The VI plan for Mori Building Co., Ltd. was a project that resulted from repeated conversations that I had with the president, Minoru Mori, about the image of the art facility that was to be constructed at the top of Roppongi Hills.

Before Roppongi Hills, Ark Hills and Ebisu Garden Place were the best-known examples of urban complex development. Compared with Roppongi Hills, the former was constructed on a significantly less favorable site, while the latter strikes one as a large industrial site that was converted to commercial use. Neither provides much in terms of a compelling urban development. That is to say that society at that time had not yet given any attention to developing a business approach which increased the value of the site and improved the profitability of the tenants by generating activity in a planned complex of hotels, offices, residences, and commercial and cultural zones. It was thought that rising land prices were generally the result of an accelerating pace of real estate investment, and there was no clear idea in ordinary society of a business model that sought to create value for land and buildings by means of straightforward land acquisition and a carefully constructed urban planning concept. One reason was the fact that there were very few locations where such a business model was possible on a grand scale, and few companies capable of carrying it out.

Roppongi Hills was a project that Mori Building had worked on for many years. It was a symbolic project which aimed for urban complex development that was radically different from conventional building development. The company conceived of an art museum as the facility which would create the core image of this urban complex, and planned to construct it on the top floor of the massive Mori Tower. This art museum was to be a cultural project that would be largely responsible for generating the crucial image of Roppongi Hills.

It was to be a world-class art facility constructed on top of a giant high-rise building. The question was what sort of image should it present. We helped with studies utilizing models and graphics, and as part of the preparations for opening the facility we produced a book titled crossing the parallel which described the concepts behind this project. This book contained the Le Corbusier art collection belonging to president Minoru Mori, and the title suggested the idea behind the project of traversing concepts that never intersect. The order for the Mori Building VI work came out of these circumstances.

Constructing offices, residences, commercial zones, and cultural zones such as the art facility in the center of a super high-rise city vastly increased the efficiency of the construction. The resulting space was filled with lush greenery to create a vertical garden city. In Tokyo, where population is overcrowded in the horizontal plane and sparsely populated in the vertical dimension, there was a strong desire to build toward the sky. This was the image of the ideal city presented by Le Corbusier in his book The Radiant City. Mori Building was aiming to create the vertical garden city imagined by Le Corbusier in Japan. The Mori Building symbol is a visual representation of looking up from the ground toward the sky in a high-rise city composed of a cluster of super high-rise buildings, and is a perfect representation of a vertical garden city.

The mark which symbolizes looking up at the tops of tall buildings is a good match for the exterior of a high-rise building. As outdoor lighting changes to fluorescent lighting and LEDs, this precisely detailed mark can be provided with a highly accurate light source in order to make a sharp impression to the eye at nighttime also.

10 years have passed since this VI was introduced. Work is progressing on applying the VI to the older numbered “Mori” buildings, and at this stage we have also proposed a highly readable original “Mori Building Font” in addition to the symbol mark. By carefully creating the signs that are installed on the buildings, it will be possible to draw the older buildings as well into the image of a high-rise city group. It will be possible to create a finely crafted depth to the image of a company that builds cities.

Kenya Hara
Graphic designer. Born in 1958 in Okayama. President of Nippon Design Center and professor at Musashino Art University. Joined Nippon Design Center after graduating from the Science of Design Faculty in the College of Art and Design at Musashino Art University in 1983. Specializes in identification and communication: the design of “concepts” not “objects.” Became a board member of MUJI in 2001, and received the Tokyo ADC Grand Prix in 2003 for his MUJI advertising campaign. Recent productions include the Matsuya Ginza department store renewal, Umeda Clinic signage system, Mori Building VI plan, Nagano Olympic opening and closing ceremony programs, official poster for the 2005 Aichi World’s Fair, and other works representing Japan. Exhibitions which he has produced, including “RE DESIGN,” “HAPTIC,” and “SENSEWARE” have attracted attention as attempts at changing the understanding of the relationships between design and society and between human beings and their senses. His recent book Designing Design has been translated into several languages and read by many persons around the world.