Roppongi Hills: from buying the land to bringing owners and investors in (2003)

A design that limits investment, run by a man who decided the details

A company that had ended up owning three-quarters of the Ark Hills site now said it wanted to hold a third at Roppongi. The construction of the business itself had changed — from buying up land and keeping the development profit, to sharing the burden with existing landowners and outside investors. For a company whose unrealised gains had fallen from a peak of ¥1.5 trillion to the low hundreds of billions, this was the only road left on which decade-long redevelopment could continue. Having chosen not to buy, Mori Building’s work drifted from holding land toward operating a district.

The design that limited investment nonetheless coexisted with management that decided every detail in person. In the museum and retail spaces on the upper floors, lifts and staircases were removed at short notice on Mori Minoru’s word that they obstructed the flow of people, and the colour of a high-rise apartment building’s exterior wall drew instructions from him too. Less than a year after opening, a child was killed in an automatic revolving door and the Metropolitan Police searched Mori Building and Sanwa Shutter. It is hard to argue that a way of working in which nothing proceeds until the boss is satisfied with the smallest feature of a building was well matched to the demands of safety at a place that receives tens of millions of visitors a year.