Consider the Thomasson

Have you heard of a ‘Thomasson’? Prepare to be impressed.

If you have heard of this design phenomenon, read on as there’s some cool examples below. If you haven’t, read on and be impressed. (if the mundane impresses you, that is, and it should.)

How best to begin this story?

I think we need to first learn of the Japanese artist Akasegawa Genpei, who first identified and named these things Thomasson.

It was lunchtime on the 17th of March, 1972, in the Yotsuya district of Tokyo, and Akasegawa was looking for somewhere to plonk himself down and eat his lunch.

He spotted a staircase, approached, but also noticed that the staircase went up to… nowhere, anymore. The staircase no longer had a purpose, other than existing as a staircase. It was “in itself and for itself.”

“The staircase for the staircase”.

But what made this staircase stand out for him was that whilst the staircase no longer served any purpose, leading as it did to a sealed-off doorway, it was still being maintained.

From this observation, grew the Thomasson: an architectural leftover or vestige that no longer has any use and is actively maintained.

You can check out more on Akasegawa’s Thomasson journey via his book Hyperart: Thomasson. Hell, somebody even made a tumblr page in honour of the book and the concept.

But wait, we’re not done yet. Why call these things Thomasson? Well, this is my favourite bit about all of this.

The term comes from an overall very successful American baseball player called Gary Thomasson, who was traded near the end of his career to a Tokyo baseball team called the Yomiuri Giants.

To help inspire the move across the Pacific, Thomasson was given a huge amount of coin for a two-year contract.

But when he arrived at the Giants, he lost form so badly that he quickly became the holder of the highest-ever strikeout record in Japan for the 1981 season – and as a result, he was mostly benched for the remainder of his contract.

For Akasegawa, Gary Thomasson was “useless”, and yet also “maintained.” And that’s where the term Thomasson comes from.

I love this so very much.

Anyways, here’s a handful of Thomassons from around the world. Time to go find a few in your neck of the woods.

You can listen to the story of the Thomasson, and a discussion on whether it’s a cruel name, in the 99% Invisible episode below.

Thomassons – 99% Invisible

Cities, like living things, evolve slowly over time. Buildings and structures get added and renovated and removed, and in this process, bits and pieces that get left behind. Vestiges. Just as humans have tailbones and whales have pelvic bones, cities have doors that open into a limb-breaking drop, segments of fences that anyone can walk around, and pipes