New Harajuku Station building opens in Tokyo

Hard to argue with that photo. Pretty old wood building on the right, ugly grey box on the left. Guess which one they are keeping.

Glass walls for the concourse allow for plenty of sunlight and give the building a bright, modern feel. The interior features tiled floors, and a clear view of the old station and the tracks.

Oh wait. You mean it has windows AND floors? My god, what a modern wonder of architecture! No wonder they chose to demolish the nice one.

Just in time for the Olympic Games!

The old station has been around for a while, so it was quite dirty

Old = dirty. New = clean. I've heard that sentiment expressed often over the years among the Japanese.

I like the old station, its design. I hope that the building will be preserved.

Though this is a bit of sunshine at a time like this, I find it interesting that while countries around the world are closing business and public transport, Japan is opening them.

I hope they can relocate part (or better yet, all) of the old station to the Edo-Tokyo Open Air Architectural Museum. It would fit right in and could be preserved as-is. Maybe in the area where the city train (trolley) currently sits. Repurposing the facade and building something modern around and above it in the current location would be a second, and less desirable, option. Simply destroying the station would be criminal.

In my earlier post I was referring to the old original station building, not the entire station complex.

The new building is fugly.

It will house the first city-style Ikea furniture store, as well as a Uniqlo shop, among other popular brands.

Ikea and Uniqlo, right at the bleeding edge of Tokyo's pop culture.

No imagination in the new building, not even a nod towards what it replaces. Cold and heartless addition to the urban landscape.

How unimaginative. Couldn't they have picked something more creative?

Glass walls for the concourse allow for plenty of sunlight and give the building a bright, modern feel

So when the sun blazes through them once summer hits, the place will be a damn greenhouse.

Ｉｔ　ｓｔｉｌｌ　ｗｏｎ’ｔ　ｄｉｓｓｕａｄｅ　ｙｏｕｎｇ　ｐｅｏｐｌｅ　ｆｒｏｍ　ｇｏｉｎｇ　ｔｏ　Ｈａｒａｊｕｋｕ．

I think it's nice," said Unjiro Hatano, 82, who had just exited the ticket gates with his 80-year-old wife Rieko.

Living in nearby Yoyogi, the elderly couple walk pass the station every day, Rieko said. "Each time I wondered when it would be completed," she said, adding that she was glad that the nostalgic old station would retain its form even when "remade."

Wonder if they have any pictures of the station from waaay back. Would be cool to see how it has changed over time. Maybe JR already thought about that and have them displayed somewhere in the new station. Don't particularly like most of the designs for these new places though. Convenient and trendy but also blocky, metallic, glassy and lacking charm. However, maybe I am just a nostalgic Boomer.

YEP, damned ugly & boring as hell!!!

I could have designed something better than this & I freely admit my imagination SUCKS as far as ideas for buildings!!

Is that thing the ''New Harajuku JR Station''???

Jacobo

Typical Japanese construction (i.e., ugly). It's like reading about how they bulldozed Kyoto station to make something just as ugly, in the book "Dogs and Demons".

what a terrible ugly shack

To think people were paid to make such a piece of junk. Japan has so many better designers out there!

I hope it looks better in real life, surely it must do?

@derek-grebe assuming of course they don’t have air-conditioning, which judging by how modern it is, won’t at all be the case.

I quite like the look of it, and think the contrast of the new one and old one side by side is good.

Just in time for the Olympic Games!

Im thinking you didn't get the memo? Athletes are already asking for postponement and or cancellation. Can't have games without participants now can we?

JR just thinks the old station is a wasted retail opportunity. All those young people streaming by and no one spending money on their property. I suppose that is how a stockholder corporation is supposed to think, but, but is there any such thing as the public good? If each business optimizes its own property the charm of a location as a whole, and the reason for people to go there vs. somewhere else, is lost. I won’t even get into the larger question of is a city just a big shopping mall?

The old Western-style wooden station building, which was constructed nearly 100 years ago, will be dismantled following the Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic Games due to its narrow shape and failure to meet fireproof standards.

seems to have survived just fine. If anything the ugly shack next to it should be the one dismantled after the games, not the old station