Azabudai Hills by Heatherwick Studio
Location: Tokyo, Japan
Status: Completed, 2023

Situated in the Minato City of Tokyo, Azabudai Hills is the studio’s first district, and a culmination of a thirty-year long regeneration process steered by Mori Building Company.

The studio designed the public realm and lower podium level architecture which includes homes, shops and restaurants, a hotel, cultural facilities and the studio’s first school. Azabudai Hills continues Mori’s commitment to creating garden cities by featuring many casual gathering spaces throughout 2.4ha of nature and public gardens which include walkable facades, an informal amphitheatre and multiple water scapes.

Working with a complicated, irregular-shaped plot spanning more than eight hectares, the studio has sought to bring harmony and to create a distinctive identity that is particular to Tokyo. The team devised a pergola-like system scaled up to district proportions to organise and unify many different elements of various sizes. In this way, the design allows for significant green space both at ground level and climbing up the podium buildings, without sacrificing connectivity to the ground.

Echoing the natural forms of the project’s valley setting, the undulating structure rises like a gently sloping hillside before puncturing the ground to allow natural light to pour deep into the basement retail zones.

Azabudai Hills opened in 2023 and is expected receive twenty-five to thirty million visitors annually.

more. www.heatherwick.com