For the most part, 16-story buildings in Osaka do not stick out that much. That is unless of course, a highway cuts through them, allowing cars to race through the fifth, sixth and seventh floors. One of the strangest looking sites in the world, the side of the Gate Tower Building simply opens up like a mouth to release traffic coming off of the Hanshin Expressway.
Amazingly, the highway hardly affects business inside the Gate Tower Building, as the owners installed noise-proofing walls and flooring. The only strange thing is the elevator skipping from the fourth to eighth floor.
(thanks Stanley)
3 comment(s):
If former NYC Mayor William O'Dwyer had gotten his way, the Mid-Manhattan Expressway would have run straight through the Empire State Building, occupying the tenth and eleventh floors.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mid-Manhattan_Expressway
Philadelphia City Hall sits atop the intersection of Market & Broad Sts, though you can't actually drive through. Traffic is routed around the building and there are pedestrian throughways through the building itself.
There are plenty of places where roads run under buildings, that's pretty much just a tunnel. But this OTOH is a neat use of space. On that basis there's an awful lot of space in cities around the world available for building if similar techniques are used.
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