Azabudai Hills, Japan’s new tallest skyscraper, is fat too

But the project is more than just a tall tower. For its developer, Mori Building Company, Azabudai Hills is a path to recast Tokyo’s future.

“Tokyo must evolve into a ‘city of choice’ among global players,” Shingo Tsuji, Mori Building’s CEO, says. “Global players are looking for more than just an office environment.” (A recent report from management consultancy firm Kearney ranked Tokyo in fourth place among global cities, behind New York, Paris and London, despite “declines in business activity and information exchange.”)

And to get there, Mori is pitching the project, designed by architecture firm Pelli Clarke & Partners, as a “vertical garden city,” a combination of green space, mixed-use buildings and public transit on a whopping 872,000 square-foot plot of land that reflects how city-dwellers want to live in a post-COVID world.

Richard A. Brooks—AFP/Getty Images

Pelli Clarke & Partners and its founder, Cesar Pelli, have a long history with Japan, after the Argentine-American architect helped design the U.S. embassy in Tokyo, completed in 1976. Since then, the firm has helped design projects throughout the country, like Abeno Harukas, formerly Japan’s tallest building, and Tokyo’s Nihonbashi Mitsui Tower, which combines a gleaming skyscraper with a 1929-era historic landmark.

PC&P’s Azabudai Hills project features a few traits that distinguish it from skyscrapers around the world. For one, it’s fat. The tower’s floor space is a lot larger than the needle-thin towers that puncture cityscapes the world over. That large floor plan is…