Description

For the task of bringing together in a single building a library, media ateliers open to the public, audio­visual facilities, and not least, an exhibition centre (which was expressly intended to be a prototype for a public building in the twenty-first century), the architect developed a design that is aptly described as a synthesis of minimalism and formal abundance. On an almost square ground plan, each of its sides 50 meters long, and surrounded on three sides by a transparent glass skin, the building – which appears from the outside to be a minimalist cube – is composed of two underground floors and seven upper floors of varying heights, which are articulated only by thirteen irregularly arranged ‘tubes.’ These are bundles of steel tubes of varying diameters, diagonally crossing each other; their tree-like form is reminiscent of the “primeval hut” said to be the origin of architecture. Here, it is no longer surrounded by nature, but by the modern city conceived as second nature. The ‘tubes’ form not only an earthquake-proof supporting structure, but also contain the entire infrastructure, serve for vertical access and ventilation, and deflect daylight into the interior by means of concave glass prisms.

Between these towers, whose effect is both organic and expressive at the same time, and whose form changes from one floor to the next and thereby evokes analogies to nature – Toyo Ito described one design sketch as “seaweed dancing in water” – the flowing spaces develop into wide open areas. The architect conceives of these and their transparent boundaries of glass of different materialities as the correlative of an open life form. The transparency of the façade skin defined as an organic membrane aims at flexibility and “equality of perspectives.” This program developed out of Japanese culture and targeting the continual change in today’s media society, forces one to question the certainty of one’s own perspective. A quarter of a century ago, and under different premises, the Centre Pompidou had already demonstrated that this external transparency and open building organisation open up possibilities – in particular for exhibitions – that are as exciting as they are problematic.

Casabella 684-685/2000-2001, pp. 144-165 (Andrea Maffei) • ARCH+ 148, 10/1999, pp. 36-41 • Architectural Design 71/ 2001, pp. 104-108 (Jeremy Melvin) • Architectural Record 189/2001, pp. 191-201 (Naomi R. Pollock) • Archis 2/2001, pp. 104-124 (Tom Avermaete; Thomas Daniell) • Baumeister 6/2001, pp. 60-73 (Nikolaus Knebel; Mike Schlaich) • Detail 7/2001, pp. 1202-1212 (Andrea Wiegelmann) • Domus 835/ 2001, pp. 36-59 (Deyan Sudjic) • Japan Architect 41/2001, pp. 16-17 (Toyohiko Kobayashi) • Hubertus Adam/Jochen Paul (eds.), Höhepunkte der Weltarchitektur, Cologne, 2001, pp. 410-411 • Toyo Ito, Sendai Mediatheque, Miyagi, Japan, 1995-2000, Tokyo, 2001 • Ron Witte/Hiroto Kobayashi (eds.), Toyo Ito: Sendai Mediatheque, Munich/London, 2002 • Tomoko Sakamoto/Albert Ferre (eds.), Sendai Mediatheque, Barcelona, 2003 • Annette LeCuyer, Steel and Beyond, Basel, 2003, pp. 74-79

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Originally published in: Paul von Naredi-Rainer, Museum Buildings: A Design Manual, Birkhäuser, 2004.