Shibuya PARCO

Rebuilt in 2019, this 19-story commercial complex rises 99.90 m above Udagawacho. Fashion, culture, and entertainment stack vertically in a building whose staircase terraces dissolve the boundary between street and shop floor.

Use

Office tower

Area

Shibuya City

Completed

2019

Floors

19 above ground, 3 below

Height

99.9 m

Total floor area

approx. 63,856 m²

Architect

Takenaka Corporation

A Landmark Returns to Udagawacho

Shibuya PARCO stands at 15-1 Udagawacho, Shibuya City, Tokyo. The building was completed in October 2019 and opened to the public on November 22 of the same year. It rises 19 stories above ground, plus a penthouse level, with three basement floors, reaching a height of 99.90 m and a total floor area of 63,856 m². Design and construction were handled entirely by Takenaka Corporation.

The original PARCO opened in 1973 and spent nearly five decades as a focal point of Shibuya’s youth culture. It closed in 2016 for rebuilding and reemerged in 2019 under the combined ownership of PARCO and Hulic, the latter acquiring the upper office floors. The building’s formal name is therefore Shibuya PARCO Hulic Building.

A City Street Stacked Vertically

What sets the building apart is its treatment of the lower floors as a continuation of the street. Outdoor staircases and terraces cascade along the façade, drawing pedestrians upward from the sidewalk through the building’s exterior without ever forcing them inside. The glass-and-metal cladding shifts its appearance through the day; at night, lit from within, it becomes a luminous panel on Udagawacho’s sloping road.

Floors one through ten house retail, while floors eleven through nineteen hold offices. The sixth floor is dedicated to Japanese manga, anime, and game culture, serving as a platform for domestic creative industries to reach international audiences. A theater occupies the tenth floor. Each level carries its own concept, making the building a kind of vertical cultural city rather than a conventional department store stack.

This design earned the 2020 Good Design Best 100 award. While the larger Shibuya redevelopment — Scramble Square, Hikarie, Stream — clusters around the station, PARCO maintains its own gravitational pull on the Udagawacho side, attracting visitors who might otherwise walk straight past.

Summary

Completed in 2019 at 19 stories and 99.90 m, Shibuya PARCO is the modern reincarnation of a 1970s cultural institution. Takenaka Corporation’s design weaves the pleasure of walking into the architecture itself through its cascading outdoor terraces. Step out onto one of those landings during your next visit to Shibuya and look back across the sloping neighborhood — the city folds around you in a way that is distinctly, unmistakably Shibuya.