Ichibankan Minoru Takeyama. 1969

From the mind-boggling bustle of Shinjuku station to the neon nightlife of Kabukicho to the towering office blocks of Nishi Shinjuku and the fashionable department stores on the East side, Shinjuku combines every aspect of modern Japan, at its best and its worst. Architecturally, the area is home to an equally impressive variety of buildings of all styles and sizes. In the first of a series of walking tours (to be published in TC over the coming months) Andrew Barrie is your guide to the highs and lows of the Shinjuku skyline.

East side
The tour starts at exit B3 of Shinjuku 3-Chome subway station. Head up Meiji Dori, across Yasukuni Dori, past Hanazono Jinja to the Kabukicho Tower (1), tucked down a narrow back street (see map). Sir Richard Rogers, the building's UK-based architect, worked on a string of projects in Tokyo during the late 1980s and early 1990s, but this was the only one built - the others were canceled following the collapse of the bubble economy.

Kabukicho Tower Richard Rogers, 1993

Rogers gives his buildings a hi-tech sensibility by exposing their mechanical parts (ducts, machinery, lifts, and stairs), the extensive use of glass and steel and by using intricate structural systems. Here, a delicate framework of stainless-steel rods supports a slanting glass roof over a basement-level atrium. Note the beautifully precise joints in the framework (no welding) and the emergency stairs, which hangs from improbably thin wires.

Walk north through the love hotel-lined streets to the Sky Building 3 (2), a silver-painted, battleship-like apartment block on Shokuan Dori. The curved panels on the facade were manufactured off-site, and then attached to the outside of the building's structural skeleton. Completed in 1970, this building anticipated the later capsule buildings of the Metabolists, in which whole rooms were prefabricated and "plugged" into position on site.

Returning to the back streets, we come to two buildings by the same architect, Minoru Takeyama, standing close to each other. Both are typical of Kabukicho. Ichibankan (3) packs 52 bars into its eight floors. Takeyama was a member of a counter-Metabolist group which was concerned with structural systems, industrial technology and rational design, and he conceived these two buildings as a response to the "festive" character of their environment, introducing to Japan the notion of "pop architecture." Nibankan (4) has been repainted several times with various patterns.

Walking south, it is hard to miss Takashimaya Times Square (6), typical of the new breed of mega-scaled retail developments. These complexes provide a total destination for shoppers - food, entertainment, shopping - but while this makes good economic sense for developers, these complexes tend to suck the life out of surrounding areas.

Tokyo New City Hall Kenzo Tange, 1991

West side
Head around to the western side of Shinjuku station to the West Plaza (7), the result of a mid-1960s redevelopment of the area as a transportation nexus. Focused around a sculptural pair of vehicle ramps, the project separates bus terminals, pedestrian concourses, and parking lots into different levels, this being the first attempt in Japan to organize large-scale pedestrian and vehicular traffic according to level.

The area west of Shinjuku station was home to a water purification plant that supplied the whole of Tokyo. Its removal in 1965 left open a large tract of land which was set aside as a high-rise district resembling downtown Dallas or Los Angeles more than it does any other part of Tokyo.

Three adjacent blocks at the center of the district were reserved for the New Tokyo City Hall (9), allowing the administrative center to be moved from Marunouchi. Kenzo Tange had designed the previous City Hall (1957) and won the commission for the new Hall in a controversial competition in 1986.

Intended as a landmark to represent the authority of the City government, the symbolism of the building has been controversial. The blocky, symmetrical twin towers are often compared with Paris' Notre Dame Cathedral - with its implication of the Hall as "cathedral of the state." Many people dislike the vastness and totalitarian feel of the building. Whether or not the complex crosses the line from civic grandeur to oppressive grandiosity, you can decide for yourself. If you haven't been up to the free-entry viewing rooms on the 45th floor, do so - best at sunset, allowing a view of the city by day and by night.

Shinjuku NS Building Nikken Sekkei, 1982

Last stop is the Shinjuku NS Building (10), which contains rental offices, with shops on the lower levels and restaurants and bars on the top two floors. Like the nearby Shinjuku Sumitomo Building it is hollow, its 30-story central atrium capped with a glassed-over steel space frame.

The indoor plaza, accessible from the adjacent streets, is perhaps best appreciated from above - the ride up the external glass elevator makes the trip worthwhile. A bridge passes over the atrium space at the 29th floor, from which you can look down onto the glass-covered lounges which sit on top of elevator shafts that rise part way up the atrium.

Map available.