architecture: new pantheon?

Teshima Art Musuem is located on an island in Seto Inland Sea. It faces the ocean from a hillside covered with rice terraces. The museum is unlike most art museums– unlike most buildings– in that it doesn’t treat the outside as a source of contamination and is completely open, a brandmark of Ryue Nishizawa from SANAA. Nishizawa, both working alone and with his partner Kazuyo Sejima, has gradually revolutionized museum architecture in Japan. The building itself resembles drop of water and corresponds with Rei Naito work Matrix which it hosts inside. A thin concrete slab stretches as long as sixty meters creating a large organic interior. Low ceiling, four-and-a-half meter height with two apertures let the light, rain and the air penetrate the inside. This structure was possible only thanks to technology since there is no straight line in the entire design. Inside water that had been welled from underground slowly springs up from various spots flow freely morphing into the shapes, whirl and disappear again. It's a place of meditation over life where architecture, art and environment blends together.

photos: Noboru Morikawa