Section 1. Creating New Urban Spaces

Next, Daibiru revealed plans to construct a steel-frame (partially steel-frame reinforced concrete) office building with 23 aboveground floors and three underground floors. The company commissioned Nikken Sekkei to design and supervise the project and signed a construction contract with a joint venture company involving Obayashi Corporation, Kajima Corporation, Takenaka Corporation, and the Zenitaka Corporation.

The design of this building featured the following elements in order to provide a spacious, comfortable environment: (1) an atrium with a 15-meter-high ceiling on the first floor to reduce the number of columns in the office space, (2) super-frame construction for the second floor to support the upper floors with a steel frame consisting of bridge girders spaced 50 m apart, and (3) office spaces with three-meter-high ceilings and 30-cm raised access flooring. As for the exterior, the building was an all-glass high-rise that stood out even in an area where Osaka’s most prominent skyscrapers were clustered.

It was built on soft ground that had formerly been a canal. Furthermore, the four adjacent buildings were connected underground, and because the Sakauchi method was used to simultaneously construct the aboveground and underground levels, the construction process was nerve-wracking to manage.

The groundbreaking ceremony took place in September 1997, and construction was completed in May 2000, about two years and eight months later. The first underground floor was directly connected to Garden Avenue, a 600-m-long underground walkway that runs under the road in front of the building. This made it possible to walk directly between the Umeda Daibiru Building and the Umeda Station on the Hanshin Line and Nishi-Umeda Station on the Osaka Metro Yotsubashi Line without needing an umbrella on rainy days.

In April 1997, the company began looking for tenants with a focus on the main business districts of Osaka, and when the building was completed, Daibiru was able to fill it to capacity with tenants that included Canon Sales (now Canon Marketing Japan Inc.) and Compaq Computer Corporation (now Hewlett-Packard).

A sculpture titled Dragon by American artist Kenneth Snelson was installed beside the main entrance. It won an award at the 12th Osaka Urban Environment Amenity Awards for having clean, light, dynamic shape that does not detract from the open feeling of the Umeda Daibiru Building’s large pilotis, and it was judged to be complementary to the building’s look.