21st Century Kanazawa Museum

Description

Kanazawa is situated on the north coast of Japan, and is one of the nation’s historical centers. The 21:st Century Museum of Contemporary Art sits in the centre of Kanazawa and in addition to museum spaces includes community gathering spaces, such as a library, lecture hall, and children’s workshop. The intertwined public and museum zones are designed to provoke interaction between potential user groups, with the public spaces encircling the museum zones. The site links together the diverse but equally important municipal functions surrounding it. Circular in form, the building has no front or back, opening it for exploration from all sides. The exhibition area is fragmented into numerous galleries that are all embedded in a field of circulation space. This approach provides individual gallery spaces with different characteristics while creating flexible museum circulation that allows for a variety of expanded or contracted ticketed areas. The scattered bulk of the galleries also creates transparency and a feeling of openness marked by long vistas through the entire depth of the building. A walk just inside the curved glass of the exterior facade smoothly unfolds a 360 degrees panorama of the site.Gallery spaces have various proportions and provide diverse lighting options; from bright daylight through glass ceilings to spaces without natural light. The heights range from four meters to twelve meters. The materiality and sequence of the circulation space is geared toward use as additional exhibition area. Four fully glazed internal courtyards, each unique in character, provide ample daylight at the center of the building and a fluent border between public zone and museum zone. Despite its size, the building feels bright, open, and free.(Description provided by the architects)