21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa

The 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa stands in the center of Kanazawa, on a site linking together diverse but equally important city functions. Circular in form, with a diameter of 112.5 meters, the building has no front or back, leaving it free to be explored from all directions. While being a reaction to the accessibility of the site from multiple points of entry, as well as to its breadth, the circularity of the plan also works in concert with keeping the overall building volume low, to effectively mitigate the scale of the project and an overly grand presence common to large institutions. In order to further encourage the multiplicity of approaches, the architects have intentionally resisted establishing a primary façade or entrance. (to find out more..)





Well this has always been my favourite building, designed by my favourite architecture office SANAA.
The most special thing here is the plan, each rooms are in fact individual blocks, and the cluster is braced by the outer circle elegantly. Without hierarchy in the overall form, the blocks' varied scales resonate with each other, generating polar yet harmonic dual-senses - individual and collective - within the cluster of blocks. Unlike conventional museums, this museum has no obvious frontal but a few entrances are placed around the circle, so it is a building where any people from any direction, can approach - truly a museum for all.
arhh there's actually so much more i want to say~!

passage from: http://www.kanazawa21.jp/en/06about/architect.html

posted by afterrabbit