Namba Parks (なんばパークス Nanba Pākusu) is an office and shopping complex located in Namba-naka Nichome, Naniwa-ku, Osaka, Japan, the south of Namba Station on Nankai Railway. It consists of a high office building called Parks Tower and a 120-tenant shopping mall with rooftop garden. Namba Parks was developed by Jon Jerde of The Jerde Partnership in the footprint of the since closed Osaka Stadium.
Various kinds of restaurants (Japanese, Korean, Italian, etc.) are located on the 6th floor, and shops are located on the 2nd to 5th floors. There is also an amphitheater for live shows, as well as space for small personal vegetable gardens and wagon shops.
Namba Parks was conceived as a large park, a natural intervention in Osaka's dense urban condition. Alongside a 30-story tower, the project features a lifestyle commercial center crowned with a rooftop park that crosses multiple blocks while gradually ascending eight levels. In addition to providing a highly visible green component in a city where nature is sparse, the sloping park connects to the street, making it easy for passers-by to enter its groves of trees, clusters of rocks, cliffs, lawn, streams, waterfalls, ponds and outdoor terraces. Beneath the park, a canyon carves a path through specialty retail, entertainment and dining venues.
Famous quotes containing the word parks:
“Perhaps our own woods and fields,—in the best wooded towns, where we need not quarrel about the huckleberries,—with the primitive swamps scattered here and there in their midst, but not prevailing over them, are the perfection of parks and groves, gardens, arbors, paths, vistas, and landscapes. They are the natural consequence of what art and refinement we as a people have.... Or, I would rather say, such were our groves twenty years ago.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)