Construction of High-rise Buildings
The Building Standard Law Enforcement Order, revised in 1963, removed the building height limitation.
With this revision, the design and construction of buildings taller than 45 m was required the approval of
the Minister of Construction. The Minister of Construction deputed the task of technical review to a
technical appraisal committee formed in the Building Center of Japan. The Hotel New Otani, the first
high-rise steel building taller than 100 feet, was constructed to accommodate visitors to the 1964 Tokyo
Olympic Games. The Building Standard Law Enforcement Order, revised in 1981, relaxed the height
limitation to 60 m, necessary for the approval of the Minister of Construction.
The construction of high-rise buildings in a seismic country was made possible by the following technical
development in the late 1950s and early 1960s; i.e., (a) the observation of strong earthquake ground
motions, (b) the understanding of the behavior of structural members under reversal loading to failure in
the laboratory, and (c) the enhanced use of digital computers in the static analysis of framed buildings and
the earthquake response analysis of lumped mass-spring systems.