Section 1. Expanding the Building Management Business

The construction work was quite challenging due to the difficult environment of the building’s surroundings, which were densely populated with old wooden houses and small buildings and whose streets were occupied by illegally parked cars. However, thanks to the hard work of the builders, construction gradually got back on track, and we were able to hold the frame-raising ceremony on August 30, 1985. Construction was completed on May 31, 1986, one year, seven months after the start of construction.

The structure used steel-frame reinforced concrete construction with eight aboveground floors, one underground floor, and one penthouse floor. The elaborately designed exterior was clad in pale warm gray porcelain tiles of two types—one type with subtly protruding stripes, and one type without stripes. The two types were mixed together to soften the glare of sunlight and to create variation in the exterior’s appearance.

Buildings in Semba had to be designed in accordance with the Semba setback building line (based on a directive by the Osaka Prefectural Government in April 1939), so that the building line is set back at least six meters from the center line of the road running east-west and five meters from the center line of the road running north-south. Although this stipulation applied to the Awajimachi Daibiru Building, we achieved a clean exterior outline by setting the building’s exterior wall farther back than the setback line and making some of the property open to the public. This building was the first of ours to use a natural gas-fired absorption chiller-heater instead of the usual boiler in order to save energy.

The completion ceremony took place on June 3, 1986. Although the building was not fully occupied when it opened, it still had an occupancy rate of 85.2%.