Toyosu Center Building

A 37-story, 165-meter office tower completed in 1992 on the site of IHI's former factory sports grounds. Designed by Nikken Sekkei and developed by IHI, it was the first skyscraper in the Toyosu district and an early signal that a former industrial waterfront would become a major urban center.

Use

Office tower

Area

Koto City

Completed

1992

Floors

37 above ground, 2 below

Height

165 m

Developer

IHI (Ishikawajima-Harima Heavy Industries)

Architect

Nikken Sekkei

Toyosu’s First Skyscraper

In October 1992, a 37-story tower rose 165 meters above the flat terrain of Toyosu, a district on Tokyo’s eastern waterfront where IHI’s shipbuilding and heavy manufacturing facilities had long dominated the land. Toyosu Center Building was developed by IHI (Ishikawajima-Harima Heavy Industries), designed by Nikken Sekkei, and built by a joint venture of major general contractors led by Shimizu Corporation. Constructed on the site of the factory’s employee sports grounds, the building was conceived not simply as an office tower but as the opening move in a broader redevelopment of the IHI landholdings.

At completion, Toyosu Center Building had no peers in the district — it stood alone as a supertall in an otherwise low-rise industrial and warehouse landscape. The aspiration was deliberate: the building was described at the time as a symbolic structure intended to lead the surrounding area’s development. In 1992, Toyosu Station was served only by the Tokyo Metro Yurakucho Line, and the infrastructure improvements that would later accelerate the area’s growth were still years away.

Thirty Years of Change, Witnessed from One Building

The following decades bore out the building’s premise. Yurikamome extended to Toyosu in 2006, and subsequent residential, commercial, and public development transformed the district beyond recognition. The Toyosu Market relocated from Tsukiji in 2018, bringing a new anchor and a surge of visitors to the area. Tower condominiums now ring the waterfront where the factory once stood. Toyosu Center Building, still functioning as an office tower, stands amid all of this as the earliest permanent record of what the district was projected to become.

Seen against today’s Toyosu skyline — crowded with residential towers and commercial developments — the 1992 building reads as a quiet elder. Its massing and materials reflect the confident corporate architecture of the early-1990s bubble era: a building designed to dominate a site it easily commanded at the time. That the district caught up and eventually surrounded it is precisely what makes the tower worth visiting on foot.

Summary

Toyosu Center Building was completed in 1992, with 37 floors above ground and a height of 165 meters. Developed by IHI as the first step in converting its former factory land, and designed by Nikken Sekkei, it was the first skyscraper in the Toyosu district — a landmark that preceded the area’s full transformation by more than a decade. A walk from Toyosu Station past this building toward the waterfront retraces the arc of one of Tokyo’s most sustained urban makeovers.

Related: Branz Tower Toyosu / The Toyosu Tower

Looking for hotels near Toyosu? Rakuten Travel has options across the waterfront area.