Yokohama Port Terminal
200best ES
Foreign Office Architects
2002
Type
Urban Infrastructures
Tags
public spaces, urban infrastructures , 200Best, enjoyable infrastructures
Visitability
Allowed
Description
The Yokohama International Passenger Terminal has the advantage of being many things at once. It is an urban park and a piece of territorial infrastructure, as well as a building without a façade and a landmark in the city.‘Ni-wa-minato’ in Japanese, is loosely translated as ‘the unseen’. This was the wish of the authorities who organised the international competition for the terminal. This has been achieved in this building, designed by FOA, which suggests overlapping layers of connected surfaces in which the flow is never interrupted and the ground floor becomes the roof and vice versa. This topographical complexity reflects the advances made at the time in computer-aided design, which made it possible to tackle a project with extremely variable sections. The building is divided into three main levels that are connected to each other. The lowest level is the car park, above which are the actual maritime terminal areas. The roof is the top level, an open pedestrian walkway and viewing platform overlooking the city. The flow of people is determined by a system of loops, facilitated by the paths created by changes in topography. The load-bearing structure of the building was a real technological challenge. The initial proposal for the tender, based on a matrix of hexagonal shapes, had to be modified in favour of a mixed system of folded steel plates and reinforced concrete girders. This allowed the spatial values of the proposal to be preserved and the seismic risk in Japan to be addressed.