Palace Side Building

A nine-story office building completed in 1966 beside the Imperial Palace moat, designed by Hayashi Shoji of Nikken Sekkei. Its twin cylindrical service cores placed on the exterior remain a defining example of postwar Japanese modernist architecture.

Use

Office tower

Area

Chiyoda City

Completed

1966

Floors

9 above ground, 6 below

Height

50 m

Total floor area

approx. 119,700 m²

Architect

Nikken Sekkei (Hayashi Shoji)

Cores on the Outside, Space on the Inside

On the north bank of the Imperial Palace moat at the Takebashi intersection, Palace Side Building has stood since 1966 as one of the most studied office buildings in Japan. Its most immediately legible feature is architectural: two exposed cylindrical concrete cores project from the facade, housing elevators, stairs, and building services that are typically buried in a tower’s center. By moving these cores to the perimeter, designer Hayashi Shoji of Nikken Sekkei freed the interior floor plates of columns and shear walls, creating wide-open office floors that tenants could subdivide as they needed.

At nine stories above ground and six below, with a total floor area of approximately 119,700 square meters, Palace Side Building is compact by Tokyo standards but dense in its use of depth. The deep basement accommodates printing and distribution facilities for the Mainichi Shimbun newspaper group, which has been the building’s anchor tenant since its opening.

Postwar Modernism Beside the Moat

The site previously held the Tokyo offices of Reader’s Digest, designed by Antonin Raymond in 1951 — itself a significant modernist work in postwar Japan. Palace Side Building replaced it with a more monumental presence, its precast concrete panels and evenly spaced horizontal windows forming a calm, authoritative backdrop to the moat’s green embankment.

The building’s longevity speaks to the practical success of its structural logic. Nearly six decades after completion, the column-free floor plates continue to serve a variety of tenants, and the building has become a standard reference in Japanese architecture education for its demonstration of service-core planning. The cylindrical cores, weathered to a silvery gray, remain as distinctive today as when they were first poured.

Summary

Completed in 1966, Palace Side Building offers nine above-ground floors, six basement levels, and roughly 119,700 square meters of total floor area organized around two external cylindrical cores — a structural idea that predates most of its more famous international contemporaries. The walk from Takebashi Station along the moat takes you past the building’s long facade; look for the concrete cylinders and the long ribbon windows that run between them. It is a quiet landmark, but one that rewards attention.

The Imperial Palace gardens and the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo are a few minutes’ walk away, making this a natural starting point for a day of architecture and culture in Chiyoda.