Highway through a building in Osaka

Gate Tower Building with a pet name “beehive” in Osaka is a 16-stories tall office building of cylindrical shape that is famous because of the highway that runs directly through it.

The elevators pass through without stopping on the 5th, 6th and 7th floor because the highway takes up the space there. Interestingly, the highway doesn’t make contact with the walls of the building and passes through like a bridge that’s held up by supports next to the building. The highway is surrounded by a structure that protects from noise and vibrations.

The Gate Tower Building was completed in 1992 and was build that way as a result of a compromise between the property rights’s holders and the Hanshin Expressway Corporation. It was possible to reach this solution because of revisions in city laws that permit a so-called Multi-Level Road System which allows for development of buildings and highways in the same space.

Source: Wikimedia Commons

Source: Unknown

Source: Wikimedia Commons