At first glance, the newly opened Ginza Sony Park looks like anything but a park in the usual sense. There are no trees and not even a tiny patch of grass. Yet, to Daisuke Nagano, the project leader of the Ginza Sony Park project, the most important feature of a park isn’t the greenery. 'For me, more than anything else, parks are about openness,' he explains. 'The freedom to use a part of the city in any way you like; have a coffee, have a nap, read a book.'
Explore Tokyo's new Ginza Sony Park
Through this lens, the naming of the concrete, brutalist architecture structure makes sense. Of the more than 4,000 sq m of space, spanning eight levels (three of them below ground), roughly 40 per cent is free, open space that locals are already using to eat their bentos, have a quiet coffee or finish the last bit of a client presentation on a laptop. The ground floor, in particular, is almost completely empty and flexible, save for a couple of in-situ concrete benches and the beginning of a large spiral staircase that continues all the way to the roof.
The architecture was a collaborative effort of the whole project team. 'We didn’t want to hire a famous architect to build us a new building. Like all Sony products, the Ginza Sony Park is made by Sony,' Nagano explains.
The remaining 60 per cent of the space is divided into different sections, which, except for the restaurant on the lowest floor, all can be turned into exhibitions or event spaces. 'My vision for the project was to create a platform for various activities. The building is the platform, and the various activities are like apps on a smartphone,' explains Nagano.
The first set of apps to be loaded onto the platform is a series of exhibitions exploring the diverse range of businesses (music, gaming, cinema, entertainment technology, finance and semiconductors) that Sony is currently involved in.
Nagano’s team have curated and produced tech-heavy exhibitions that showcase some of Sony’s latest technology, such as haptic floor tiles that simulate the feeling of walking on water. With about 12,000 visitors to the current exhibition a day, Ginza Sony Park is off to a good start.
Nagano hopes that the park will attract outside collaborators too. With rent in Ginza being among the highest in Tokyo, Ginza Sony Park offers an interesting opportunity for short-term leasing at what is poised to become one of the city’s most iconic locations.
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