With the space at a premium in Japan’s capital, the city is giving birth to a whole new environment for work, rest and play. Mark Caswell explores the futuristic district of Tokyo Midtown.
According to population-trend researcher Demographia, Tokyo had the world’s highest urban-area population in 2007, at just under 35 million inhabitants. Japan’s capital also ranks in the top ten worldwide in terms of population density – mix this with a city which some say lacks a single central focal point among its 23 districts, and it’s not surprising that Tokyo has had to adapt its building practices to fulfil the city’s needs.
Cue the “composite city”, a recent phenomenon in Tokyo which has seen developers attempting to create all-encompassing urban projects, with retail, residential, office, hotel, entertainment and cultural space all integrated within one huge complex.
Covering an area of 109,000 sqm, the Roppongi Hills development led the way in 2003, when building tycoon Minoru Mori opened Tokyo’s first “city within a city”. The complex houses, among other facilities, the offices of Goldman Sachs
and Lehman Brothers, as well as the Grand Hyatt Tokyo, a museum, cinema, TV studio, parks, shops and restaurants, an outdoor amphitheatre and residential apartments. Mori’s aim was to create a centre where “humanity, culture, interaction and vision could flourish”, while at the same time eliminating the Tokyo average of 23 annual days of commuting for those living and working in the complex.
It is estimated that over 40 million people a year have visited the Roppongi Hills development since it opened, a success which led to a second “city” opening in April 2007, under the moniker Tokyo Midtown (derived from the district of the same name in New York).
Also located in the Roppongi area, the US$3 billion new project occupies the former site of the Japan Defence Agency, and has attracted corporate tenants ranging from Fujifilm and Yahoo to Cisco and Konami. Other business facilities include two state-of-the-art conference centres, with a total of 15 room combinations, the largest of which is capable of holding more than 800 people theatre-style.
The complex also boasts Tokyo’s tallest inhabitable building, Midtown Tower, which is a whole ten metres higher than its rival Mori Tower. Indeed, the sense of one-upmanship continues with Midtown’s hotel offering – the first three and top nine floors of the skyscraper house the luxury Ritz-Carlton Tokyo, a 248-room hotel complete with 360-degree views from its 46th-floor spa and fitness centre. On a good day guests can see as far as Mount Fuji, some 200km away.
Ritz-Carlton also manages 244 unfurnished, long-stay Park Residences, located in an adjacent building, which come with a concierge, fitness centre, lounge, housekeeping and room service. It’s these apartments – along with the 332 rental and owned apartments within the Midtown Residences building, and another 107 serviced apartments which make up the Oakwood Premier Tokyo Midtown – that turn the complex into a living, breathing “city”, rather than just another huge shopping mall.
Ricco Deblank, general manager of the Ritz-Carlton Tokyo, says: “We’re finding that 80 per cent of the Park Residences are being rented by Japanese customers, and of these, 75 per cent are using them as their first home. The other 25 per cent tend to be from outside Tokyo and use the residences as a second home.
“In terms of the hotel, we’re experiencing about 70 per cent Japanese guests, the majority of which are high-
end leisure customers. We have what I believe to be the finest location in town – the complex is so well situated that
you can reach anywhere in Tokyo within 20 minutes.”
Of course, adding a residential community to the project brings with it needs such as healthcare and everyday living, and consequently Tokyo Midtown has facilities including a hospital, post office, bank, supermarket, hairdressers, pharmacy, dentist, opticians, nursery, gym, florist, pet shop and stationers, to name but a few. The complex also has direct links with the Oedo and Hibiya lines on Tokyo’s underground system.
These day-to-day essentials are not going to attract the sort of visitor numbers that Roppongi Hills has enjoyed though – for this Tokyo Midtown has had to encourage a myriad of retail and leisure facilities to locate within its boundaries. One of the most important is the Suntory Museum of Art, originally sited in the Marunouchi district of the city, whose “art revisited, beauty revealed” principle encompasses both Western and Asian art and sculpture. Future exhibits for 2008 include a collection of Edo-period kimonos, and the Japanese leg of the Musée National Picasso Paris world tour.
Tokyo Midtown also incorporates two large park areas (much of which bows to the Japanese love of technology by providing wifi internet access), flanked by the 21_21 Design Sight Museum, a contemporary art space housed in an ultra-modern building with a sloping steel roof and 14 metre-high glass panels. Indeed, the whole of Tokyo Midtown serves as one big interactive art gallery, with several stone and bronze pieces by Japanese sculptor Kan Yasuda dotted around the complex.
If cultural activities bring in the visitors, then the shopping and eating out will keep them there. Tokyo Midtown has three buildings with retail space inside, including the five-storey Galleria. The emphasis is on chic, high-end outlets, including a Bottega Veneta store, Harry Winston jewellers, and a wine bar showcasing produce from Hollywood film director Francis Ford Coppola’s winery. The Ritz-Carlton hotel has recently been awarded a Michelin star for its Japanese restaurant, and also has a French all-day dining eatery.
Ritz-Carlton’s Deblank says: “Nearly 80 per cent of guests at our restaurants come from outside the hotel, which makes them very much a destination in their own right. The great advantage of Tokyo Midtown is that everything is literally right on your doorstep – the shops, the restaurants, the museums. There’s even a beautiful Japanese garden right outside the hotel with a children’s playground.
“It’s become a great destination for Tokyo life, and also for attracting foreign visitors, and I think we’re going to see more [composite cities] like this – Tokyo’s land is very sparse and very expensive, so one of the solutions is to build up and use the land cleverly as our owners have.”
Of course, developments of this nature are not without their critics. Some people have condemned the concentration of high-end apartments, shops and restaurants at the expense of mass-market eateries and affordable housing, and detractors also point out that the developments have brought greater noise pollution and traffic congestion to the area.
Nevertheless, the composite cities are a gleaming example of Tokyo’s new vision of urban life, and there’s much more to come. The enormous redevelopment of Tokyo’s Marunouchi area, close to the Imperial Palace, dwarfs what has come before, and stage one has already seen the completion of the 24-storey Peninsula Tokyo hotel, which opened September last year (click here for a full review).
By the time this area is finished in 2017, developer Mitsubishi Estate Corporation aims to turn the area into “the most interactive city in the world” – so watch this space…
GETTING THERE
Japan Airlines departs daily from London at 1900, arriving at 1600 the next day. Visit jal.co.jp.
Virgin departs London daily at 1300, arriving at 1000 the next day. Visit virgin-atlantic.com.
ANA departs London daily at 1900, arriving at 1555 the next day. Visit anaskyweb.com.
British Airways departs twice a day from London at 1235 and 1435, arriving at 0905 and 1105 the next day. Visit ba.com.
CONTACTS
Tokyo Midtown tokyo-midtown.com/en
Ritz-Carlton Tokyo ritzcarlton.com
Roppongi Hills roppongihills.com/en
Oakwood Premier Tokyo Midtown oakwood.com
Grand Hyatt Tokyo tokyo.grand.hyatt.com
Visit Japan visitjapan.jp
