While it troubles me to say it, the Tokyo metro system works extremely well and is used by everybody without fear or favour. And the reason for my trouble is that it is also extremely bland.

Not for the Tokyo Metro the soaring architectural ambitions of the Elizabeth line, not for them the strictly coordinated wayfinding and finishes of the LUL Idiom, these are simple functional places, devoid of excess and without the spatial acrobatics introduced by my profession. What matters in Tokyo stations is cleanliness, efficiency, comfort, and safety, just like the trains that serve them which are low cost and widespread. This is a system for moving people to where they want to be in a manner befitting their straightforward, extremely polite, and unflustered character. And that’s almost all it appears to need and be wanted to do.
 
Of course, there are the few advertising panels placed like unnecessary afterthoughts, a few brightly dressed vending machines, directional signage that requires the nurturing of a particularly selective mindset to follow, but otherwise it’s a single-minded transit system that simply works.

It troubles me too for, some years ago, at the behest of Tokyo Metro, my office engaged in a study to add architectural flair to three of these stations in one of the posher parts of town, and the designs were well received, we were invited to present our proposals to a plethora of Japanese dignitaries in the grand hall of Omotosando Hills, and much applause ensued. 

And now, ten years later, I return to those stations and nothing has changed, nothing really needed to, it still works, nobody got lost or more depressed, or back in their car.

But then, in complete contrast, there are the public toilets scattered amongst the streets and parks of Shibuya.

Now anyone who knows Japan admires their toilets. Like the trains below they work more efficiently than most, and they do as much if not more than anything you might think you want them to do. They are warm, comfortable, and well maintained. Clean to the point of neurosis. But then came the 2020 Olympics and Koji Yanai, who proposed that Tokyo's public toilets should not only work efficiently, but that they should also be architecturally significant, and that it would be worth asking a few well-known architects and designers to turn their attention to raising the status of this humble infrastructure, to go beyond the purely functional and examine the nature of their role in the city as a social hub.
 
And the results are popular, amusing and worthy of note, a collection of urban interventions that adds flair to the greyest of Tokyo mornings, that makes the use of the functional a far more joyful event, that initiates debate and amusement and encourages broad ownership and civic pride and who's presence and maintenance has since become the subject of a well-received and highly acclaimed film.
 

And, while the Tokyo metro system functions well, these are all good reasons why it’s worth the effort to add architectural and spatial interest to our railway infrastructure, accepting that the function is as flawless as a plethora of hard-working operational folk can make it, but that the emotional, social and promotional potential - for its operators, its users and its passers-by - is equally important and should also be addressed to the greater benefit of us all.