Park City Musashikosugi MidSky Tower

A 59-storey residential tower completed in April 2009 in Musashikosugi, Nakahara-ku, Kawasaki, standing 203.5 metres — the tallest condominium building in Japan at the time of completion.

Use

Residential tower

Area

Nakahara, Kawasaki

Completed

2009

Floors

59 above ground, 3 below

Height

203.5 m

Developer

Mitsui Fudosan Residential

Architect

Takenaka Corporation

Fifty-Nine Storeys Above Musashikosugi

At Shin-Maruko-Higashi 3-chome, Nakahara-ku, Kawasaki — roughly two minutes on foot from Musashikosugi Station, where the Tokyu Toyoko and Meguro Lines meet the JR Nambu Line — stands Park City Musashikosugi MidSky Tower. The building was completed in April 2009 and rises 59 storeys above grade, with three levels of basement, to a height of 203.5 metres. Takenaka Corporation handled both design and construction from start to finish. Mitsui Fudosan Residential led the development, and the building contains 794 homes.

When MidSky Tower was completed, its 59 storeys made it the tallest condominium building anywhere in Japan. A 203.5-metre residential shaft rising above Musashikosugi — a neighbourhood that had until recently blended housing streets with factory land — changed the skyline of Nakahara-ku in a single step. The site lies close to the Tama River, and the scale of the tower against the flat industrial topography of the area made its arrival all the more dramatic.

The Kosugi Station Southern Area Redevelopment

MidSky Tower did not appear in isolation. It was part of a coordinated, district-wide transformation of the Kosugi Station Southern Area, a planning process that gathered pace through the 2000s and targeted the large tracts of factory and industrial land surrounding Musashikosugi Station. Several separate redevelopment associations were formed across the site. MidSky Tower corresponds to the D District within this scheme; it used Japan’s comprehensive design system to unlock the exceptional height, well above what the underlying floor-area ratios alone would have allowed.

The effect of this redevelopment on Nakahara-ku has been lasting. Construction of new supertall residential buildings in and around Musashikosugi continued for more than a decade after MidSky Tower opened. The neighbourhood became nationally known as a place where high-rise towers had clustered around a single station. Yet the original tower’s dimensions — 59 storeys, 203.5 metres — remain among the highest in the city, and from the station platform today the building still reads clearly as the tallest element in the immediate skyline.

Summary

Park City Musashikosugi MidSky Tower was completed in April 2009, rising 59 storeys above ground and three levels below, to 203.5 metres, in Nakahara-ku, Kawasaki. Designed and built by Takenaka Corporation and developed by Mitsui Fudosan Residential, it was the tallest condominium building in Japan when it opened, and it remains the defining mark of the post-industrial Musashikosugi skyline.

Stand on the Tokyu platform or walk toward the Tama River and look back: the 59-storey profile rising from the former factory land says something concrete about how Japanese cities remade themselves in the 2000s — and why Musashikosugi became the place that everyone else in the country started watching.

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