, officially known as , is a convention and exhibition center in

Tokyo Tokyo, officially the Tokyo Metropolis, is the capital of Japan, capital and List of cities in Japan, most populous city in Japan. With a population of over 14 million in the city proper in 2023, it is List of largest cities, one of the most ...

and the largest such venue in Japan. Opened in April 1996, the center is located in the Ariake Minami district of the on the

Tokyo Bay is a bay located in the southern Kantō region of Japan spanning the coasts of Tokyo, Kanagawa Prefecture, and Chiba Prefecture, on the southern coast of the island of Honshu. Tokyo Bay is connected to the Pacific Ocean by the Uraga Channel. Th ...

waterfront. Its most iconic feature is the visually distinctive Conference Tower. The name Tokyo Big Sight in Japanese eventually became the official name, and it also became the name of the operator in April 2003. The center hosts the

Comiket , more commonly known as or , is a semiannual Doujinshi convention, ''doujinshi'' convention in Tokyo, Japan. A grassroots market focused on the sale of ''doujin'' (self-published) works, Comiket is a not-for-profit fan convention administered ...

convention since 1996 and the

AnimeJapan AnimeJapan is a Japanese anime consumer show held annually at the Tokyo Big Sight exhibition center in Tokyo since March 2014. It was created from the merger of the Tokyo International Anime Fair with the Anime Contents Expo. It is organized ...

convention since 2014. It previously hosted the

Tokyo International Anime Fair The Tokyo International Anime Fair also known as was one of the largest anime trade fairs in the world, held annually in Tokyo, Japan. The first event was held in 2002 as "Tokyo International Anime Fair 21". The event was held at Tokyo Big Sigh ...

from 2002 to 2013. It was a planned venue for the

2020 Summer Olympics The officially the and officially branded as were an international multi-sport event that was held from 23 July to 8 August 2021 in Tokyo, Japan, with some of the preliminary sporting events beginning on 21 July 2021. Tokyo ...

hosting

wrestling Wrestling is a martial art, combat sport, and form of entertainment that involves grappling with an opponent and striving to obtain a position of advantage through different throws or techniques, within a given ruleset. Wrestling involves di ...

fencing Fencing is a combat sport that features sword fighting. It consists of three primary disciplines: Foil (fencing), foil, épée, and Sabre (fencing), sabre (also spelled ''saber''), each with its own blade and set of rules. Most competitive fe ...

and

taekwondo Taekwondo (; ; ) is a Korean martial art and combat sport involving primarily kicking techniques and punching. "Taekwondo" can be translated as ''tae'' ("strike with foot"), ''kwon'' ("strike with hand"), and ''do'' ("the art or way"). In ad ...

events, but the reduction of public funds forced the organization committee to choose an alternative location for these events; it instead served as the main broadcasting and press center for the Games.

Location and components

Located on the shore of

, about 30 minutes by rail from

Tokyo Station Tōkyō Station (, ) is a major railway station in Chiyoda, Tokyo, Japan. The original station is located in Chiyoda's Marunouchi business district near the Tokyo Imperial Palace, Imperial Palace grounds. The newer Eastern extension is not far ...

(12 minutes by car), Big Sight is Japan's largest international convention venue. Its most distinctive feature is the unique architecture of its high eight-storey Conference

Tower A tower is a tall Nonbuilding structure, structure, taller than it is wide, often by a significant factor. Towers are distinguished from guyed mast, masts by their lack of guy-wires and are therefore, along with tall buildings, self-supporting ...

. The site utilizes

steel frame Steel frame is a building technique with a "skeleton frame" of vertical steel columns and horizontal I-beams, constructed in a rectangular grid to support the floors, roof and walls of a building which are all attached to the frame. The develop ...

with

reinforced concrete Reinforced concrete, also called ferroconcrete or ferro-concrete, is a composite material in which concrete's relatively low tensile strength and ductility are compensated for by the inclusion of reinforcement having higher tensile strength or ...

construction, boasting a total floor area of which outsizes

Makuhari Messe is a convention center in Chiba (city), Chiba City, Chiba Prefecture, Japan, located just outside of Tokyo. Designed by Fumihiko Maki, it is accessible by Transportation in Greater Tokyo#Railway and subway, Tokyo's commuter rail system. ''Makuha ...

's floor space by half, and of which is indoors. The convention center is divided into three main areas, each with their own

restaurant A restaurant is an establishment that prepares and serves food and drinks to customers. Meals are generally served and eaten on the premises, but many restaurants also offer take-out and Delivery (commerce), food delivery services. Restaurants ...

s and other supporting facilities: The ''East Exhibition Hall'', the ''West Exhibition Hall'' and the ''Conference Tower''.

Conference Tower

The architectural element most associated with the Tokyo Big Sight name, the glass and

titanium Titanium is a chemical element; it has symbol Ti and atomic number 22. Found in nature only as an oxide, it can be reduced to produce a lustrous transition metal with a silver color, low density, and high strength, resistant to corrosion in ...

-panelled Conference Tower appears as a set of four inverted

pyramid A pyramid () is a structure whose visible surfaces are triangular in broad outline and converge toward the top, making the appearance roughly a pyramid in the geometric sense. The base of a pyramid can be of any polygon shape, such as trian ...

s mounted upon large supports. The first floor comprises an 1,100-seat reception hall and four conference rooms of varying size. The second floor comprises the ''Entrance Plaza'' which is the main access area, the

glass Glass is an amorphous (non-crystalline solid, non-crystalline) solid. Because it is often transparency and translucency, transparent and chemically inert, glass has found widespread practical, technological, and decorative use in window pane ...

-roofed ''Event Plaza'', the ''Entrance Hall'' which leads to the exhibition halls proper, and the ''Exhibition Plaza''. There are no floors three through five due to the structure's above-ground stature. Floors six and seven can be directly accessed via

escalator An escalator is a moving staircase which carries people between floors of a building or structure. It consists of a Electric motor, motor-driven chain of individually linked steps on a track which cycle on a pair of tracks which keep the st ...

from the second-floor Entrance Hall, and comprise the main convention facilities of the Tower. The sixth floor houses ten conference rooms of small to medium size, some of which can be merged into larger spaces by removing intervening partitions. Floor seven houses the 1,000-seat International Conference Room as well as three conference rooms of much smaller size. Floor eight houses five conference rooms. Scattered around the Tower's vicinity are

public art Public art is art in any Media (arts), media whose form, function and meaning are created for the general public through a public process. It is a specific art genre with its own professional and critical discourse. Public art is visually and phy ...

pieces, most of which are works by international artists such as

Claes Oldenburg Claes Oldenburg (January 28, 1929 – July 18, 2022) was a Swedish-born American sculptor best known for his public art installations, typically featuring large replicas of everyday objects. Another theme in his work is soft sculpture versions ...

and his wife Coosje Van Bruggen,

Michael Craig-Martin Sir Michael Craig-Martin (born 28 August 1941) is an Irish-born contemporary conceptual artist and painter. He is known for fostering and adopting the Young British Artists, many of whom he taught, and for his conceptual artwork, '' An Oak ...

and Lee U-Fan. These include a giant sculpture of a saw, a large stylized pond and three

marble Marble is a metamorphic rock consisting of carbonate minerals (most commonly calcite (CaCO3) or Dolomite (mineral), dolomite (CaMg(CO3)2) that have recrystallized under the influence of heat and pressure. It has a crystalline texture, and is ty ...

beds.

East Exhibition Hall

The East Exhibition Hall's main layout consists of a central long two-tiered galleria, flanked on both sides by three mostly identical exhibition halls, and has underground parking available. The overall height of the structure is three storeys, with the galleria reaching two storeys. The glass-roofed galleria is equipped with moving walkways for easier movement, food outlets, escalators, electronic signboards and a host of other relevant facilities. Each hall has a mobile roof that enables exhibitors to control the amount of

sunlight Sunlight is the portion of the electromagnetic radiation which is emitted by the Sun (i.e. solar radiation) and received by the Earth, in particular the visible spectrum, visible light perceptible to the human eye as well as invisible infrare ...

coming through, recessed electronic and control service pits at regular intervals (), a show office, four meeting rooms and a dressing room. It is possible to merge a hall with adjacent halls on the same side, allowing for a maximum continuous floor space three times the capacity of a single hall, or a grand total of . Unlike its West counterpart, the East Exhibition Hall is not located next to the main Conference Tower area.

West Exhibition Hall

The West Exhibition Hall's layout consists of four internal halls surrounding a central two-tiered Atrium. Halls one and two occupy the first floor, and are each equipped with a single meeting room, two show offices and seven meeting rooms. If necessary, they can be merged with the glass-roofed atrium area to maximize all available exhibition space. Halls three and four are individually smaller than the first floor halls, as the rest of the space not taken up by the Atrium's upper area is largely the rooftop exhibition area. Adjacent to the West Exhibition Hall is an outdoor exhibition area, which like the rooftop area overlooks the waterfront. Like the other exhibition areas in the Tokyo Big Sight, it is possible to combine both upper halls and both spaces together to create a single continuous floor area. All in all, the West Exhibition Hall boasts in total six show offices, twenty-three meeting rooms and three dressing rooms. The gross total floor area of the Hall stands at .

Construction

Contracted by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government's Bureau of Finance, the construction of the entire site was handled by eight contractors in total, among them companies such as the Hazama and Shimizu Corporations. Construction began in October 1992 and was finished in October 1995. The total contract was worth million. Forty-five percent of that sum went to Hazama, the sole contractor of the Tower segment. Then

Governor of Tokyo The is the head of government of Tokyo. In 1943, upon the unification of Tokyo City and Tokyo Prefecture (1868–1943), Tokyo Prefecture into Tokyo Metropolitan Government, the position of Governor was created. Previously, the prefecture had a ...

Shunichi Suzuki was present at the 1994 lifting-up ceremony on June 30, which initiated the raising the Tower's main structure above ground, a process which took three days to complete using a computer-guided system that precisely jacked the structure up into place. A 250-ton aerial

was installed later to formally link the raised structure to the ground floors.

References

External links

*
Tokyo Big Sight Map
{{Authority control Odaiba Buildings and structures completed in 1996 Buildings and structures completed in 1995 Convention centers in Japan Buildings and structures in Koto, Tokyo Event venues established in 1996 Venues of the 2020 Summer Olympics Inverted pyramids High-tech architecture Pyramids in Japan Olympic International Broadcast Centres