Mori Building turns Azabudai Hills into a town-wide wellness programme, with Keio University

Mori Building Co., Ltd. said on October 13 it is launching "Hills for Wellness," a programme built around Azabudai Hills, its mixed-use complex in central Tokyo, aimed at improving the physical and mental health of the people who work in the district. The initiative runs on what the company calls a "Green & Wellness" concept it says has guided the complex's development, and uses Azabudai Hills' standing as what Mori Building describes as Japan's first building to hold the highest, Platinum, rank of WELL certification, a US-based standard for how buildings support occupant health.

Three parts

The programme has three parts, according to the company. A town-wide wellness programme is organised around five themes -- physical activity, balanced meals, recovery, new forms of learning, and communication -- designed so office workers can take part during an ordinary working day rather than carving out separate time for health. Alongside it, a corporate community programme will bring together HR and health-management staff from companies based in the district to share initiatives and know-how across the complex. The third part is a joint research project with Keio University, which will analyse data on how people in the district actually live and work day to day, studying the links between lifestyle, environment and health with a focus on catching problems before they become illness; the results, Mori Building said, will be shared back with the individuals and companies involved.

Mori Building framed the launch around Japan's shrinking working-age population, arguing that makes workplace wellness more important even as most existing health initiatives depend on individual employees' own awareness or on what each company chooses to do on its own, limiting how far they reach. The company also said that gathering everyday data on early-stage, pre-illness conditions could help advance preventive medicine more broadly. It did not name which tenant companies are taking part, name the Keio researchers involved, or set a specific start date for the research or numeric participation targets.

As Japan's working-age population shrinks and hybrid work raises the bar for why anyone needs to come into an office at all, wellness programming has become one of the few ways a trophy office landlord can keep differentiating a lease beyond rent and address, and Mori Building is treating Azabudai Hills less like a finished building than an ongoing service relationship with its tenants. The retail and food floors under the same roof stand to benefit indirectly from that bet too, since an office population a developer is actively trying to keep healthy and present is also the customer base for the mall below it. Whether the approach actually moves health outcomes, and whether Mori Building extends it to its other complexes, is something only the data the company has not yet published will show.