Kengo Kuma, Kengo Kuma and Associates

As architects, we never expected to design a piano. We liked the idea because it was an opportunity to think of how architecture could relate to furniture, albeit with completely different parameters. We therefore started conceptually. Since Alberni Street strives to create a new high-rise experience by introducing a soft and intimate idiom particular to Japanese space, we thought of how the piano could evoke the same feelings. By layering sheets of Hinoki wood, a spiritual material in Japan used for building temples, and by carving the piano in a similar manner as the tower, we arrived at something light, textured, and warm. Its hallowed formations implying an almost geological, timeless character.