Nihonbashi Takashimaya Mitsui Building

Completed in June 2018, the Nihonbashi Takashimaya Mitsui Building stands 32 storeys and 176.66 metres tall in Nihonbashi, Chuo Ward. Built immediately beside the 1933 Nihonbashi Takashimaya main store — a National Important Cultural Property — it is a landmark example of heritage preservation and high-rise redevelopment coexisting within a single city block.

Use

Office tower

Area

Chuo City, Tokyo

Completed

2018

Floors

32 above ground, 5 below

Height

176.66 m

Total floor area

approx. 148,064 m²

Developer

Mitsui Fudosan, Takashimaya, Taiyō Life Insurance

Architect

Nihon Sekkei / Plantec Sekkei JV (facade design: Skidmore, Owings & Merrill)

A High-Rise Beside a National Treasure

In the Nihonbashi 2-chome district of Chuo Ward, Tokyo, the Nihonbashi Takashimaya Mitsui Building was completed in June 2018. Standing 32 storeys above ground and five below, it reaches 176.66 metres in height with a total floor area of approximately 148,064 square metres. The building was developed under the Nihonbashi 2-chome Urban Redevelopment Project, with Mitsui Fudosan, Takashimaya and Taiyō Life Insurance among the principal participants. Design was handled by a joint venture of Nihon Sekkei and Plantec Sekkei, with facade design by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill of the United States. Office floors occupy the tenth to thirty-second levels; the basement through seventh floors serve as the Takashimaya Shopping Centre New Building.

The building’s defining architectural circumstance is its neighbour: the Nihonbashi Takashimaya main store, completed in 1933 and designated a National Important Cultural Property in 2009 — the first department store in Japan to receive that status. Large-scale alterations to the historic structure are restricted, so the new tower was conceived as a freestanding building standing directly alongside it, connected at the lower floors through galleria and bridges that allow the two structures to read as a single continuous retail and office environment.

Heritage and Density Side by Side

Nihonbashi has been a centre of Japanese commerce and finance since the Edo period. Long-established department stores, banks and securities firms line its streets, giving the district a weight and grain of history that is rare among Tokyo’s commercial zones. The redevelopment chose to leave the heritage main store intact while inserting a high-rise on the adjacent site — an answer to the practical challenge of renewing an urban block that contains a protected historic building.

The upper floors of the new building provide high-specification office space, while the lower floors extend the Takashimaya retail offer. Rooftop garden space across the C-block site brings a measure of planted landscape into the dense urban setting, encouraging people to linger in the street-level environment between the old and new buildings. Since its completion the development has helped accelerate further redevelopment in the wider Nihonbashi area, reinforcing the district’s role as one of central Tokyo’s most active zones of urban renewal.

Summary

The Nihonbashi Takashimaya Mitsui Building was completed in 2018: 32 storeys above ground, 176.66 metres tall, with a total floor area of approximately 148,064 square metres. Standing directly beside the 1933 Takashimaya main store — a National Important Cultural Property — it shows how a protected heritage building and a contemporary high-rise can coexist and function as one within a single urban block.

For a complementary example of heritage-led redevelopment in Nihonbashi, the Nihonbashi Mitsui Tower (completed 2005) is a short walk away. Accommodation in the area can be found through Rakuten Travel.