HanaoSan in Shinjuku, Tokyo

At the exit of Shinjuku Station, one of Tokyo’s most dynamic and traversed places, a new public square is taking shape, conceived as a space for gathering, exchange, and urban breathing. Within this larger intervention, our role was to give structural form to the large stainless-steel sculpture that becomes the focal point of the entire project.

Working on a sculpture of this scale, so different in nature and complexity from a building, required a fully dedicated approach. The extremely slender profiles, the almost artisanal welds, the apparent lightness of the piece all demand tolerances and precision that conventional building design does not account for. In this context, numerical models and finite-element analyses provide essential support, yet they do not always capture a structural behaviour perfectly aligned with reality.

The transition between hinge joints and rigid joints, the micro-deformability of materials, the system’s response to minimal loads: all of it calls for a refined balance of calculation, experience, and constructive sensitivity.

The result is a structure that supports the form without betraying it, discreet, precise, and seamlessly integrated, capable of giving the square a new point of identity. A work that lives at the intersection of engineering and art, where technical complexity becomes part of the urban poetry.