Gate Tower Building

The Gate Tower Building

The Gate Tower Building ( ゲートタワービル Gēto tawā biru ) is a 71.9 m high office building in the Fukushima district of Osaka , Japan . Its peculiarity is that a street runs through the building.

The building

Schematic representation of the building

Building number 5-4-21, completed in 1992, is located in Osaka 's Fukushima district. Its construction consists of fiber concrete with steel girders and has two building cores. The floor plan is circular with an area of 760 m², the total area of 7,956 m² is distributed over 16 floors with an additional two basement floors and a machine room on the roof for the elevator technology. The roof has a helipad .

The Umeda junction of the Ikeda route (No. 11) of the Hanshin motorway network runs through the building between floors 5 to 7. The motorway operator is the tenant of these floors and pays the equivalent of around 15,000 euros per month. The elevator travels through these three floors without stopping; in the elevator, floor 4 is followed by floor 8. The floors through which the motorway leads are elevator shafts, stairs and building services. The motorway does not touch the building, it runs as a bridge through the building, bridge piers stand next to the building. There is an emergency ladder. The motorway is coated with multilayer soundproofing at the level of the building . The building is partially equipped with 9 mm thick soundproof windows.

The architects were Azusa Sekkei and Yamamoto-Nishihara Kenchiku Sekkei Jimushō, the Satō Kōgyō Co. Ltd. carried out the construction work.

history

Since the early Meiji period , this 2,353 square meter property has belonged to a firewood and coal store, but the gradual change in fuel consumption led to the deterioration of the company's buildings. In 1983 the redevelopment of the area was approved, but the building permits were rejected because the motorway was already planned. The property owners refused to give up and negotiated with Hanshin Expressway Corporation for around five years to come to an agreement on this solution.

The Umeda exit

Typically, Japanese highway operators buy up the land they are building a highway over. These interests were not guaranteed to succeed in court. For this reason, in 1989 Japan's highway, urban planning, redevelopment laws and building codes were partially revised to allow for uniform development of highways and buildings in the same area. The law was intended to enable the construction of the second ring road in Tokyo's Toranomon business district in Minato , but was ultimately not applied. Instead, it came into effect when the Gate Tower Building was built, laying the legal basis for Japan's first building to 'house' a motorway.

The soundproofing around the motorway exit

Broadcast reports

Martin Hackl, Marco Witt, Simon Bethke and Martina Beils: Traffic planning: A motorway leads through this high-rise , ProSieben - Galileo , series: Lunch Break , episode 397, season 2016 from December 28, 2016 (YouTube)