japanese interior design chicago
highway through a building story quite often when you see something unbelievable on the internet you don’t know whether or not it is fake or real behind me is osaka’s gate tower building and believe me — it’s real! that’s right! going through that building is a highway. osaka is japan’s second largest metropolitan area located in the heart of the kansai region.
not far from osaka station lies one of the world’s most peculiar buildings. from above, it’s easy to see why but from building level, the gate tower building is just ridiculous there’s a story behind this building but before i get into that, i wanted to go inside the tkp gate tower building and find out what exactly’s on those middle floors. i got permission from the building owner to give you a look around.
first i had to pin down which floors the highway was located i quickly found out those floors simple don’t exist. 1 2 3 4 the elevator simply doesn’t stop on the highway level. in the lobby, you can see it listed though. floors 5 6 and 7 are the hanshin expressway
but the 8th floor was a conference room so i asked to take a look from up there the elevator took me above the highway yup! you can watch the cars go straight though the building. from an adjacent building, you can see that the expressway curves below my postion on the 8th floor. it never actually touches the building. it passes thorough suspended on a bridge surrounded by a tunnel to prevent noise and vibrations
to the surrounding floors. on the 5th to 7th floors is a stairwell, elevator and some machinery by the way, the highway is the legal tenant of floors 5 through 7 about 1500 meters away is osaka’s famous umeda sky building with the highest escalators in the world from there, you can get an amazing view of the city and the gate tower building you’re probably wondering why the hanshin expressway is passing through the building, right?
it’s basically a land rights dispute with a sort of happy ending the property was owned by a business since the early meiji era but when the business declined, so did the buildings the area was approved to be redeveloped in 1983 but the property holder refused to give up the land, even though new building permits had been refused they negotiated for 5 years and this was the compromise now it’s part of osaka’s fast growing skyline.
seen it, been in it, and now it’s time to drive through it in a 1996 lotus seven. we got on the hanshin expressway one stop away from the gate tower building and umeda exit let’s go! it’s a 3km drive this is yasui-san yes! this is his wonderful can and
he’s taking me on a trip through the gate tower building and he’s also — oh! oh! look! look! that’s your company! yes! he’s the president of a delivery service that gets things speedily to people whereever they are in japan it didn’t take long to arrive. felt like we were driving inside a video game to complete a mission
was there anything special about driving through a building like this? when you do it in a lotus 7, you bet there is! in reality, it’s just a tunnel for drivers to pass though, but the visual of it all is just super cool and now i can check it off my list of things to do only in japan you can get good views of the building on the osaka kanjou sen or circular / loop line between osaka and fukushima station when you think about it, the shortest route from a to b is a straight line, never mind that this ones curves a little
i’m just saying more highways should go through more buildings because – it’s just simple cooler that way if you’re in osaka, take a look around and see if you can find the crazy building with a highway going through it and – see you next time! next time i meet up with only in japan regular kevin riley and we hear to nara for a street food guide episode
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