Why you should experience Shibuya Cast in Tokyo, Japan.
Shibuya Cast is a creative urban complex where Shibuya's fashion culture, postwar redevelopment, collaborative work and residential experimentation converge at the southern entrance to Cat Street.
Set along Meiji-dori near Cat Street and just steps from Miyashita Park, the complex occupies the 5,020-square-meter former Miyashitacho Apartments site redeveloped through Tokyo Metropolitan Government's Urban Renewal Step-up Project, with the approximately 35,000-square-meter building rising 16 floors above ground and two below after its April 2017 completion. A 1,000-square-meter garden and broad staircase open the property toward Meiji-dori, an east-west pedestrian passage crosses the site, and triangular ribs across the precast-concrete facade alter the building's appearance with changing daylight, weather and viewing position. Shops and event facilities occupy the lowest levels, co-lab shared offices extend across the first and second floors, corporate offices rise through the 12th floor, and residential floors complete the upper portion with apartments overlooking Central Shibuya. The result is a vertically layered creative center whose public garden, pedestrian route, workplaces and residences convert a former municipal housing property into a major connection between Shibuya, Harajuku and Aoyama.
What you should know about Shibuya Cast.
Shibuya Cast is best known for redeveloping the former Miyashitacho Apartments property through Tokyo Metropolitan Government's Urban Renewal Step-up Project, creating a new base for creative industries on municipal land between Shibuya, Harajuku and Aoyama. Tokyo selected the redevelopment proposal in March 2012, advancing a project on 5,020.09 square meters of land formerly occupied by municipal housing near the entrance to Cat Street. Shibuya Miyashitacho Realty became the project company, with Tokyu Corporation, Sapporo Real Estate Development and Tokyu Construction among its investors, and the completed building opened on April 28, 2017. Nihon Sekkei and Taisei participated in the architectural and structural work, with Taisei and Tokyu Construction responsible for construction of a building using steel, reinforced-concrete and steel-reinforced-concrete systems. Approximately 34,980 square meters of floor area extend across 16 above-ground floors and two basement levels, reaching approximately 71 meters above a site programmed for offices, residences, shops, shared workplaces and event facilities. The project subsequently received a 2018 Good Design Award, selection among the JIA Excellent Architecture 100, an IES Illumination Award of Merit and a 2019 special prize for Shibuya Cast Garden at the Machinaka Hiroba Awards.
Architectural development extended across a large creative team, with noiz principals Keisuke Toyoda and Yusuke Ono supervising the facade and landscape and Torafu Architects contributing to portions of the pedestrian passage and garden paving. Yoshiaki Irobe's sign design joined work by Naruse Inokuma Architects on the collective-housing component, POINT on co-lab and Rhizomatiks on the first-floor plaza installation. The upper residential program contains apartments from the 13th through 16th floors, with the 13th floor devoted to collective housing and the 14th to serviced apartments for short and medium stays. co-lab occupies the first and second floors with a creative community exceeding 400 members, placing independent practitioners beneath standard office floors of approximately 400 tsubo extending from the second through 12th levels. Shibuya Cast consequently translates its creative-industry mission into architecture through separately commissioned facade, landscape, workplace, residential, signage and public-area design across the building.
How to fold Shibuya Cast into your trip.
Shibuya Cast anchors a northbound progression through public architecture, pedestrian infrastructure and major redevelopment along the route connecting Shibuya with Harajuku and Omotesando.
Begin at Miyashita Park, reconstructed in 2020 as a long elevated park above commercial floors between Meiji-dori and the railway tracks, continuing a site history that reaches back to the municipal park established in the postwar period. Its approximately 330-meter form places lawns, sports facilities and gathering areas above the surrounding streets, extending the concentration of public circulation immediately beside Shibuya Cast. Continue north along Cat Street, whose route follows the former course of the Shibuya River and passes directly beside Shibuya Cast before continuing through Jingumae toward Omotesando. Municipal improvements beginning during the late 1980s helped establish the pedestrian environment now associated with the corridor, connecting the former Miyashitacho area with successive generations of fashion businesses and small-scale commercial architecture. Finish at Omotesando Hills, opened in 2006 on the former Dojunkai Aoyama Apartments site through a redevelopment designed by Tadao Ando, where a roughly 250-meter facade follows Omotesando and an interior spiral slope tracks the avenue's approximately three-degree gradient. The progression moves from Miyashita Park's elevated public realm through Cat Street's former river course to Tadao Ando's reconstruction of the Dojunkai site, extending Shibuya Cast's immediate architectural context north through three distinct phases of metropolitan development.
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