Umeda Sky Building
Hiroshi Hara · Osaka, Japan · 1993
Two office towers are joined high above the city by a circular observation structure and dramatic diagonal escalators. Hiroshi Hara treats the project as a fragment of an imagined elevated city, with bridges and voids turning the skyline itself into part of the circulation experience. The rooftop observatory makes the spatial concept unusually accessible and offers a useful reading of Osaka's large-scale late-20th-century urban development.