Why you should experience Toranomon Hills in Tokyo, Japan.
Toranomon Hills is an ambitious urban district where Toranomon's commercial power, postwar infrastructure planning, international architecture and large-scale metropolitan redevelopment converge around four towers integrated directly with Tokyo's road and rail networks.
Set along Sakurada-dori near Shintora-dori and just steps from Toranomon Hills Station, the district spans 7.5 hectares across Mori Tower, Business Tower, Residential Tower and Station Tower, with pedestrian routes, plazas and elevated connections joining buildings on both sides of the surrounding streets. Mori Tower rises 247 meters above Loop Road No. 2, whose alignment passes beneath the building, before Station Tower extends the district westward through a direct connection with the Hibiya Line and an elevated pedestrian deck crossing Sakurada-dori. Moving between the towers reveals infrastructure operating as part of the architecture itself, with roads, subway circulation, landscaped terraces and high-rise structures organized as a continuous piece of the district. The result is a development where Loop Road No. 2, Tokyo Metro and four architecturally distinct towers make Toranomon Hills a physical demonstration of how Tokyo has rebuilt an entire business district around transportation infrastructure.
What you should know about Toranomon Hills.
Toranomon Hills is best known for realizing the long-delayed Loop Road No. 2 through an urban redevelopment strategy that placed Toranomon Hills Mori Tower directly above the arterial route using Japan's Multi-Level Road System. Plans for the road originated in 1946, leaving the Shimbashi-Toranomon section unresolved for decades before the Tokyo Metropolitan Government advanced a Type II Urban Redevelopment Project that combined roadway construction with redevelopment rights across the surrounding blocks. Nihon Sekkei designed the resulting Mori Tower around the underground alignment, using a gently curved plan that follows Loop Road No. 2 beneath a 52-story, 247-meter structure containing 244,360 square meters of floor area. Obayashi Corporation constructed the tower after work began in 2011, with 6,000 square meters of open space created around Oval Square and the Step Garden as part of the redevelopment. Shintora-dori subsequently emerged above the completed tunnel section as the surface boulevard linking Toranomon with Shimbashi, and the full Loop Road No. 2 reached completion in December 2022 after a 68-year development history. Mori Tower, the Multi-Level Road System and Loop Road No. 2 established the infrastructural mechanism that allowed Toranomon Hills to grow from a single redevelopment project into a 7.5-hectare district containing 792,000 square meters of floor area.
Shohei Shigematsu and OMA carried the district into a new architectural phase through Station Tower, developing an “Activity Band” that extends from Shintora-dori toward Akasaka as a three-dimensional circulation axis through the 49-story building. The 266-meter tower uses that axis to connect subway infrastructure, commercial floors and elevated pedestrian circulation, preventing the skyscraper from operating as an isolated vertical object within Toranomon. TOKYO NODE occupies the tower's upper levels as an 10,000-square-meter platform combining galleries, halls, laboratories and event spaces, extending the Activity Band from metropolitan circulation into cultural production and experimentation. Heatherwick Studio developed another component through the Station Atrium and public realm, using substantial planted areas and interconnected pedestrian levels to strengthen movement between the tower and surrounding district. OMA, Shohei Shigematsu, TOKYO NODE and Heatherwick Studio advance Toranomon Hills from the road-centered engineering of Mori Tower toward an architecture in which transportation, public circulation and cultural programming operate as a single metropolitan system.
How to fold Toranomon Hills into your trip.
Toranomon Hills works as the contemporary anchor within a daytime Toranomon and Atago route connecting Tokugawa religious patronage, the birth of Japanese broadcasting and one of the country's earliest private art collections.
Begin at Atago Shrine, commissioned by Tokugawa Ieyasu in 1603 atop the 26-meter Atagoyama as a sanctuary dedicated principally to Homusubi no Mikoto, the deity associated with protection from fire. Its steep 86-step approach acquired the name “Stone Steps of Success” through the Edo-period account of Marugame retainer Magaki Heikuro riding a horse up the staircase to retrieve plum blossoms before third shogun Tokugawa Iemitsu, joining the shrine's protective function with one of Toranomon and Atago's enduring historical traditions. Continue to NHK Museum of Broadcasting on Atagoyama, where Japan's first radio broadcasts originated from the Tokyo Broadcasting Station in 1925 before the museum devoted to broadcasting history was established there in 1956. Its collections trace the technological progression from radio into television, satellite transmission, high-definition broadcasting and digital systems, preserving equipment and programming associated with the medium that transformed Japanese mass communication during the twentieth century. Conclude at Okura Museum of Art, founded by industrialist Kihachiro Okura around a collection he assembled across Japanese and East Asian art and housed in an institution recognized as Japan's oldest surviving private art museum. The collection encompasses 2,500 works, including National Treasures and Important Cultural Properties, connecting Okura's industrial fortune and cultural patronage with the preservation of Buddhist painting, calligraphy, ceramics and other works acquired during Japan's rapid modernization. The progression moves from Tokugawa Ieyasu's protection of Edo through Atagoyama's role in the development of Japanese broadcasting into Kihachiro Okura's institutional preservation of Asian art, placing Toranomon Hills within a district repeatedly shaped by religious authority, technological change and private cultural ambition.
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