Tokyo Sky Tree

Last Thursday morning I got up a bit earlier than usual to catch a train to the other side of town where the new Tokyo Sky Tree tower is under construction. I couldn’t have thought of a better name for a tower myself. Nikken is one of the primary architects working on the development, and my friends Banno-san (Mariko) and Misawa-san have been kind enough to arrange for me to take a tour of the building site.

We arriving in the construction site offices and met one of Nikken’s project managers. We watched a short promo movie about the tower on his laptop, and then we broke out the hard hats and headed outside.

For a tower so tall, it has a surprisingly small footprint. I believe someone said that the structural foundation for the tower extends 50m (about 175 ft) into the ground. The tower also features an inner core that is weighted to provide stability in the event of an earthquake. The outer steel structure creates an interesting profile by morphing from a multi-sided polygon horizontal section at the bottom to a circular horizontal section at the top. There are two view decks, one with a restaurant and one with a cool spiral walkway that wraps up to the top level of the building.

Of course, those aren’t yet built, so we took the construction elevator up about 300 m to a mechanical level that people will not normally be allowed to visit when the building is complete.Although it was a bit hazy, the view is amazing. Instead of the other view deck I went to in Shinjuku which is surrounded by other tall buildings, this one is in an area of low buildings, providing unobstructed views over the city. You can easily pick out each of the many city centers across the landscape.

After hanging out in the tower for a little while, Misawa-san, Banno-san and I headed back down, said our goodbyes to the project manager, and then made our way over to nearby Asakusa to visit a temple and have lunch.