotel, I see the sun rise over the skyline as the metropolis gradually comes to life. A bird cawing in the distance, a few workers moving silently down the street and then the doors opening at the shops of Azabudai Hills.
The hotel fills part of a 54-storey tower designed by the Pelli office; its interiors, by Belgian designer Jean-Michel Gathy of Denniston, deploy the softest of lighting and the warmest materials – washed oak, honed marble, Where the Aman brand is known for creating refuges, Janu aims for connection. With only 122 rooms, each exquisitely decorated in a quiet Japanese-Scandinavian manner, the hotel has eight bars and restaurants. If you are here, youThe hotel’s attitude parallels that of the complex where it sits: Azabudai Hills is massive in scale and placemaking ambition.
Down near the ground, an installation of stepping planter boxes by Sou Fujimoto dresses up one entrance to the shopping mall. The mall itself carries Heatherwick’s steampunk sensibility: The centre is a cluster of glass boxes, topped with lush planting, in a lattice of glass-reinforced concrete that seems to stretch and bend like rubber bands. It’s a chaotic architecture, rendered by the magic of Japanese construction into some sort of order.