Meguro Bölge Ofisi, Municipal government office in Kami-Meguro district, Tokyo, Japan.
Meguro Ward Office occupies the former Chiyoda Mutual Life Insurance headquarters, completed in 1966 to a design by architect Togo Murano. Its white cast-aluminium louvred facade, said to be the first of its kind at this scale in Japan, won the BCS Prize in 1969. The entrance canopy and its supporting columns are also aluminium. Inside, a spiral staircase and an entrance room with a shallow water basin and a tile artwork by Tanpei Sakuno remain from the original building.
The current building opened in 1966 as the headquarters of Chiyoda Mutual Life Insurance, designed by Togo Murano with white cast-aluminium louvres and a BCS Prize in 1969. After the insurer's bankruptcy in 2000, Meguro Ward bought the site and moved its offices here between 2002 and 2003, leaving the former ward office in Chuo-cho to be rebuilt as Chuo-cho Sakura Plaza.
The building was originally the headquarters of Chiyoda Mutual Life Insurance, completed in 1966 and designed by Togo Murano. Remnants of that corporate past survive inside: a Japanese-style garden and a tea room built for employee welfare, the tea room constructed entirely in reinforced concrete because wood was not permitted inside the concrete structure at the time.
The main and annex buildings are a 5-minute walk from Naka-Meguro Station on the Tokyu Toyoko and Tokyo Metro Hibiya lines. Toei bus stops and the Sanma community bus also serve the site. The ward health centre and the Tokyo Metropolitan Meguro tax office occupy the same complex.
The building was designed by architect Togo Murano, and its white cast-aluminium louvred facade, said to be the first of its kind at this scale in Japan, won the BCS Prize in 1969. Murano, who had worked as a researcher at the Yawata steelworks before university, mixed sawdust into the casting to give the metal a rougher texture.
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