“Tokyo Review 013” Toranomon area-5
Highest grade facility composition
The category-2 urban redevelopment project is a type of project that is usually applied to areas where priority is high due to their public importance or urgent necessity. In Tokyo, I remember examples like the Shirahige-East residential area which functions as an evacuation shelter in case of disasters. Being a building made by such project, Toranomon Hills is the only one which is enhancing its value as a real estate utilizing the knowhow of a private developer.
Toranomon Hills contains a slope of the trunk road that gradually goes up from basement 1 level to the ground level. The columns along the gently curving exterior glass wall on the south side are actually standing right on the central separator of the Loop Road No.2.
This fact indeed realized the President Minoru Mori’s blueprint in which Mori tower rises just in front of the Shin Tora Dori Avenue, on the other hand, the majority area of the first floor, which is the most valuable, had been obstructed by the road. During the designing, the challenge must have been on how to create the features for an office, a hotel, housing, and how to layout those commercial functions which support office facilities under such difficult prerequisites.
When you go up one floor by staircase or escalator from Atago Dori Avenue, you can see the south-east entrance, and the gradually rising and spiraling floor on the second-floor level that leads you inside. If you go half around this route will meet another passage from Toranomon station and you can reach the office entrance.
The slope on the south side is splendidly integrated with the gently sloping roof garden with a stream, just separated by a thin glass wall. “Hotel Andaz” the higher-class brand of the Hyatt chain is on the top floorv, but its entrance is tailored to the north side of the 1st floor, with a fine car drop area. In this way, by making a “face” on the second floor, they had overcome the handicap of this building bearing a road in it. Don’t you think so?
