Inside the new Accelarium atrium, with Tomás Saraceno’s reflective artwork floating above and rows of guests seated beneath the building’s sweeping wooden forms, Tenjin Business Center II officially opened on August 4 in central Fukuoka.
Fukuoka Now attended the opening ceremony inside the new landmark, directly across from Fukuoka City Hall. The message from the stage was clear: this is not simply another office tower.
For Fukuoka Jisho President and CEO Ichiro Enomoto, the building is meant to work more like a campus, a place where companies, startups, students, creators and visitors cross paths in ways that do not happen inside a conventional office building.
“The answer we arrived at was a campus,” Enomoto said.
He described the project as part of a broader question facing Fukuoka: how the city can grow on a different path from Tokyo, while making the most of its own character. For Enomoto, that character includes the city’s compact scale, closeness to nature, openness to Asia and a younger generation willing to take risks.
“This is not just a box-shaped office building,” he said.
The building’s lower levels are arranged around the Accelarium, a seven-level atrium connecting B2 to 5F. Designed by Fukuoka-born architect Shohei Shigematsu of OMA, the space brings together shops, restaurants, a large bookstore, office entrances, startup support facilities, greenery, public art and shared worker amenities.
Fukuoka Now has also published a separate interview with Shigematsu, conducted ahead of the opening, looking more closely at his architectural vision for the project. A detailed guide to the building’s new shops and restaurants is also being published separately.
At the ceremony, Enomoto compared the idea to a university campus, where learning happens not only in classrooms but also in cafeterias, gyms, clubs and chance encounters.
“Just as encounters across faculties happen on a university campus, I hope encounters across companies will happen here,” he said.
He imagined startup founders meeting larger companies in the building’s sauna or over drinks in Tenjin Inachika, students discovering LEVEL5 programming events at Junkudo Bookstore, and new ideas moving from casual conversation to real business.
“I want us to create, together, an ecosystem here at Tenjin Business Center II where dreams can come true,” he said.
Fukuoka Mayor Soichiro Takashima also framed the opening as part of a longer story. He said Tenjin Big Bang grew partly from the need to make Tenjin safer and more resilient after the 2005 Fukuoka Prefecture Western Offshore Earthquake, while also creating a city where new ideas and businesses can take root.
“Tenjin Business Center I and II together form what could be called a Tenjin Business Campus,” Takashima said.
The mayor also connected the building to a shift in how people think about work after the pandemic.
“After COVID, the workplace is no longer simply a place to do tasks,” he said. “It is a place where new value is created.”
Looking around the atrium, Takashima pointed to the curves, greenery, art and shared spaces as part of the building’s appeal.
“This is a campus where people will want to gather,” he said.
Shigematsu, who also designed the original Tenjin Business Center, explained that the two buildings were originally considered together in an international design competition in 2016. He sees them not as identical towers, but as a pair with different roles.
“Rather than twin towers, they are a campus that exists as a pair, complementing each other,” he said.
“One faces the sea, one faces the mountains. One faces City Hall, one faces the main street.”
For Shigematsu, Tenjin Business Center II also captures the shift between pre-pandemic and post-pandemic office thinking. The first building came before COVID. The second was completed after work culture had changed dramatically.
“This complex embodies the major change in the idea of workspace before and after the pandemic,” he said.
The Accelarium is the clearest expression of that change. It is not a sealed interior lobby, but a vertical public space connected to Tenjin’s streets, underground passages and surrounding civic area.
“I often describe it as a vertical urban park,” Shigematsu said.
He also called the Accelarium a “collision zone,” a place where different people and companies meet and where unexpected ideas can begin.
“I call the Accelarium a collision zone,” he said. “Different users and stakeholders gather, new encounters and ideas are born, and innovation emerges.”
For Shigematsu, the project is deeply tied to Fukuoka’s size and personality.
“Fukuoka has its own sense of scale,” he said. “It is not too large, not too small, and it is extremely active.”
“This is a design that could only have been done in Fukuoka.”
One of the clearest examples of how tenants are responding to the building came from Akihiro Hino, Representative Director, President and CEO of LEVEL5 Inc., the Fukuoka-based game company behind titles such as Professor Layton, Inazuma Eleven and Yo-kai Watch.
Hino said LEVEL5 had not originally planned to move its Fukuoka headquarters. But after visiting the building while it was still under construction and hearing its concept, his mind changed quickly.
“When I entered this building and heard its concept, I fell in love with it at first sight,” Hino said.
“I decided that same day that we would move in.”
LEVEL5’s new office is being designed around the idea of making work itself more enjoyable. Hino described plans for an AI character reception system, displays and dioramas of LEVEL5 works, internal stairs connecting the office, a cafe space, kitchen and bar-like area, and a small theater for staff.
“We want to create an office where people can enjoy working,” he said.
For Hino, the move is not just about a new address. It is about building the kind of creative environment that helps a Fukuoka company compete globally.
“We are thinking about what the best creative environment in Kyushu should be,” he said.
“From this building, we want to make great things and aim for the world.”
Tenjin Business Center II combines offices, commercial facilities, startup support and worker amenities in one building. The public commercial zone runs from B2 to 3F, including the expanded Tenjin Gourmet Street Tenjin Inachika, Junkudo Bookstore, Starbucks Reserve Cafe, Käfer ALPS KITCHEN and other shops and restaurants.
On 4F, Fukuoka Innovation Lab.Tenjin will support deep-tech startups, while Reboot! provides shared facilities for tenant workers, including a gym, sauna, spa, cafe lounge, meeting rooms and simulation golf.
The building also features “Aerosolar Rhythms,” a large-scale installation by Argentine artist Tomás Saraceno, suspended inside the Accelarium. Its reflective forms shift with light, air and movement, giving the atrium a sense of constant change.
By the time the ribbon was cut, the opening ceremony had become less about completing a building and more about launching a new kind of place in Tenjin.
The test now is whether the encounters imagined on stage actually happen: startup founders meeting investors, students meeting creators, workers finding new collaborators, and visitors discovering another reason to spend time in the city center.
For now, the building is new. The more interesting question is what begins inside it.
At a Glance
Tenjin Business Center II
Opened: August 4, 2026
Address: 1-10-10 Tenjin, Chuo-ku, Fukuoka City
Scale: 18 floors above ground, 2 basement floors
Commercial zone: B2 to 3F
Architect: Shohei Shigematsu / OMA
Key features: Accelarium, Aerosolar Rhythms, Reboot!, Fukuoka Innovation Lab.Tenjin, Tenjin Gourmet Street Tenjin Inachika, Junkudo Bookstore
Official site: https://tenjinbc2.jp/
Text & photos: Nick Szasz / Fukuoka Now