Iidamachi I-Garden Air

Developed on a 5ha ex rail freight yard site in the center of Tokyo, the urban development theme was to reinforce a green connection linking the Imperial Palace and Koishikawa Korakuen gardens. The design focused on site-specific aspects of water, greenery and history and improving the interface and linkages through to neighboring areas. The green linkage concept galvanized the many stakeholders into a single direction and resulted in a 300m long tree-lined pedestrian walkway, uniformly setting back buildings from the street. Nikken Sekkei served as administrative body for the community development, negotiated land re-adjustment, governmental approvals and stakeholder consensus as well as general landscape design works and architectural design of five buildings including Nikken's Tokyo headquarters.

• Environment and Energy Saving Architecture Award 2002