‘The Daiei Headquarters was the first of an important group of buildings designed by Paul Rudolph in the Far East and opened up a whole new chapter in his career in these countries, where a warm respect for his work continues to be maintained.
He produced the design for this project with Tsukasa Yamashita and Associates who provided the production drawings and supervised the construction as the local architects. Paul Rudolph’s main influence was on the quality of the impressive internal spaces and in the detailing of the public areas where the specification was sumptuous. His personal sketches… showed his full involvement in the early evolution of the scheme as well as his technique of producing freehand drawings of the plans, sections and elevations to examine the project at this initial stage.
Built on a tight site near Shirakawa Park in Nagoya in a busy shopping street leading to Nagoya castle, this fourteen- storey office building consisted of over 54,000 square feet of accommodation. Below ground there were three floors of car parking. The three storeys of public reception areas were all visible at street level and the remaining floors were offices. A circular illuminated advertisement topped the tower at roof level. The building was constructed of reinforced-concrete beams and floor slabs containing waffled recessed ceilings and it had a structural frame of concrete-cased steel. The exterior exposed concrete was brutalist in character and was fronted with numerous metal tubular mullions.”
Monk, Tony. The Art and Architecture of Paul Rudolph. Chichester, West Sussex: Wiley-Academy, 1999. PP. 97, 101.