A couple of days ago I have seen an interesting documentary about a very unusual construction project in Japan which took a lot of logistical effort to accomplish. It is not very close related to our topics from the previous lectures but I still thought it would be nice to share it with you.
The Gate Tower Building is an office tower in Osaka, Japan. The special characteristic about
that building is that a highway leads directly through the building.
The tower was completed in 1992 and has in total 16 levels. The highway leads through the stories five, six and seven. The highway and the building are not touching each other at any point.
The owner of the property where the building is located now, refused to sell his property to the highway operator and insisted on building an office tower there, but since the plans for the highway were fixed, they had to come up with a new solution. As a result the architects Azusa Sekkei und Yamamoto-Nishihara Kenchiku Sekkei Jimushō designed the Gate Tower Building and the highway operator pays a monthly rent to the owner of the property. The rent is about 15000 Euro a month.
Sources:
The blog of Logistics at MGEPS at UPV 