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Planners Reveal Design of 'New Tokyo Tower;' Will Be the Tallest Structure in the World

Link to article with rendering

Friday , November 24, 2006

TOKYO — Japanese planners on Friday revealed the design of a huge broadcast tower that is set to become the world's tallest structure upon completion in 2011.

The tower will stand 610 meters (2,013-feet) tall and will claim the title from the CN Tower in Toronto, Canada, which is currently the world's tallest structure at 553 meters (1,815 feet), according to Tobu Railway Co., which has provided land for the project.

Dubbed the "New Tokyo Tower," it will replace a 333-meter-tall (1,090-foot) tower built in 1958.

The new tower, designed by award winning Japanese architect Tadao Ando and sculptor Kiichi Sumikawa, will stand on a triangular foundation, but its slender body will turn into a cylinder as it stretches upward, its bluish-silver color blending into the sky.

The tower is being built by Japan's six top broadcasters and is expected to greatly bolster television and radio transmissions in the capital.

Though it now competes with a plethora of skyscrapers, the old tower is one of Tokyo's most visible landmarks and is visited by 2.5 million tourists each year. The new tower will stand in the capital's Sumida ward, an area known for its old-Tokyo ambiance, wedged between the Sumida and Arakawa rivers.

Sumida ward beat out 15 other areas in Tokyo to host the tower, many of which were dropped after failing broadcast feasibility tests or coming up short in other ways, including the availability of mass transit.


The Globe and Mail: View from Toronto

Can't win an Expo bid. Can't win an Olympics bid. Now, weep, Toronto is losing its status as hometown to the world's tallest structure -- the CN Tower.

The 553-metre (1,815-foot) structure on Front Street is about to play second fiddle to Japan's New Tokyo Tower, a 610-metre (2,001-foot) broadcast tower to be built by 2011. The Tokyo tower replaces a shorter one built in 1958. This week, Japanese planners unveiled the design, a slender, cylinder-shaped building with bluish-silver hues.

So is anyone in Toronto worried?

Seems not, judging by the initial brave front.

"It is not the size of your tower, it's what you do with it ," says Stuart Green, deputy press secretary to Mayor David Miller. "For 30 years, the CN Tower has been one of Toronto's premier tourist destinations and we expect it will continue to draw visitors from all over the world and remain a prominent feature on the city's skyline."

 

[Degnaw]

Tobu Railway Co., which has provided land for the project.

CN originally referred to the Canadian National Railway

Whats with railways and transmission towers?

 

[SD2]

Aren't there at least 3-4 projects currently underway that are supposed to take the title from the CN Tower?

 

[EnviroTO]

Tourists will continue to flock to the city which is known as:
- the city which is the biggest in a country of relatively small population
- the city that has a tower which used to be the tallest
- the city that has attractions which are like other attractions in the world but less significant, and
- the city that almost held an Olympics and an Expo.

We really don't need to worry about this. Toronto has everything... just like many other places.

 

[wyliepoon]

www.rising-east.jp/

Two observation decks, to be located at 350 and 450m levels

Other proposed supertall structures (from Wikipedia)

 

[jeicow]

Burj Dubai will surpass CN sometime before 2011 likely (it just tipped 900 feet last month) so this tower really means nothing for the height race. It's also interesting to see the New Tokyo Tower being about 60m taller, yet the highest observation deck is only 3m higher. The world eh?

 

[adma]

Symbolically speaking, Seattle's Space Needle is still a draw, right?

 

[rbtaylor]

Whats with railways and transmission towers?

That's a really good question actually.

Railways and hydro companies tend to own long and fairly straight corridors. These corridors are great for long distance data transmission because laying wires only only required negotiations with a single entity.

The old Ontario Hydro was one of the top data carriers in the province.

Anyway, once railway companies were running data, they simply took it to the next step and started building the broadcast towers. CN Tower being one of the largest.

 

[wyliepoon]

Tobu is a commuter railway company. Much like many of the private commuter railway companies in Japan they also have investments in other areas, such as retail (usually in the form of department stores located at their downtown stations), and property development (something CN was doing with the CN Tower and the Metro Centre project).

Think of the Sumida Tower as something like a "GO Transit Tower".

 

[stokell]

it looks awfully similar to the CN tower.


i dont like it. not one bit.

 

[EnviroTO]

With the windows angled downwards the tower looks a lot like an air traffic control tower.

 

[MetroMan1000]

I'm surprised (and proud) that the CN Tower held the title for this long. 30 years as the tallest building in the world is incredible.

The CN Tower's title survived the skyscraper craze which you would have thought would bring somebody to want to be the tallest. For a moment, after Sep11 I thought all plans for tall buildings would go away for a while, but if anything it's spurred development.

Maybe this will put the CN Tower in the spotlight to improve the look of the building and the landscaping around it since it will no longer have the title to rest its laurels on.

 

[tudararms]

^I think that's probably more important. A tall tower is a tall tower, isn't it? Unless somebody is scaling the thing with a tape measure does it really matter if one is slightly taller or smaller? The CN tower is an important Toronto landmark no matter how you look at it, or whether or not some tower in Dubai or Tokyo or wherever is actually taller. What's more important is that Toronto improve it and maintain it adequately as a decent visitor destination.

 

[scarberiankhatru]

"Unless somebody is scaling the thing with a tape measure does it really matter if one is slightly taller or smaller?"

Kind of, yeah. I think we would have treated it differently all these years if it wasn't the tallest when built.

 

[wyliepoon]

it looks awfully similar to the CN tower.

At least this tower is a more original design than the original Tokyo Tower, which was designed to be a copy of the Eiffel Tower... (and I actually like the Tokyo Tower, with its red-white colour scheme)

The New Tokyo Tower looks more like the Blackpool Tower (another tower based on the Eiffel Tower)

Going back to Wikipedia, I'm looking at the Tallest Buildings in World History table. Even if the CN Tower is replaced as the tallest building, being in a list of buildings that includes the Great Pyramid, the Cologne Cathedral, Washington Monument, Eiffel Tower and the Empire State Building. That's a really elite group.

Considering Toronto doesn't have a lot of significant landmarks, I don't see CN Tower leaving the spotlight the same way that the Ostankino Tower has in Moscow, where it has to compete with more prominent buildings like St. Basil's Cathedral, the Kremlin, the Moscow Metro, etc.