'WEB FRAME'

Thanks to advanced planning, all of the stations along the Toei Ōedo Line in Tokyo are home to an assortment of public art, from subtle murals, to expressively avant-garde designs of architecture. Out of these, Iidabashi Station may be the most notable, as its ceiling has been overtaken by an intricate network of fluorescent green pipes.

The station was designed by architect Makoto Sei Watanabe, who was also responsible for the Aoyama Technical College building. He has been known to adopt mathematical algorithms into his artistic style, and Iidabashi Station is no exception. To create the artwork, Watanabe developed a new computer software called Web Frame and used it to create a complex grid of pipes at random.

Design-wise, the station’s “WEB FRAME” symbolizes the entangled network of transportation and information throughout the city. Its brilliant color represents the nearby Koishikawa-Kōrakuen Garden. The installation was also created to beautify the station, which can often be dull and tedious, especially with its long series of escalators and stairs. 

The “WEB FRAME” is not the only notable feature of Iidabashi Station. At one of the exits (C3) is a massive leaflike ventilation tower.