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Geometry of Art Tower Mito

The Art Tower Mito is an arts complex designed by Arata Isozaki and opened in 1990 to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Mito's official designation as a city. The concert hall, theatre and contemporary art gallery are accompanied by a huge 100m tall tower in the shape of a Boerdijk-Coxeter helix - each face a regular equilateral triangle.

The huge 100m tall titanium-clad Boerdijk-Coxeter helix at Art Tower Mito, Japan.
Street-level view of the tower at Art Tower Mito.

The Boerdijk-Coxeter helix is named after Arie Boerdijk and H.S.M. Coxeter, two mathematicians who studied and formalized the geometric properties and symmetries of this helical structure in the 1950s.

Coxeter’s work served as an inspiration for R. Buckminster Fuller’s concept of the geodesic dome and, particularly, for the intricate geometric designs of Dutch graphic artist M.C. Escher.
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Several street-level views from various vantage points around the tower.

Arata Isozaki, Art Tower Mito's architect, won the prestigious Pritzker Architecture Prize in 2019. Art Tower Mito is one of the 16 works selected for the prize.

One of the most influential figures in contemporary world architecture on a constant search, not afraid to change and try new ideas. His architecture rests on profound understanding, not only of architecture but also of philosophy, history, theory and culture.
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Viewing windows and a typical main structural joint from the inside of the tower.

The Boerdijk-Coxeter helix is formed by stacking or chaining regular tetrahedra face-to-face in a helical arrangement with either a left or right-handed rotation. One of the unexpected properties of the Boerdijk-Coxeter helix is that each vertex is geometrically identical to every other vertex, i.e. a single vertex shape when interconnected yields a helical, chiral structure.

More detailed views of the main structural joint geometry from the inside.

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