Sejima Nishizawa 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art Kanazawa Japanone France

The 21st Century Museum, located in Kanazawa, is one of the most important works designed by SANAA (Sejima and Nishikawa Architects and Associates). Using simple geometry and minimalist language, the project explores the permeability of the public space through different levels of transparency, a concept that these Pritzker awarded couple the has been exploiting through different approaches in previous works.

Location
The Museum of the 21st Century is located in the city of Kanazawa, in Ishikawa Prefecture, located adjacent to the Kenrokuen, one of the most beautiful and famous gardens of Japan. The building, inscribed in a circle of 112.5 meters in diameter, is located on an irregularly shaped park. Some of the artworks have been installed in the park, which is an extension of the museum.

Concept
The museum'south programme includes meeting spaces, a reading room, library,  workshops for children, a eatery, service and display areas. Therefore, the complex had to be both public and individual, including  costless access areas for the do good of the local population, as well as other paid areas to let the maintenance of this facility.

The challenge of Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishikawa was to create a balance between these  ii domains, blurring the boundaries between the public and private areas, and for that purpose they proposed a mixed-use layout, organized around four courtyards. The interaction with the public space is such that at times the circulation themselves act as exhibition areas. Formally, the museum is a series of boxes of unlike area, level of opacity and height - which accomplish between 4 and 12 meters- and that are inserted into a circular drinking glass skin, joining the external environment. Just an opaque and eccentric cylinder appears equally an anomaly in this rectangular gridiron layout, refering to the transparent encircling membrane of the museum. In contrast, the outer cylinder is a thin, transparent edge which is openly connected with the exterior.

This is a deceptively simple but highly provocative design, that challenges the traditional notion of a museum flow, by offering visitors full liberty on their situatedness, their appropriation of space, defining their own route and their interaction with the edifice, art and environment.
In this context, some of the exhibited works collaborate to stress the phenomenological connectedness between the viewer, the displayed object and nature, establishing not only a relationship of passive observation but  of individual and group interaction with the fine art.
For example, Sky Blue Planet, the open-air sculpture James Turrell , in a similar work displayed in the Tadao Ando'south Chichu Fine art Museum in Naoshima . Framing the heaven, the viewer witnesses the ever-irresolute spectacle of the heaven and the environment.
Another case is Vertical Green, past Patrick Blanc, a vertical garden with over 100 varieties of plants that acts equally a border in i of the courtyards and which is crossed perpendicularly past a glazed circulation.
One the most striking is the work of Leandro Erlich, called Pond Puddle. It was unusual to find a pool in the eye of a museum, but every bit ane approaches, it is surprising to see people underwater. Later, upon entering the exhibit areas in the basement, you may step into the puddle and see people from beyond the "water".
The effect is very interesting and successful, affording enthusiastic public participation. Information technology is achieved by  putting two acrylic plates separated form each other by 30 cm, a space filled with water. Another layer of water about 10 cm thick has as well been placed on acme the acrylic to achieve a more realistic result.
The museum has a special exhibit area in the basement, accessed by an elevator, a transparent box that  is raised past a cylindrical piston, both of which in turn evoke the primary forms used in the pattern and refer to the concepts of lightness, permeability and simplicity that are found throughout the building.
At night, the museum  emphasizes its role as urban landmark and its symbolic visual appropriation by the people of Kanazawa.

more than buildings from SANAA

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Source: https://www.archiweb.cz/en/b/21st-century-museum-of-contemporary-art-kanazawa

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