rendapg On the Japanese Coast, a Carefully Restored Modernist Marvel

data de lançamento:2025-03-28 06:35    tempo visitado:64

By Design takes a closer look at the world of design, in moments big and small.

IN 1919, THE Czech American architect Antonin Raymond and his wife and creative partner, the French-born American artist Noémi Raymond, traveled to Tokyo to help Frank Lloyd Wright construct the Imperial Hotel. While working on the project, they decided to set up their practice in Japan, where they remained — apart from a stint in the United States during and after World War II — until 1970. One of Antonin’s protégés, Junzo Yoshimura, who is said to have developed an interest in architecture after his father took him to the Imperial Hotel as a teenager, would later popularize Japanese Modernism in the United States, creating a house for the garden at New York’s Museum of Modern Art and two buildings for the future vice president Nelson Rockefeller’s family estate in Pocantico Hills, N.Y. But Yoshimura achieved most of his success in Japan; by the time of his death in 1997, at age 88, he was responsible for the schematic design for a wing of Emperor Hirohito’s palace in Tokyo as well as several dozen private houses across the country, including a three-bedroom weekend home in the cliffside town of Atami on the Pacific, where, at the request of the beauty mogul Hatsuko Endo, he carpeted each space in a different color.

ImageIn the foyer, a 1968 red enameled metal Charlotte Perriand vanity from Form Atelier in New York. The carpets throughout are by Yamagata Dantsu.Credit...Josh RobenstoneImageIn the yard, a fire pit designed by Yoshimura.Credit...Josh Robenstone

Five years ago, Naoki Kotaka, 39, a writer and curator with a background in architecture, and his high school friend Aimi Sahara, 39, the founder and designer of the women’s denim brand Tu Es Mon Tresor, became art advisers for a wealthy Japanese private equity investor in his 50s. On behalf of their client, who lives in Tokyo and asked not to be named, they acquired paintings by such artists as Jean-Michel Basquiat and David Hockney, and a fragment of “We the People” (2011-16), the Danish Vietnamese artist Danh Vo’s 250-piece copper replica of the Statue of Liberty. They soon realized that they would have to find somewhere to put this growing collection. The investor had recently purchased a mountain lodge by Yoshimura in Nagano prefecture that is still being renovated. Then the property in Atami, about 60 miles southwest of Tokyo, came on the market. At first,66jogo.com their client was reluctant: The house, which was built in 1977, was smaller than he wanted. But Kotaka and Sahara saw an opportunity. By furnishing the space with rare midcentury pieces, most of which they would buy at auction or source from galleries in Milan, São Paulo, Paris and New York, they could place Yoshimura in a new context — as an influential Japanese architect, but also as part of an international network of Modernists, including the Raymonds and Wright, as well as Le Corbusier, Charlotte Perriand and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe.

Mr. Park, a Korean-born graduate of Georgetown University, leveraged a family fortune and an easy gregariousness to seduce the power brokers of Capitol Hill in the 1970s.

ImageIn the primary bedroom, a 1977 cabinet by Yoshimura, a pair of 1967 Isamu Kenmochi chairs, a 1970s Ludwig Mies van der Rohe MR Table from Knoll and photographs by Luigi Ghirri from 1973.Credit...Josh Robenstone

Before signing the deal, Endo’s son, whose family often visited the house, made Kotaka and Sahara promise that their client wouldn’t tear the place down. Despite not being designers themselves, Kotaka and Sahara ended up returning the 3,240-square-foot, two-story structure to its early glory with, Kotaka says, “repainting and some partial carpentry fixes.” After consulting with a few historians, architects and craftspeople, they also retiled the upstairs bathroom, recarpeted the floors using Yoshimura’s preferred mill and added contemporary art by the painter Alex Katz and others to make the house, which now functions as an event and exhibition space — and, to a lesser extent, a weekend retreat, for the duo sometimes as much as for their client — feel new again.

ImageIn the sunroom, a 1956 table by Janine Abraham and Dirk Jan Rol and a pair of 1950s rattan chairs from Demisch Danant in New York.Credit...Josh Robenstone

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