Kyoto Station Building

This guide to Kyoto Station Building follows the 1997 unveiling of a fifteen-storey glass-and-steel terminal built for the city's twelve-hundredth anniversary, and the outcry it caused by breaking Kyoto's unwritten rule of a low, temple-respecting skyline. It traces architect Hiroshi Hara's idea of building a man-made valley, lit by escalators instead of rivers, and the exposed steel roof grid that echoes the city's ancient street plan. Stand in the main hall and look up at the grid of steel beams before moving toward the stairway.