Roppongi Hills Mori Tower

The core of Roppongi Hills, which championed an 'arts and cultural city.' A pioneer of large-scale redevelopment in Tokyo.

Use

Office tower

Area

Minato City

Completed

2003

Floors

54 above ground

Height

238 m

Developer

Mori Building

A single column that redrew the topography of Roppongi

In Roppongi, Minato City, Tokyo, stands Roppongi Hills Mori Tower, completed in 2003. With 54 floors above ground and a height of 238 m, it was a strikingly conspicuous presence in the Tokyo of its day. The development was led by Mori Building, and the entire Roppongi Hills complex anchored by this tower is said to have greatly updated the urban landscape of Minato City.

Roppongi was originally an area characterized by tangled alleys and undulating terrain. The rise of a 238 m vertical tower there made the contrast with the surrounding streetscape extremely vivid. Because it can be spotted even from far away, you could say it serves as a kind of directional landmark within Minato City.

Redevelopment as the will of the city

Mori Tower functions as an office building, and its scale of 54 floors is often discussed in the context of large-scale development in the city center. Behind Mori Building’s commitment to this project is said to have been a long-term vision of fundamentally renewing the aging blocks around Roppongi.

In urban redevelopment, the role an office building plays is not limited to merely providing workspace. By concentrating office demand above a certain scale in one place, chained changes also occur in the surrounding transport, infrastructure and commercial environment. In the case of Mori Tower too, you can sense as you walk the streets how the Roppongi area transformed in terms of urban function after its completion.

That said, what such change means for the local area is not easy to judge in simple terms. Does large-scale development inherit the context of the existing town, or break with it? Walking Roppongi with such questions in mind, starting from Mori Tower, is one way to engage with this neighborhood.

Summary

Roppongi Hills Mori Tower, completed in 2003 with 54 floors above ground and a height of 238 m, still stands in Roppongi, Minato City. This project by its developer Mori Building is said to have brought major change to the urban structure of the Roppongi area.

As someone who tours high-rise architecture as a hobby, what draws me to this tower is less its height itself than the aspect of “architecture as the will of the city.” The figure of 238 m is one of the answers a certain era of Tokyo chose, and that record is etched into the topography of Minato City. When you actually visit and look up from the foot of the tower, you can feel a kind of density that numbers alone cannot convey.