The inverted cones and the restaurant

The cones are structural as well as theatrical: they help brace the long glass wall and carry the loads of the walkways. Look at the surface of the concrete, which is smooth and slightly warm in colour, and at the way the cone meets the floor in a small circle you could almost put your arms around. Kurokawa loved geometric solids and had used cones, spheres and capsules throughout his career, most famously in the Nakagin Capsule Tower of 1972. Here the geometry is turned playful: an upside-down cone is inherently unstable to the eye, and the pleasure of the space comes from seeing something so heavy apparently balanced on so little.

The restaurant on the big cone was the first branch outside France of the Lyon brasserie founded by the chef Paul Bocuse, and it has become a destination in itself, with a queue at lunchtime and reservations recommended for dinner. The Salon de The Rond on the smaller cone is a good place for coffee and cake with the same view at a lower price. Even if you do not eat, take the escalator to the third floor and walk out onto the bridge, because looking down from the cone top gives you the best view of the atrium and the wave.

Did You Know? The larger cone's restaurant terrace is where the two main characters of the anime film Your Name finally see each other, which made it one of the most visited film locations in Tokyo.