Hiroshi Hara (1936–2025) was a Japanese architect and writer on architecture, known for large public buildings including Kyoto Station and the Umeda Sky Building. He studied at the University of Tokyo, earning a doctorate in engineering in 1964, and taught there until 1997, becoming professor at its Institute of Industrial Science in 1982. From 1970 he worked with Atelier Φ, renamed Hiroshi Hara + Atelier Φ in 1999. His theoretical essays on architecture and cities include "Discrete City".
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The Iida City Museum (1988) followed a run of museums, schools and houses in the 1980s. The Umeda Sky Building in Osaka (1993) is two 40-storey towers joined at their top two floors by bridges across an open atrium, crowned by the Floating Garden Observatory. Kyoto Station Building (1997) is among his best-known works, followed by the Miyagi Prefectural Library in Sendai (1998) and the Sapporo Dome (2001), a football stadium used for the 2002 FIFA World Cup. He also built a series of experimental houses in Latin America, in Montevideo, Córdoba and La Paz. Hiroshi Hara's buildings are studied for treating large buildings as cities.
