Shinjuku Front Tower

A 35-story, 166-meter office tower completed in 2011 in Kita-Shinjuku under a Tokyo Metropolitan Government–led urban redevelopment project, forming part of the Shinjuku Front Square complex together with an adjacent 20-story residential tower.

Use

Office tower

Area

Shinjuku City

Completed

2011

Floors

35 above ground, 2 below

Height

166 m

Total floor area

approx. 93,996 m²

Developer

Tokyo Metropolitan Government (Kita-Shinjuku 2-chome District Urban Redevelopment)

Architect

Mitsubishi Jisho Sekkei

A Vertical Accent for Kita-Shinjuku

North of Shinjuku Station, beyond the railroad overpass and the bustle of Kabukicho, the city quickly settles back into a lower-rise grain of mid-century buildings and narrow streets. This is Kita-Shinjuku — the northern quarter of Shinjuku — and it is here that the Shinjuku Front Tower arrived in 2011, inserting a 35-story, 166-meter vertical accent into a neighbourhood that had long remained at human scale.

Designed by Mitsubishi Jisho Sekkei, the tower is the centrepiece of the Shinjuku Front Square development, a mixed-use complex that also includes an adjacent 20-story condominium tower completed the following year. Together they occupy the footprint of what was once a dense district of aging low-rise buildings, replaced through a comprehensive redevelopment that reorganized land rights, widened pavements, and created ground-level commercial space facing the main street.

The Tokyo Metropolitan Government as Redevelopment Organizer

What distinguishes the Shinjuku Front Square project from privately led high-rise developments is the role of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government as the statutory executing authority. Under Japan’s Urban Redevelopment Act, a metropolitan government can take the lead in a redevelopment project — acquiring land, relocating residents, and overseeing construction — when the area meets specific criteria for density, aging structures, or fire risk.

Kita-Shinjuku qualified on several grounds, and the resulting development follows the standard logic of Tokyo urban renewal: scattered small plots are aggregated, a single high-rise is built to accommodate all the programme, and the remaining open land is returned to the public as plaza and pedestrian space. The total floor area of the office tower alone is approximately 94,000 square meters, serving multiple tenants across its 35 floors.

Summary

Shinjuku Front Tower was completed in 2011 with 35 above-ground floors and a height of approximately 166 meters. As the anchor of the Shinjuku Front Square redevelopment led by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government, it transformed a low-rise Kita-Shinjuku block into a functioning high-rise precinct.

The walk from Shinjuku Station north through Kita-Shinjuku shows how Tokyo’s urban renewal logic has been applied zone by zone, gradually reshaping what is still a work in progress.

Related: Shinjuku i-Land Tower / JR Shinjuku Miraina Tower / Sumitomo Fudosan Shinjuku Grand Tower

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