Kyoto Station

Kyoto Station is a major railway station and transportation hub in Kyoto, Japan, and one of the largest station buildings in the country. The current building opened in 1997 to mark the 1,200th anniversary of the city's founding and was designed by the architect Hiroshi Hara, replacing earlier station structures on the same site. The building rises about 70 meters and stretches roughly 470 meters from east to west, with an irregular cubic facade of plate glass over a steel frame that combines a shopping mall, hotel, cinema, a department store and local government offices under one roof. Its strikingly modern design was a sharp departure from Kyoto's historic architecture and helped set off a wave of new high rise construction in the city during the late 1990s.