Located on an important waterfront site in Japan’s second most populous city, the high-profile com-

mission attracted 660 entries from around the world, the country’s largest international competition
to date. [1] The enormous, 430 meter-long project took eight years and a budget of £150 million to
complete, and required FOA to temporarily relocate their studios to Yokohama to supervise con-
struction. The public opening of the terminal occurred in 2002, serendipitously coinciding with the
final game of the World Cup being held only a few miles from the shoreline.
Spaces
The pier-building is 70 meters wide and goes 430 meters into the sea. The total height is approxi-
mately 15 meters.

It is a building with no recognizable facade, where the walls are mixed with soil, the columns by
their absence soil and becomes homeless, as soon as the interior becomes exterior. The architects of
the building were proposed to make a continuity of urban land, and for that, given the form of a soft
Lomada that gradually grows in height as it enters the sea. Thus, the undulations in the topography
constitute the building, the limits are diluted and the roof folds taking different forms. The ground
surface is bent upon itself, forming folds that produce and contain the roads running through the
building. The individual moves at different levels.

The upper level of the terminal is a wooden terrace that serves to stroll and enjoy the scene consists
of maritime vessels moored with passengers climbing or descending. The main activity of the build-
ing is below the terrace, where operating rooms arrivals and departures, the areas of meetings and
waiting, restaurants and shops. At a lower level parking and hides the engine room.

The level of the soil not only fulfills its role of supporting surface, but that happens to shape space. In
this way, several times the floor or wall becomes rises to form inclines and stairs linking the interior
and exterior. A total of 10 ramps connecting the three levels.

For the public entering the terminal is a rare experience: it’s like being inside a huge prehistoric crea-
ture. The roof of the main hall looks like a heavy skeleton contrast, because of its low height, with
the vast width and length of the environment. The most specific function in separate boxes from the
ceiling, as if they were the internal organs of a gigantic animal.
While the contours of the building occasionally betray an element of randomness, they are in fact
generated by a single circulation scheme that dictates spatial organization. The circulation operates as
a continuous looped diagram, directly rejecting any notion of linearity and directionality. Visitors are
taken through paths that meander vertically and horizontally before arriving at any destination, and
their sight lines through space are comparably tortuous and indirect. For all of the chaotic complexity of
the materials and formal gestures, the simplicity of this diagram offers a sense of clarity and reveals the
process from which the building emerged.
The building is organized in three vertical levels. Atop a first-floor parking garage, a spacious mid-
dle floor contains the terminal’s administrative and operational areas, including ticketing, customs,
immigration, restaurants, shopping, and waiting areas. The steel beams that span the ceiling add a
weighty feeling to the space that contrasts sharply with the feel of the observation deck, which has
the sensation of being made of a light, flexible, and easily malleable plane. Connecting the three lev-
els are a series of gently sloping ramps, which the architects decided were more effective than stairs
at maintaining a continuous and multi-dimensional flow of circulation.

FIRST FLOOR PLAN

OBSERVATION DECK
The greatest conceptual strength of the project is perhaps its sensitive relationship with the urban wa-
terfront. With the observation deck doubling as a fully accessible public plaza, the terminal seamlessly
emerges from the neighboring Yamashita and Akaranega Parks to make one uninterrupted, universally
accessible urban parkscape. Its height is calculated to achieve continuity with the shore and to ensure
that inland views of the waterfront remain unobstructed.