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Just three weeks after the completion of the Atsugi plant, the groundbreaking ceremony for the Sony Research Center was held on November 22.
The research laboratory building was a modern three-story ferro-concrete facility set on 28,100 square meters of land. Since the architectural considerations that restricted the design of the transistor plant were not a concern, it was simply decided to commission an outside designer to do the work. All for the idea, Ibuka even took the time to contact Junzo Yoshimura from Haneda Airport before leaving on a business trip to the U.S. Yoshimura was an up and coming architect who had worked on a famous mountain resort in New York and later on the renovated Imperial Palace.
A typical scientist, Hatoyama was not fussy. He would be content as long as the lab had rooms and the necessary equipment. A little inconvenience was no concern. Architect Yoshimura, however, was taking great pains in designing the layout, including  walking lines and other esoteric features. You have to hand it to this professional, thought Hatoyama, who found this whole design process absolutely intriguing.
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 | | The Sony Research center in 1961. |
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Hodogaya is an area with many hills and ridges, and rice paddies which dot the valleys. The lab was built in a Y-shape on a leveled hill called site A. The construction company strengthened the foundation on the cut-away areas, but this area was still extremely weak, perhaps due to bad tamping. In fact, this later led to cracks in the ceilings and persistent rain leakage.
One of the hallmarks of the laboratory was the overpass which Sony built from the Hodogaya Bypass to the lab grounds. Initially the bridge was to be made with steel girders, but at Ibuka's suggestion the relatively new PS concrete building technique was used. An investigation of available methods showed that PS concrete was by far the cheapest.
The most difficult part of PS construction was laying the girders. This involved first laying girders on the buttress within the research grounds, then building the next 33.7 1.5m, 65t PS concrete girder on top of this. The newer girder was then pushed out to the next buttress while being supported by ropes. On weekdays, construction took place between four and seven in the morning before traffic became too heavy.
During construction, two members of the Sony building repair and maintenance section stayed overnight at the research center in order to supervise the early morning laying of the first girders outside the property and ensure that the Expressway Public Corporation's directive to avoid danger or inconvenience to traffic on the expressway was followed. The four 1.5 m wide girders were laid without any problems over the following four days. To the surprise of the Sony staff, Hatoyama also joined them, complete with an 8mm camera to capture the bridge-building process on slow speed film. The building repair and maintenance crew could not help admiring Hatoyama's gung-ho spirit, unusual as it was.
In all, the bridge took ten months and 42 million yen to build. In 1961, just prior to completion, it was christened the "Sony Bridge." The 69m-long, 6m-wide bridge painted in Sony's colors was to be the main link between the research laboratory, the main plant at the Sony head office and the Atsugi plant.
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