Osaka

Osaka is Japan’s third-largest city and one of its most architecturally vital, a dense, energetic metropolis whose built environment reflects both a deep mercantile history and a forward-looking embrace of bold contemporary architecture, urban infrastructure, and experimental design. Home to Tadao Ando — whose Brutalist concrete works transformed global architecture from his base in the city — Osaka has been a center of architectural innovation for decades, producing buildings that are often more daring and commercially uninhibited than those found in Tokyo or Kyoto. The city’s layered urban fabric, from the canal districts of Dotonbori and Nakanoshima’s civic buildings to the cutting-edge architecture of the Umeda skyline and the floating Osaka Expo future development, makes it a compelling case study in Japanese architecture and the relationship between urban design and the vitality of commercial city life.