Tokyo International Cruise Terminal
The planned site of the cruise terminal was on the sea, amid Tokyo Bay. The construction started by driving steel pipe piles into approx. 10-meter-deep seabed to create an artificial island—a work of civil engineering—, then placing architectural pillars precisely upon the piles.
To build on the sea, we had to defy the convention of placing underlying structural pillars “on the ground.” Our task was to connect the pillars to the steel pipe piles, which form the foundation of the building, within a “millimeter-scale tolerance.”
After much deliberation, our structural engineers devised a method of inserting parts called set plates (SPs) between the steel piles and the architectural pillars. After the SPs are set in place and their position calibrated, the concrete is poured. This system absorbs construction errors by repeating the process of checking the accuracy of each cast of concrete. This way, we achieved the integration of civil engineering and architecture in one building project.
The joint system, developed by our structural engineers, is currently under patent application.