Omotesando Hills Dojunkan

Tokyo Design Center inc. (TDC) Review

Dojunkan is a foundation established as a reconstruction support initiative after the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake that aimed to provide unburnable steel-reinforced concrete housing. Dojukan’s apartments were the first steel-reinforced concrete facilities to ever appear in Japan and thus retained enormous value.
In Omotesando, where all the streets’ forestation burnt down during the American military raids of Tokyo in May 1945, the only tree that survived was an elm in front of the Dojukan Aoyama apartment complex, leading people to believe that the Dojukan apartments’ functionality as a firewall had been proven. This Aoyama apartment complex was redeveloped in 2006 by the Mori Building Company as Omotesando Hills, and the external appearance of its east unit was faithfully reproduced by Tadao Ando, preserving “Dojukan” as one of the sections of Omotesando Hills.