Japan has a new tallest building – but its height may surprise you

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There’s a new colossus on the streets of Tokyo. 

We’re not talking about the return of Gozilla, Japan’s most famous kaiju. Opened today, the Azabudai Hills complex includes the new tallest building in the entire country. 

The real estate complex includes three skyscrapers, with the tallest one – the Mori Building – topping out at 330 metres.

For context, that makes the Mori Building under half the height of the world’s tallest building, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai which stands at 828m tall. It is, however, taller than the EU’s tallest building, the Varso Tower in Warsaw, which is 310m tall.

Asia and the Middle-East are far ahead of the game for tall skyscrapers, yet Japan’s tallest buildings are on the comparatively small side next to China, Taiwan and South Korea. This is largely due to the increased seismic risk in the Japanese archipelago. To counter that risk, skyscrapers must adhere to strict standards and often are built to far chunkier appearances than the nation’s peers.

Azabudai Hills has been created as a “city within a city” and hopes to attract 30 million annual visitors to its site in the Minato City district of Tokyo. It will accommodate 20,000 office workers and 3,500 residents when it is fully occupied. Among the three skyscrapers, there will be over 150 restaurants and shops as well as a new immersive digital art museum from the Japanese collective teamLab, which is due to open next February.

While Azabudai Hills is the new tallest building in Japan, overtaking the place of Osaka’s 300m tall Abeno Harukas, it is not the tallest structure in the country. Round the corner from the complex is the Tokyo Tower, built in 1958 as a communications tower that peeks out 3m higher than the skyscraper.

At nearly twice the Tokyo Tower’s height, there is also the Tokyo Skytree to the north of the city. Completed in 2012, the Skytree is an impressive 634m tall.

Not only do these towers tower over Azabudai Hills, but its own record as tallest building is set to fall when the 390m tall Torch Tower is completed sometime between 2027 and 2028.

For the moment though, Azabudai Hills can sit comfortably in the knowledge of being the tallest inhabited structure in Japan. Until Godzilla does come back, that is.