After nearly three years of fierce criticism, revisions, budget cuts, and soaring costs, plans for a Zaha Hadid-designed Olympic stadium in Tokyo—an 80,000-seat stingray-like arena set to rise 20 stories in the city’s heart—has been cancelled.

A makeover energizes a former swimming space while retaining traces of its watery past..

Tokyo may be among the world’s largest cities, but it has some of the smallest buildings. At critical nodes such as Roppongi and Shinjuku, the city has plenty of skyscrapers and hulking commercial complexes, yet its character is mostly defined by dense, low-scale neighborhoods where the majority of buildings are no more than five stories high.

Despite Japan's energy belt-tightening, triggered by the Great Eastern Japan Earthquake of 2011, dazzling lighting effects still bedeck most luxury boutiques in Tokyo's Ginza shopping district.

Kengo Kuma refers to the classic brewing process of a century-old Japanese soy sauce maker for a surprising shop in an urban mall.