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A Highway Through A Building!!! - Japanese are Unstoppable!!!

A Highway through a Building 

Gate Tower Building is a 16-story office building in Fukushima-ku, Osaka , Japan . And what makes it notable is the highway that passes through the 5th-7th floors of this building. The highway is part of the Hanshin Expressway, a network (239.3 km) of expressways surrounding Osaka , Kobe and Kyoto , Japan . The Gate Tower Building is Japan 's first building to have a highway pass through it. And it had been nicknamed "beehive" referring to its appearance as a "bustling place". The Umeda Exit of the Ikeda Route of the Hanshin Expressway system passes through this building. The expressway is the tenant of these floors. The elevator doesn't stop on floor 5th-7th, floor 4 being followed by floor 8. These floors consist of elevators, stairways, machinery and other stuff. The highway passes through the building as a bridge, held up by supports next to the building making no contact with the building itself. The building has a double core construction, with a circular cross section and special care is taken by providing surrounded structure to the highway to protect the building from noise and vibration. Generally expressways are built underground, and passing through a building is an extremely rare occasion. It dates back to 1983, when the redevelopment of this area was decided upon, "building permits were refused because the highway was already being planned to be built over this land. The property rights' holders refused to give up, and negotiated with the Hanshin Expressway corporation for approximately 5 years to reach the current solution."
 
 
 
 
 
 

Comments (10)

Apr 08, 2010
rachel said...
this is amazing! the Japanese people are so intelligent. I wonder if they are already AIs for the past 10 years to conceptualize something like this! And when I get to Japan, I'm gonna make sure that I have my Taxi drive through the building. It's going to be an experience!
Apr 11, 2010
Eric Yap liked this post.
Apr 12, 2010
 said...
bloody brillant
Apr 16, 2010
Amit Banerjee said...
Great find Anand !
Apr 20, 2010
Walter Buffalo said...
I always wondered whether they built the highway through an exisiting building or whether the building was built around the highway. Thanks for doing the research!
Another Osaka building that baffled me was Keihan's Kyobashi Station. The only photo I could find online was this one:
http://travel.rakuten.co.jp/share/image_up/115/LARGE/gI6vWe.jpeg
It's just a station building with a hotel and shops inside, but because the railway line is elevated, it looks as if the train line goes through the building, especially surreal when viewed from below.
Nov 19, 2010
Paul Kavuma said...
These guys are really unstopable.Our UG roads are not even well tarmacced
Jun 29, 2011
Evgeniya Buyko said...
WOW)))magnificent
Oct 02, 2011
Pandurangaswamy H said...
its wonderfull
Feb 03, 2012
ARPITA BEHERA said...
excellent engineering.realy u people r too intelligent.
May 15, 2012
Delta Solutions said...
Japanese are really so brilliant....They did a awesome job.

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