Shinjuku Center Building

A 54-story, 223-meter office building forming part of West Shinjuku's high-rise district.

Use

Office tower

Area

Shinjuku City

Completed

1979

Floors

54 above ground, 4 below

Height

223 m

Developer

Tokyo Tatemono

Architect

Taisei Corporation

One tower carrying the subcenter’s skyline

Nishi-Shinjuku, Shinjuku City, Tokyo. In a corner of the subcenter where skyscrapers gather, an office building of 54 floors and a height of 223 meters was completed in 1979. This is the Shinjuku Center Building. Developed by Tokyo Tatemono, it forms part of the skyline as one of the buildings raised during the high-rise growth of West Shinjuku in the 1970s.

West Shinjuku is a district where, starting from the redevelopment of a former water-plant site, skyscrapers rose one after another over little more than a decade. The Shinjuku Center Building joined in that period, taking part in a landscape where multiple high-rises stand shoulder to shoulder.

Reading the city as a cluster

Rather than viewing this building on its own, seeing it together with the neighboring high-rises reveals how the district of West Shinjuku came to be. With buildings of the same generation packed closely together, the Shinjuku subcenter acquired a strong identity as a “cluster of skyscrapers.”

At ground level, plazas and an underground network let people move between the buildings. Beyond the height of any single tower, the way the district functions as a whole is what characterizes West Shinjuku.

Summary

The Shinjuku Center Building is an office building completed in 1979, with 54 floors above ground, 4 below, and a height of 223 meters. Born of Tokyo Tatemono’s development, it stands as one building that reflects the era when West Shinjuku was transformed into a high-rise district in a short span of time.

When you look up at the buildings of West Shinjuku, try viewing them not as single towers but as one mass. You can feel the momentum of the era when a whole district grew tall together.