Marunouchi Nakadori Street

Turning main street to people’s place.

OMY, Otemachi,Marunouchi,Yurakucho area is one of the biggest business district in the world. More than 4,000 headquarters of international leading companies are located and 260,000 people work here. Since the renewal of the Marunouchi Building in 2002, the long term innovative development brings many new values in the area.

A street to an urban place.

The main street, the Marunouchi Nakadori, used to be Asia’s Wall street filled with bankers and traders. Back in the 90’s , when all the banks were closed at 3PM, the street became silent. Now Marunouchi Nakadori is beautifully covered by greens , alongside popular brand retail shops and restaurants. Workers, shoppers and tourists always come and go. A project has been launched to push up to the next level.

There are many cases of closing the street for pedestrians in downtown, but not many in the office district. “What kind of function should the main street have?” For the sake of making “Street” into “Place” , there should be a big difference in human activity on the street and the place. We paid close attention to the people who work in this area.

Those new sky scraping buildings have highly functional offices and infrastructure is very well designed. Shops are located on the lower floors. The end is designed for the means. What highly designed buildings cannot provide for people to spend a comfortable time?

Research & Test.

We conducted a research to find a clue with “Tactical urbanism method” This research method is brought from Oregon, Portland.
In collaboration with the social creative class of Marunouchi Morning University, which is an educational platform for adults in the area, we experimented with the street space to create a new communication.

“Create a place for people to communicate on the street”. This task was given to the 7 teams. Each team came up with a unique idea. A team that created a putter golf course, a team that created balloon objects, a kotatsu, and a team that plays jump roping. Each team was well communicated with people on the road, but what people love the most was jump roping. An intuitive and fun idea shined the most.

What we discovered was that the street could function as the “huge blank space” of the city. We could make this space to place for people. That’s why it can bring out the creativity in people.

The concept for the street is “terrace”.

The only function that skyscrapers do not have is a terrace. Taking the street as a terrace for refreshment, cozy meeting room, coffee break place. On weekends, the street has events using the whole street.

The street was named “Urban Terrace”. The attractiveness of the Otemachi-Marunouchi-Yurakucho (OMY) area is that you can “feel the city”. Both people who work here and visit here as tourists, come to this area to have urban experience. Continue to create spaces that always seek a better future.
Continue to explore urbanism.
We reached this point after having discussions with clients who had many years of experience and passion for developing the city.

A food cart that serves snacks, cargo bikes with parasols, and chairs that create a fun mood. Objects are there to support communication with words and graphics. We aimed to create highly intuitive expressions which are fit for the city; the destination of people from countries with various cultural backgrounds.