Kyoto Station is the principal rail hub of the city and a Hiroshi Hara building of 1997 — a vast 470-metre-long, fifteen-storey assembly of glass, steel, and exposed structural beams that opens at its centre into a 60-metre-high atrium. The building was controversial when it opened, like Kyoto Tower thirty years earlier, but has acquired its own affection over time as a modernist counterpoint to the city's wooden architectural heritage.
Beyond its function as a station, the building contains the Isetan department store, a major hotel, a theatre, and a Cube food court of restaurants on the upper floors. Two free public spaces are worth visiting on their own: the Skyway glass corridor traversing the building at the eleventh floor, and the Sky Garden on the roof, both of which give excellent views over central Kyoto. The long west-end staircase is sometimes used as projection screen for light shows after dark.