When Osaka City is mentioned alongside halls of classical music, Osaka-jo Hall and Nakanoshima's Festival Hall come to mind. That Festival Hall has been rebuilt, and the hall is now housed in the newly completed Nakanoshima Festival Tower. The 39-story above-ground, 3-story underground, 200-meter building also contains offices, restaurants, and shops. Rising on Nakanoshima between the Dojima and Tosabori rivers, it looks set to become a new landmark in Osaka, the "city of water."
Built on the soft ground known as Nakasu, the project emphasizes improved seismic performance. The designers are confident the structure can withstand a magnitude-7 earthquake surpassing the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake. The Festival Hall in the lower floors reportedly uses an intermediate-story base-isolation system with isolators and dampers (vibration-absorbing devices) above the hall.
The Festival Hall is a vast 2,700-seat venue. It is said to boast multi-purpose acoustic equipment capable of handling not only classical music but jazz, pop, rock, enka, and every other genre. Plans call for inviting Italy's Teatro La Fenice for the inaugural performances next April.
The staircase from the building's main entrance to the Festival Hall on the second floor is covered in a striking red carpet and has become a photo spot for Osaka's "obachan" — middle-aged women who strike Takarazuka Revue-style poses on the central landing and snap away with delight.
On the second-floor restaurant floor, Alaska, long established on the ninth floor of Palaceside Building, has opened as Alaska Festival Tower. The Palaceside location, renowned as a restaurant overlooking the Imperial Palace wrapped in greenery, is said to be the Tokyo spot where actor Kinjiro Hiraga proposed to Yoshiko Sakuma; the Festival Tower branch should become another Osaka landmark as an open-kitchen restaurant.