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Ashihara Yoshinobu 蘆原義信
Sony Corporation 索尼株式會社
Central core tile, Sony Building (1964–1966), Tokyo, Japan 日本東京索尼大廈（1964至1966年）中央芯柱瓷磚
1966
This marble tile is a component from the Sony Building, designed by Ashihara Yoshinobu in the mid-1960s and demolished fifty years later. After working for influential modernist architects Sakakura Junzo and Marcel Breuer, Ashihara started his own firm, and the Sony Building was one of the office’s early projects. In the context of Japan’s rapid economic growth and intensifying consumer culture, Sony’s co-founder Morita Akio wanted a flagship building to provide a symbolic image of the company. Located on a prominent site in Tokyo’s Ginza district, the eight-storey structure is notable for its split-level interior layout, introducing continuous, flowing circulation. Four square rooms are positioned around a central column, with each floor slab raised ninety centimetres and connected via steps, to create a spiral—a design that was inspired by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York. The building also includes an upper-storey restaurant, a multipurpose hall, and a sunken public garden near the entrance, as well as floors below ground with a direct connection to the metro. The sleek exterior features concrete walls, white tiles, large glass windows covered by vertical aluminium louvres, and an electronic facade consisting of 2,300 cathode-ray tubes. The building has showrooms for Sony products as well as for other companies, materialising Morita’s ambition to bring the window shopping typical of Ginza street life into interior space.
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