The Mori Arts Center is a museum that occupies the top two floors of a 53-story office tower designed by Kohn Pedersen Fox. The project includes100,000 SF, encompassing a five-story Atrium Lobby, Art Museum, and Tokyo City View, an observation deck and promenade with panoramic views of the city. The Museum provides 32,000 square feet of exhibition space, as well as a museum shop, restaurant-cafe, administrative offices and art handling spaces. A separate cable-net glazed entry pavilion at the base of the tower provides a distinct and iconic entrance to the Museum.

In response to the client's call for a truly unique destination in the city of Tokyo, we created an unprecedented building type: an independent, world-class contemporary art institution located at the top of a 53-story skyscraper.  It is the so-called "jewel in the crown" of Roppongi Hills and the primary cultural component of the entire redevelopment.

 The client's complex program for the Mori Arts Center included a Museum, public observation galleries and promenade, a conference center and academy, administrative offices, and a private club and restaurant.  GTA designed a multi-story atrium, carved out of the core of the building, to connect the different program elements and provide a space where visitors can orient themselves within the building. Addressing specific circulation requirements defined by the client, the designed the Atrium Lobby to function as a primary circulation space, accommodating lobbies for double-decker elevators and up and down escalators, and providing space for crowds of visitors to organize and convene.

The architecture of the Mori Arts Center is designed to overlay clear axes and strong, simple forms onto the sophisticated and complex geometries and circulation patterns of the office tower and the entire site.  Although the building has a curved façade and oval floor plan, the museum galleries are designed as straightforward rectangular boxes, simplifying circulation and providing ideal spaces for art.  Taking advantage of the location at the top of the building, GTA designed linear skylights in the main gallery spaces.

In response to the client's desire for a significant and identifiable entrance to the Mori Arts Center, and to solve complex issues of circulation, we proposed the idea of the Museum Cone, a five-story entrance structure at the base of the office tower. The iconic Museum Cone is a concise solution to an array of circulation, identity, technical, and structural issues.  Because the tower's complex elevator system placed the museum's visitor lobby one floor above the main pedestrian arrival level, and the site plan presented a dense mix of varied commercial uses, the Museum Cone acts both as a beacon for site navigation and a signifier for the cultural components located within the tower.  At night, the resulting structure glows softly, like a paper lantern.  It features glass shingles printed with a translucent ceramic frit pattern, overlapping one another to provide protection against the elements.  Coiling between the funnel structure and the façade, a gently-sloped spiral stair provides views over a historic Japanese Garden as it connects five levels, including garden access, parking, bus drop-off, pedestrian plaza, and Museum bridge.