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Japan's gate tower building features highway exit ramp passing through its middle floors [1]
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Date: 2025-07-30
Sometimes, disputes between property owners and highway planners result in surreal looking buildings, like this Japanese office building. The Gate Tower Building in Osaka, Japan features something no other office building in the country has. A highway exit ramp passes directly through its middle floors.
In the 1980s, Hanshin Expressway Corporation planned to build the Ikeda Route through a plot of land owned by the same family since the Meiji period, and the owners refused to sell. After five years of negotiations, engineers devised an unprecedented solution. They ran the highway through floors 5-7 of a new office building.
The highway doesn't actually touch the building structure. It passes through like a bridge, supported by external columns and wrapped in a protective shell to shield office workers from traffic noise and vibration. The building's elevator system simply skips from floor 4 to floor 8, as if the highway floors don't exist. Japanese lawmakers even had to revise multiple building codes and planning laws to make the unique arrangement possible. I'm not sure how I'd feel about working on a floor right above or below an off-ramp, but I'd definitely love to drive on a road that goes through a building.
See also: Texas man tows car with shoelace, highway chaos ensues (video)
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