THE ROCKET BUILDING - ロケットビル
Designed and constructed by an unknown architect team in the 1980s, the Rocket Building was originally meant to house a space and astronomy museum, with a rotating observation deck on the top floor.
Nowadays, the shiny, streamlined, sci-fi styled Rocket Building dominates an otherwise unremarkable downtown street near Omiya Station in Saitama and now is home to rental apartments, a cafe, an educational daycare facility and more.
These days, the building’s owners lean more to the commercial than the artistic, figuring there’s a niche market for tenants who appreciate the allure of living or working in an abstract and unique building.
The Rocket Building was one of a number of offbeat edifices that sprung up in and around Japan’s major cities as the country’s economic bubble inflated. Low interest rates, reasonable real estate prices and a steady flow of government funds into the construction sector saw projects approved that would normally never see the light of day.
The building’s design is actually quite complex – a pair of scalloped insets on either side of the main entrance allows for open-air balconies with a steel railing facing the street. As well, beneath one of the balconies is an extremely small (though typical for Tokyo) parking space which might possibly hold two small cars or minivans.
Images by Joanna Kawecki
