Gate Tower Building is not too high above the road level, so many tourists think they are dizzy when the car drives through this building.

The Gate Tower Building in the middle of Osaka city carries a story that is both beautiful and strange about how people harmonize with each other to coexist. It all started in the late 19th century, when a wood and coal trading group called Suezawa Sangyo bought a piece of land. Over the years, their real estate was damaged. Photo: Geoffrey Morrison

When this unit planned to renovate the area in 1983, a project connecting the Hanshin Expressway with central Osaka ran through here. Suezawa Sangyo and the highway construction contractor fought for 5 years until reaching the final solution: one side still had the house, the other side still completed the road. Photo: Geoffrey Morrison

The project to build a new building and exit for the expressway started in 1989 and was completed in 1992. Photo: Geoffrey Morrison

From there, Gate Tower Building was the first building with a highway running through it in Japan. Urban planning laws and construction standards were both revised for such a project to be born. Photo: Geoffrey Morrison

To ensure office workers in this building are not disturbed when vehicles pass through the 5th, 6th and 7th floors; Experts designed soundproof walls and floors around the highway – parts that do not touch the structure of the cylindrical tower. Photo: Geoffrey Morrison

While the rest of the building is occupied by offices, the wall surrounding the highway contains nothing but machinery and elevators. Photo: Japanese Wikipedia

Today Gate Tower Building is an office building owned by TKP Group. The building is 16 floors high but only 13 floors are regularly used, the space from floors 5 to 7 is “sacrificed” for the highway. People who frequent this building can hardly recognize a road running through here from the inside. The only special thing is that from the 4th to the 8th floor there is no elevator installed. Photo: Wikimedia Commons

The highway running through the building is quite crowded, because it leads traffic straight to Umerda – the largest central district in Osaka. And most likely, many people working in Gate Tower Building have to drive through this building every day to go to work. Photo: jtabn99/Flickr