Roppongi Hills Club - Tokyo

Roppongi Hills Club is serious business in that it's the prime gathering point for the financial and cultural elite of Tokyo, but it's also seriously pleasurable. It;s a members club of extraordinarily high ideals that, as its own message states,'functions as a forum where global thought and sensibilities abound, a place with the ability to inspire lively conversation that trancend the limitations of ones work or generation. Fortunately , the setting of these noble intentions is a magnificent array of bars and restaurants where the emphasis is on high quality aesthetics and cuisine.

The club is situated on the 51st of the Roppongi Hills Mori Tower, an offivce arts building that is the centrepiece of the Roppongi of tokyo as a cultural district. The tower and , in fact, much of the new Roppongi, has been created by Minoru MOri, one of the Japan's most famoust businessmen whose investement in urban regeneration continually defy any thought that Japan will never recover from the bursting of the bubble economy. The club makes the full views over Tokyo.One of Britain's leading designer, Sir Terence Conran, has designed the interior so that there is a virtually unbroken 360-degree view of the city-this marries with the club philosophy; its member may be the financial elite ( the numbing initial joining fee is almost $ 10.000) but Mori wish them to outward-looking, reflecting on the state of the world while sipping their fine cocktails.

View From Roppongi Hills Club 

All the club's facilities are set on the outer perimeter of the building,wich is oval with the exception of two boulbus, cornea-like protusions on opposite sides. These house two of the club's larger facilities The Fifty One Club and Meridiana restaurant. The Fifty One club, an informal brasserie and bar, is simply designed with white tablecloths and Mart Stamp's black cantilever chairs,but has full flor-to-ceiling to make the most view of Tokyo Bay. The Meridiana is an Italian restaurant, bar and loungewith an orange theme that begins with neon floorstrip and curving wall of the reception and is picked up by the furniture including Bombo bar stools. The bar specialises in organic juices that women will appreciate.

Both liquor and more innovative design come into their own with the intimate Sushi Bar, a sleek, black-laquer box with an aluring, colourfull flower mural and mirrored sake display. The Star Bar, the similarly simple but effective cocktail bar, feature Pierre Paulin's Slice chairs, pointing upwards towards the star-dotted ceiling which continues the night-sky view on central Tokyo. The Star Bar has a regular Scotch night, wich serve 21 varieties. Elsewhere, Conran has really delved into Japanese design with Onjaku, a Kappo cuisine restaurantwith deshes designed to complement sake. The dublime spaces feature floor seats with graceful, arching back supports, a restaurant include The Star Anise specialising in Chinese (rather than Japanese) sake and teas. Its all-red private booths are the most full-on sensual rooms in the whole club design.

Almost all the restaurants have private dining rooms, specifically created to impress business clients, while the Amakawa tepanyaki restaurant is entirely private. Guests sit at a table arcing around the personal chef's station while taking in the view of Tokyo Bay. Trhoughout the Topongi Hills Club, the design and facilities are physical embodiment of the co-relationship of work and play. Private club culture first emerged in Regency London, primarily out of a need to create protected enclaves for gambling and business, but there is a continued British embarrassment about the conection between work and pleasure. By contrast the Japanese have no coyness about merging the two, and Roppongi Hills Clup is a conscious temple to the benefits of their symbiosis. It is simultaneously strange and fitting the tah the designer is British. 

About the Designer: Sir Terence Conran

Born in 1931 Sir terence Conran hestablished the first habitat, the chain often heralded as starting the democratisation of good design and revoliounising British home interiors, in 1964. He went on to set up The Conran Shop & The Benchmark Woodwork Company, and has launched many reastaurant including Quanglino's,Bluebird & Floridita, a new Cuban-influenced restaurant in London. He was behind the initation of London's Design Museum in 1989, while Conran &Partners own design include The Great Eastern Hotel in London & The Park Hotel, Banglore, as well as the Roppongi Hills Club, Japanese ventures include The Ark Hills Club which houses paintings by Le Corbusier