The Okura Tokyo

Reopened in 2019, this 41-story, 188 m tower in Toranomon is the modern reincarnation of the beloved 1962 Hotel Okura Tokyo. Yoshio Taniguchi's design for the Prestige Tower honors his father Yoshiro Taniguchi's original while carving its own place in the sky.

Use

Office tower

Area

Minato City

Completed

2019

Floors

41 above ground

Height

188 m

Developer

Hotel Okura

Architect

Yoshio Taniguchi Architecture Design

A Family Legacy in Architecture

The Okura Tokyo stands at 2-10-4 Toranomon, Minato City, Tokyo. The current building reopened on September 12, 2019, following the closure and demolition of the original Hotel Okura Tokyo — one of Japan’s most celebrated postwar buildings. The Prestige Tower rises 41 stories to 188 m and was designed by Yoshio Taniguchi Architecture Design, the firm led by Yoshio Taniguchi, son of the original hotel’s architect Yoshiro Taniguchi. The developer is Hotel Okura.

The first Hotel Okura Tokyo opened in 1962, designed by Yoshiro Taniguchi as one of Japan’s premier expressions of postwar modernism. Its lobby — famous for its shoji-screen lattice patterns and chochin-style lanterns — was internationally cited as a model of how Japanese traditional aesthetics could be translated into a mid-century hotel. When the redevelopment plan was announced, architects around the world protested its demolition. The Okura family’s choice to commission Yoshio Taniguchi — who is himself best known for the Museum of Modern Art renovation in New York — was a deliberate statement: this is a successor, not merely a replacement.

Two Wings, Two Eras

The completed complex comprises two wings on the same site. The Prestige Tower is a slender glass-and-metal curtain-wall skyscraper that establishes a vertical presence in the Toranomon skyline alongside the nearby Toranomon Hills Station Tower. Its vertical-line emphasis contrasts with the original building’s horizontal composition, marking a conscious break as much as a continuation.

The Heritage Wing is a low-rise building constructed alongside the tower, intended to carry forward design elements from the original lobby. Visitors who remember the old hotel come here to find the proportions and decorative motifs that shaped their memory of the Okura, even as the building around them is entirely new.

Together the two wings serve the full range of Okura’s hospitality — rooms, restaurants, banqueting, and meeting facilities — while positioning the hotel at the center of one of Tokyo’s most active redevelopment corridors. Toranomon has changed substantially in the years since the Okura reopened, and the hotel’s continued presence gives the district a connective thread between postwar Tokyo and its current form.

Summary

Reopened in 2019 at 41 stories and 188 m, The Okura Tokyo pairs a contemporary skyscraper with a heritage wing that keeps the original building’s spirit alive. Yoshio Taniguchi’s design answers one of the hardest problems in urban architecture — how to replace something beloved — with restraint, craft, and a family inheritance. A walk through the Heritage Wing lobby, then a look upward at the Prestige Tower, gives you both halves of the answer in the same ten minutes.