66854 New Forms Taschen 088

Toyo Ito

Yatsushiro Municipal Museum Yatsushiro, Kumamoto, iapan. 1989-91

located on an artificial hill, this museum of local history is the first of three buildings in the othcrwise rather unrcmarkable Kyushu town of Yatsushiro, by Ito. He also designed the Elderly Poople s Home (1992-94) and a Fire Station (1992-95).

the Louvre. The second generation is illustrated by morę flexible modern institu-tions such as the Pompidou Center and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Now, says Isozaki, the time is ripe for a third generation that abandons the conven-tional concept of a museum and provides specially designed spaćes and settings for newly created and installed art. The town of Nagi counts only 7,500 inhabitants and as such could not be expected to boast a substantial art collection. So here, Isozaki not only conceived the architecture, but provided the art as well, with site-specific installations designed by his wife, the sculptor Aiko Miyawaki, Shusaku Arakawa and Kazuo Okazaki. Further, the museum and art design is integrated into a symbolic triad formed by the sun, moon and earth, the whole aligned with a nearby "sacred" mountain. The Nagi MoCA is of importance not because of its size but because of its integrated effort to create a symbolic structure, in harmony both with the art that it houses and gives significance to, and with the local traditions and topography. Its rather blocky forms do not have the lyrical grace of lto's light architecture, but lsozaki's thinking here has clearly gone beyond one of attractive shapes.

A finał example, which may not be the most successful work by Fumihiko Maki, is the Kyoto Museum of Modern Art, situated near the Okazaki park in the north-western section of the city, just next to the enormous red torii of the Heian Tempie. Its large rectilinear bulk stands out, and its rather awkward white entrance area

g4 Space ro# Art