Beyond the Golden Turd: Japan's inventory of smile-inducing buildings

"At the time, I was interested in so-called symbolic architecture, I endeavoured to imagine buildings that expressed symbols directly. So I came up with, between fantasy, reasoning, intuition and obligations, a strange little building where the luminous base, the kind of crystal staircase, is the energy. The kind of black object, like an urn, is the mystery. And that the golden flame, above, is the passion." – Philippe Starck

Maybe in another country, the turd would have been interpreted as the "Flamme d'Or" he imagined it to be. Or a tadpole. Or a squiggly squeeze of toothpaste. But in Japan, where a very similar looking coiled golden poo (kin no unko) is a popular good luck charm, the building immediately became known as the 'poo building' (unko-biru). Mission accomplished, then, in terms of creating a building that is the 'talk of the town'–- and a popular tourist attraction to boot.

The Asahi Beer Hall is far from the only whacky piece of architecture the country has embraced. Similarly ambitious and surprising expressions of imagination have been built all over Japan, if you know where to look. Some are cartoonish. Some are stern. Some are playful. Some are chaotic. Some are frankly baffling. All are unique, joyous manifestations of big visions brought to life – of creations that exist simply because someone had the thought 'Wouldn't it be cool if...' and followed it all the way through.

Here are a handful of our favourites – a mix of celebrity homes, corporate novelties and quirky odes to nature.

1. Face House

Kyoto, Kazusama Yamashita, 1974

If you look up 'Face House – Kyoto' on Google Maps street view, and zoom out a little, you will find you are being stared at. Nestled within an otherwise ordinary cityscape is a building that looks like it wants to be your friend. The façade of this home is quite literally a face – there is no doubt about it. It has big round 'eyes' for windows, that blink with the opening and closing of shutters; a 'mouth' agape – the front entrance, teeth outlined by its door frames; a cylindrical 'nose' letting shafts of light through to the children's bedrooms on the upper level; all arranged on a big block shaped head, with a breeze blowing through the balcony 'ears' at the sides.

This anthropomorphic home and design studio sits on an otherwise nondescript street in Kyoto, surrounded by very ordinary buildings. It was built in 1974 as a residence and studio for a graphic designer, who lived and worked there for decades. The two upper floors – accessed by an external staircase – are the domestic quarters, while the ground level – with direct access from the street – was where his creative work was done and displayed. The building has since been home to an artist's studio, shop and exhibition space dedicated to 'handmade and DIY items'. The first business to move into the space was very particular about what it sold and made, and had a mission that perfectly matched the spirit of the house: "With so much mass production, we are always looking for originality. Something one-of-a-kind."

2. Ark Nova

No fixed location, Arata Isozaki & Anish Kapoor, 2013

Is it a giant blueberry? An extraterrestrial orb? The world's biggest bubblegum bubble? No: it's an inflatable 500-seat mobile concert hall! Well, obviously. This bonkers ball of art-meets-engineering was created by Japanese architect Arata Isozaki and British-Indian sculptor Anish Kapoor in 2013. Two years earlier, the northeast of Japan had been hit by a devastating earthquake and tsunami. Together, the designers had conceived of an ark to "travel packed with music and various arts, from the perspective of long-term rebuilding of culture and spirit".

They named the project 'Ark Nova', meaning 'new ark', "with the hope that it will become a symbol of recovery immediately after the great earthquake disaster". Part of that symbolism involved using the wood of ancient cedar trees – which had been uprooted in the disaster – to construct the auditorium's seating.

Deflated and disassembled, the Ark Nova fits on the back of a truck. Upon arrival in a new location, the stretchy plastic membrane is blown up to a magnificent 9000 cubic metres of donut-shaped space – technically called a 'toroid'. The void inside is interrupted only by the donut's internal tube, which also helps control the acoustics. Seemingly opaque purple from the outside, the material is in fact slightly translucent, giving the interior a red glow that organically changes in step with the natural light levels from outside. A flexible multistage format can be configured to suit a range of performance types, from orchestral and chamber music to jazz and traditional Japanese dance theatre.

3. Aoyama Technical College

Tokyo, Makoto Sei Watanabe, 1990

In 1990, a giant Transformer toy rampaged through Tokyo, stopping only when it collided with a helicopter and was brought down in a heap of metal tangled up with power lines. Okay, not really – but you can see how that would surely be a plausible origin story for the Aoyama Technical College in the city's downtown Shibuya district.

This metallic mangle of machine parts is chaotic in appearance but fully functional in design: the giant silver egg is a water tank; the two long orange appendages are lightning rods. The architect, Makoto Sei Watanabe, said he was seeking to "restore the fundamental strength that buildings ought to have", noting that "ancient structures, from the pyramids to the great cathedrals, possessed the awesome power of large spaces".

Watanabe believed architecture should be "capable of moving people's hearts", and "giving them a thrill in a way possible in no other art". He saw the 'computer as an extension of the brain', and used mathematical algorithms to inform his deliberately disorderly designs, the aim being an aesthetic mess that somehow made structural sense. Watanabe said he hoped the Aoyama Technical College would encourage people "to stop and think about the way they want their cities to be", but also that "anyone who might see it experiences, both mentally and physically, a definitive feeling of excitement."

4. Office Sakaya

Tokyo, Yokogawa Architects, 2007

You will often see passers-by stopped in their tracks, staring up at this bizarre, cartoon-submarine-looking building in Tokyo's Shinjuku city and trying to work out what on earth it is. It is marked on Google Maps as "Office Sakaya" – but it's not just an office: it's also a home. And it's not just any home: This is a celebrity power couple home. Ryuta Mine and his wife, Midori – both well-known Japanese actors – built a three-storey house on the 400-square-metre site (big, by Tokyo standards) in 2007. The pair was intimately involved with its design, working with Yokogawa Architects & Engineers to incorporate a grass roof for their dogs, a swimming pool running through the middle level of the structure, a mirrored studio for aerobics sessions, and five-car garage (their luxury vehicle collection included a Bentley and a Porsche) that wraps around the ground floor entrance. As you do.

The couple was delighted with the result. Three years after it was finished, Midori said in an interview that the home was such a joy it had replaced the need for overseas holidays: "I feel like I am in a resort every day... I haven't travelled abroad since my home is like Monaco — and Greece." Although, that break from travel may have been more to do with the project's rumoured USD$5 million price tag, which the couple admitted wasn't a bad guess... but not quite high enough.

5. Organic Building

Osaka, Gaetano Pesce, 1993

Nine storeys of steel frame, with playful protrusions of pipe and scupper-shaped planters across a gridded facade of terracotta-toned panels. This is the headquarters of the Oguraya Yamamoto Company – a seaweed-based snacks producer with a corporate vision of "nature and health". But from the outside, it's like a wall of orange toilet bowls is slowly being taken over by a jungle, right in the middle of the city. Inside, a commemorative plaque explains what the structure is trying to say:

"In all living creatures each individual cell is organically joined and rationally interrelated to each other to stimulate growth and maturity. It is the Organic Building that symbolises the complete structure and system of a living creature."

The building was completed in 1993 during a time of great collaboration between Italian and Japanese designers. Italian architect Gaetano Pesce's concept was inspired by bamboo, for its "distinctive verticality, undulating surface, and tendency to grow into a network of interlocking but nonetheless unique spaces", and Osaka horticulturalists helped select more than 50 types of indigenous plants and trees, which are all kept alive by a sophisticated irrigation system built into the walls. While a "vertical garden" was seen at the time as a quirky modern novelty, the project was actually a nod to the ancient past, when this practice was "one of the seven great architectural styles in the era of Mesopotamian civilisation".

6. St. Mary's Cathedral

Tokyo, Kenzo Tange, 1964

You may be forgiven for thinking you've stumbled onto the set of a Stanley Kubrick film but this is a different kind of hallowed ground. The Tokyo church that originally stood here was a wooden, Gothic style structure built in 1899, destroyed by air raids during the Second World War. (Catholicism isn't something generally associated with Japan, but the country has almost half a million adherents and nearly a thousand churches across the country.)

Rebuilt in its place in 1964 is the ultramodern and iconic St Mary's Cathedral – a cavernous, stone-tiled worship space of curved concrete walls laid out in the form of a cross, the glazed ceiling forming a "crucifix skylight, a window onto Heaven". The cathedral is equally imposing from the outside, clad in glimmering stainless steel and towering 40 metres high at its tallest. It was designed by renowned Japanese architect Kenzo Tange, who specialised in combining traditional Japanese styles with modernist aesthetics and took on a number of the country's post-war redevelopment projects. Acoustic and structural engineers helped him create an extraordinary sonic environment inside the cathedral, which now houses Japan's largest (and custom-made for the space) pipe organ.

7. Maishima Incineration Plant

Osaka, Friedensreich Hundertwasser, 2001

It is Willy Wonka's mansion? Is it a toy factory? Is it a licorice allsorts warehouse? No – it's ... a waste management centre. Probably the only one in the world with its own TripAdvisor page and that attracts thousands of tourists every year. (Sure, some of them may be trying to find the nearby Universal Studios theme park.)

The Maishima Incineration Plant in Osaka opened in 2001. It is the work of Viennese designer and artist Friedensreich Hundertwasser, famous for infusing his architectural projects with a deep sense of fun and freedom. (You probably won't be surprised to hear the man who thought a waste sludge plant should be joyous, also once gave a lecture titled "Speech in Nude for the Right to a Third Skin".)

A pamphlet for visitors to the facility explains his intentions to symbolise the harmony of technology, ecology and art: "Since straight lines and identical objects do not exist in nature, Hundertwasser incorporated curved lines into each shape and encompassed the buildings in green as a symbol of harmony with nature." Part of the purpose of the plant's attention-grabbing design is to underscore how inseparable waste management is from our lives – within those wacky walls, 900 tonnes of rubbish is burnt each day, fuelling a steam turbine generator to produce electricity for the city.