Like the character Bill Murray plays in the recent film Lost in Translation, the Mori Art Museum, which opened in Tokyo last fall, suffers from a mild case of dislocation. As a privately run contemporary-art venue with international ambitions, it will help herald the accomplishments of such Japanese art stars as Yoko Ono, Yayoi Kusama, Hiroshi Sugimoto and Takashi Murakami. The museum is also supposed to function as a tourist destination, the jewel in the crown of real-estate developer Minoru Mori's newest project, Roppongi Hills. The upscale multiuse community features condominium apartment buildings, a luxurious Grand Hyatt hotel, the new headquarters of Asahi Television and a shopping complex packed with boutiques of the caliber of Louis Vuitton, Issey Miyake and Baccarat.

The most prominent structure in Roppongi Hills is the 53-story Mori Tower, designed by Kohn Pedersen Fox. It is one of the tallest buildings in this earthquake-ridden city and houses the Mori Arts Center on the top five floors. In addition to the museum, the center contains a private club with numerous restaurants and meeting rooms, a continuing-education facility and Tokyo City View, an observation deck that provides a 360-degree panorama of the neon-laced metropolis below. Gluckman Mayner Architects designed the steel, glass and sandstone museum, as well as the street-level entry structure, a 98-foot-tall beehive shape covered in glass shingles.

Visitors ride high-speed elevators to reach the 31,820 square feet of exhibition space located on the 52nd and 53rd floors. The galleries themselves are long corridors with windows at the ends. Mori, who calls his pet project "Artelligent City," envisions a scenario where tourists and local residents can mix shopping and sightseeing, entertainment and the viewing of contemporary art, in ways that boost the bottom line of his entire venture. As one of the wealthiest businessmen in Japan, he is blatantly commercial about his goals, stating candidly at the pre-opening press conference that he only became interested in contemporary art when his niece, artist Mariko Mori, mentioned that her work was selling for more, per square inch, than his real estate was worth.