Fitted into the upper floors of the 53-storey Midtown Tower — the tallest building in Tokyo when it completed in 2007 as the centrepiece of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill's Tokyo Midtown mixed-use development in Akasaka — The Ritz-Carlton Tokyo was always conceived as a vertical hotel in the most literal sense, with its 247 rooms and suites beginning on the 45th floor and the city spread out below like a circuit board. The tower's dark curtain-wall facade, visible in the images against the blue dusk, gives little away about what the upper floors contain. Inside, the interiors — designed by Remedios Studio — resolve the tension between high-altitude corporate architecture and Japanese material culture through dark stained walnut millwork, lacquer-red accents in the bedhead screens, and pale woven silk panels that reference shoji screens without copying them. Guest rooms carry the full weight of the city view as their primary decorative gesture, floor-to-ceiling glass framing the Shinjuku skyline or the wooded canopy of the Meiji Shrine grounds depending on orientation. The bar sits behind double-height glazing, a marble counter glowing amber against the night city. The swimming pool, positioned on a high floor with flanking windows onto the Tokyo grid, strips the institution of any basement-spa feeling — the water is simply suspended above one of the densest cities on earth.

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