An urban forest on a slab

The Otemachi business district abuts the Tokyo Imperial Palace. Following an imperial order, a slice of primary forest from the nearby mountains was scaled and recreated in the palace gardens. Later, the authorization to grow the adjacent business district was given on one condition: that small urban forests of high ecological quality be planted throughout – like in the palace gardens. This experiment in scaling tangible landscapes to size is the inspiration behind the Otemachi Tower project: a 3,600-meter-square urban forest at the foot of the new tower, planted in an entirely engineered surface above a metro station. The construction timeline allowed for multiple layers of vegetation, selected with the help of botanists, to be grown and adapted off-site first, in the mountains near Tokyo. At the time of installation, the impact of the striking urban forest and its more than 200 trees was immediate.