KDDI Building

A 32-storey, approximately 164-metre office tower completed in 1974 in Nishi-Shinjuku, Tokyo. Originally the headquarters of KDD (Kokusai Denshin Denwa), Japan's former international telecommunications carrier, it was one of the first supertall buildings to join the emerging Nishi-Shinjuku skyline.

Use

Office tower

Area

Shinjuku

Completed

1974

Floors

32 above ground, 3 below

Height

164 m

Developer

KDD (Kokusai Denshin Denwa)

The Tower That Carried Japan’s International Calls

The KDDI Building stands at 32 storeys and approximately 164 metres tall in the Nishi-Shinjuku district of Shinjuku, Tokyo, having been completed in 1974 as the headquarters of KDD — Kokusai Denshin Denwa, Japan’s state-backed international telecommunications carrier. The building opened under the name International Communications Centre (国際通信センタービル) and served as the principal hub for Japan’s international telephone and telex traffic during an era when cross-border communication was a specialised, capital-intensive service. Three basement levels underpin the tower’s foundations in an area that was still being cleared and developed following the demolition of the Yodobashi water treatment plant.

The formation of Nishi-Shinjuku’s high-rise cluster began in earnest in the early 1970s, and the KDDI Building was among the first cohort to break the skyline. The Shinjuku Sumitomo Building and Shinjuku Mitsui Building were completed in the same year, and together with the KDDI Building they established the framework of the supertall group that the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building would join in 1991 — seventeen years later. The telecommunications role of the site created a different design logic from the speculative office towers around it: the building was conceived primarily around the infrastructure it needed to house, not purely around maximising rentable floor area.

KDD merged with DDI Corporation and IDO in 2000 to form KDDI, the telecommunications company that is today one of Japan’s three major mobile carriers. The building was renamed to reflect the successor company and remains the registered head office address, giving a 1970s concrete-and-glass structure an ongoing function in a digital economy it could not have anticipated when it was built.

Summary

The KDDI Building was completed in 1974 as a 32-storey, approximately 164-metre tower that served as Japan’s international telecommunications nerve centre. As one of the founding buildings of the Nishi-Shinjuku high-rise cluster, it predates the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building by nearly two decades and carries a history of global connectivity that digital infrastructure has since made invisible. From the free observation deck of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building, looking across the Nishi-Shinjuku skyline, the KDDI Building’s position among the first generation of towers is easy to identify — and the half-century of history embedded in its facade is worth a second look.

Related: Shinjuku Mitsui Building / Shinjuku Center Building

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