Urban Futures, Tokyo

We speak with Thomas Heatherwick about his contribution to the ToranomonAzabudai Project, an ambitious urban regeneration project in Tokyo inspired by the concept of future cities

It's the antithesis of a hard-edged skyscraper: wrapped in greenery, it rolls, drapes and undulates, rising 40 metres before flowing underground, with homes, shops, a school and even a temple lying among its curves.

The ‘it' in question is an innovative, organic structure designed by British architect Thomas Heatherwick for the Toranomon-Azabudai Project, an urban regeneration development in Tokyo masterminded by Mori Building.

‘It's almost like a latticed tablecloth,' says the designer. ‘It drapes across the site, with work and living spaces underneath the lattice, but it also rolls down to make a six-thousandsquare-metre public open space in the middle, with sakura trees. Imagine pushing down on a tablecloth and its edges rolling up.'

Construction work has just begun on the project, one of the city's most ambitious urban developments in recent years: spanning an eight-hectare site in the heart of the capital and close to three decades in the making, the so-called ‘city within a city' is set for completion in 2023.

Powered entirely by renewable energy sources, it will comprise three high-tech towers, interlinked by Heatherwick's undulating structure that flows seamlessly through the public spaces. Dubbed a ‘modern urban village', it's expected to house 20,000 office workers, 3,500 residents, 150 shops, a luxury hotel, an international school and cultural facilities, with Mori estimating that up to 30 million people will visit the new landmark every year.

According to Shingo Tsuji, president and ceo of Mori Building, the project was inspired by the changing nature of life and work ushered in by technological advancements, and by questioning the essence of a city and what a future version should look like.

Heatherwick is among a star-studded roll call of global creatives who are attempting to answer these questions, with the three skyscrapers designed by global firm Pelli Clarke Pelli Architects and a portion of retail spaces by award-winning Japanese architect Sou Fujimoto.

The project taps into Heatherwick's prolonged interest in the foundations of modern living, shifting work-life values and the quest for quality of life, while seeking an antidote to the rise of increasingly homogenised urban developments cropping up in cities around the world. ‘We're fascinated by how you can have urban density but also intense quality of life,' explains Heatherwick, whose structure encompasses the public realm and lower-level architecture that sweeps through the project. ‘Our site has these three very significant towers, and our role was to create all the other architecture to support that, including homes, workspaces and a school.'

The towers' stark physicality led Heatherwick and his team to seek out a counterpoint that would make the site distinctive, rather than what he considers the ‘faceless, generic and soulless' new districts being built in cities around the world. ‘Often you have large towers that sit on these inhuman podium structures, so we were interested in breaking away from these notions and creating a more natural, more human-scaled counterpoint to the towers.'

Horticulture is a vital ingredient in Heatherwick's design, as seen in the planted pergola that will flow across the site and reflect its original topography of a small valley. Its grid structure was inspired by the Hampstead Pergola in London — an Edwardian landmark renowned for the romance of its faded elegance — with thousands of plants and hundreds of trees interwoven into the structure.

‘One of the missing elements in many new pieces of cities has been horticulture,' he says. ‘Our idea is an undulating, heavily planted grid that creates landscape and blurs the levels of the site: you can walk up or underneath it and it plunges down at different points. It also respectfully allows the temple to sit above in a moment of reverence. It acts to stitch the whole site together like a piece of embroidery.'

Japan's famed craft heritage is also woven into the structure, with Heatherwick currently creating prototypes of engraved glass inspired by traditional Edo kiriko glass-cutting methods, but executed using modern techniques.

For Heatherwick, the entire project is the culmination of a long-standing appreciation of Japanese aesthetics and artisanry. He recalls creating a design for a temple in southern Japan's Kagoshima region almost 20 years ago, and though the temple was never actually built, he still describes the experience as ‘influential' and ‘key' to his development. ‘It was the first time I'd experienced the country,' he says. ‘The values in Japanese culture were legendary to me as a design student, so it was powerful to experience the phenomenal craftsmanship and approach to simplicity and landscape.'

Given his fascination with Japanese culture, it's not surprising that Heatherwick describes himself as being ‘thrilled' when Mori approached him for this project. ‘There aren't many developers who'd have the confidence to do something like this,' he concludes. ‘They've been assembling the site gradually over more than twenty-five years, working with the community. They're very committed to doing something meaningful here.'

This page, top The project is expected to house 150 retail outlets, with some of the retail space designed by Sou Fujimoto

This page, bottom Heatherwick’s design ‘rolls down to make a six-thousand-squaremetre public open space in the middle’, replete with cherry trees. The project taps into his interest in quality of life in the context of work-life balance and urban density

Located on eight hectares between other notable mixed-use projects ark Hills, Roppongi Hills and Toranomon Hills, the development has been almost three decades in the making