This building is on Port Island, a man-made island jutting out from the port of Kobe into the sea. It includes a reception space, a multi-purpose hall and storage. A four-storey, medium-rise block and a low-rise block that stretches north-south along one of the longer sides of the site, form an L in plan and take up half the site, leaving the other half to a lawn. The lawn is not flat but bulges upwards in the middle to form a hillock. The intention was to create a distinctive interior landscape that was not simply open to the outside but was open yet closed. The compositional elements of the building consist of a grid based on a square 6.4 metres to a side and a screen of frosted glass that absorbs infrared rays. The grid bestows order on the homogeneous land; walls enclose places, and openings carefully frame the exterior landscape. There is extensive office space on the first floorwhich itself is on three levels. Stairs and decks link the levels three-dirnensionally. At the end of the low-rise block there is an enclosed garden, separated from the hillock by a single wall. This is partly linked to the outside by an opening, but from inside the building you can only see the expanse of green and the exposed concrete wall, which establish a restrained atmosphere.
