At the water’s edge in Yokohama, Japan, is one of the most important early examples of what has been described as “digital architecture”. In other words, it is a building not just designed with the help of computer technology, but which is so complex it could only have been designed using computers. Conventional drawing techniques would have been simply too crude to allow the creation of accurate construction drawings. The fact that it happens to be a transport building makes it all the more pleasing, and demonstrates once again the impact that transport has had on the built environment. It’s the Yokohama International Port Terminal.
It’s a building of different aspects, presenting varying faces according to how it is being looked at and what it is being used for. On the top (as seen in the photo above) it seems to a visitor like a city park and the fact that it is a three-storey building (two above ground, plus a basement level) is hard to appreciate. Inside the terminal is a series of extraordinary spaces the design of which would have been impossible only a year or two earlier. Yet when approached by ship (it is the major cruise ship terminal for Yokohama) it looks like a more conventional terminal building.