A stellar effort at urban renewal, the Shiodome City Center helps finish the southern end of the Ginza corridor with a huge complex that serves as a demarkation point between the two neighborhoods. The skyscraper is mostly offices, but like many Tokyo towers upper and lower levels are reserved for shops and eateries.

Shiodome City Center sits askew on its plot, which helps provide some better views of the city and the harbor in what is ordinarily a tight spot. The glass is reflective blue-green which has been specially treated to create multipath problems with the TV signals coming off the nearby Tokyo Tower. Its facade is a smooth glass skin, occasionally interrupted by vertical channels which help divide the building into sections that make its varied roof line make sense. That glass curtain wall is important because the building has been specifically designed to maximize the views of its occupants. It is built around a central core to reduce the number of columns needed to support the building and afford panoramic views.

The Shiodome City Center is just one part of the larger Shiodome Sio-Site project -- a redevelopment of a huge parcel of land seven times the size of the Tokyo Dome. The idea is to turn a railroad freight hub into an urban town much like Nishi-Shinjuku where people can live, work, and play. Before this area was a rail yard it was an estuary. "Shiodome" means "place where the tide stops."