Koraibashi Nomura Building

This was the first rental building constructed by the real estate department of Nomura Gomei, the holding company of the Nomura zaibatsu. It was built in 1927 and designed by Takeo Yasui, a leading architect in the Kinki region known for his work on the Osaka Gas Building and other structures. It featured a steel-reinforced concrete structure, which was still rare at the time, and while it stood at six stories above ground before the war, a seventh floor was added in 1964.

Takeo Yasui gained the patronage of Tokushichi Nomura through his designs for the Osaka Nomura Bank Dojima Branch (1922) and its main office (1924). During this period, Tokushichi was forming a major corporate group encompassing Nomura Securities, banking, insurance, and trade. For Takeo Yasui, who became independent in 1924, Tokushichi was his greatest supporter and most significant client. Tokushichi was also active in building management. Along Sakaisuji Avenue, he constructed the Kitahama Nomura Building (1921, designed and built by Takenaka Corporation), the aforementioned main office building in Bingo-machi, and then this building in 1927. The Koraibashi Nomura Building site lacks depth, and because all rooms were intended for lease, the facade composition is simple. However, the details are filled with complex ingenuity. The spandrel walls slope outward, and a band of roof tiles runs beneath the windows on each floor. The first floor of the wall surface is finished with tuff and tile, while the second floor and above are finished with scraped mortar, using materials that evoke a sense of earth. It is a masterpiece that combines modernity with a primitive quality. Note that the seventh floor is a post-war addition.

The building stands on a site with an extremely narrow depth relative to its wide frontage facing Sakaisuji Avenue. It is adorned with oriental decorations, and the mortar-painted spandrel walls are a light brown color. The exterior wall shape, where the upper edge of the spandrel wall between each floor protrudes outward, adopts a technique used by Erich Mendelsohn in German architecture of that time. Furthermore, the edges are decorated with oriental-style ornaments.