JR Central Towers

JR Central Towers are twin skyscrapers standing right above Nagoya Station in Nakamura Ward, Nagoya, Japan. The office tower is about 245 metres tall and the hotel tower about 226 metres, and the office tower is the slightly taller one. They opened in December 1999.

The complex is the headquarters of the Central Japan Railway Company, known as JR Central. It was the tallest building in Nagoya until the nearby Midland Square passed it in 2007, so it is now the second tallest, and in 2015 it ranked eighth tallest in Japan. By floor area it is one of the world's largest train station complexes, at around 410,000 square metres according to one source.

Who built it

The towers were designed by Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates, an American architecture firm, together with Taisei Corporation, a Japanese company. The construction was completed in December 1999.

What is inside

The towers sit on a big base that is both a station and a shopping centre. The JR Nagoya Takashimaya department store fills the floors from the second basement level up to the 11th floor, and the 12th and 13th floors have restaurants and a multi-purpose hall called Towers Plaza.

The hotel tower holds the Nagoya Marriott Associa Hotel. A shared space called Sky Street is on the 15th floor.

A city on top of a station

Trains, shops, offices and hotel rooms are all in one place, so a traveller can step off a train and be inside a department store or a hotel in a few minutes. This mix of station and skyscraper is why the complex is so large for its height.

On the globe

The model shows the twin towers rising side by side from a department-store base.