165 At 6,500m2 , this is
Japanese architect Sou Fujimoto’s largest building to date. Ever since his Children’s Treatment Centre in Hokkaido shared first prize in the 2006 AR Awards for Emerging Architecture, Fujimoto has become more widely known for an acclaimed range of smaller domestic projects. With six of his Japanese houses featured in these pages, the architect’s inventive use of space is familiar to many AR readers. Until this point, however,
Fujimoto’s ability to produce a large-scale institutional building has remained untested, so anyone interested in the scalability of his talents will be particularly keen to scrutinise the plans for the recently completed Musashino Art University Library in Tokyo. As with all of Fujimoto’s projects the plan is the key generator. With T House (AR December 2005) he challenged conventional living arrangements with a series of radial walls that created alcoves for specific use. In his House at Tateyama
MUSASHINO ART UNIVERSITY LIBRARY Location
TOKYO, JAPAN architect
SOU FUJIMOTO ARCHITECTS writer
ROB GREGORY photography
EDMUND SUMNER
(AR August 2007), he laid out spidery limbs to pinpoint specific views on a panoramic site. And in House N (AR April 2009), he used three nested boxes to create permeable layers of privacy for his client. Here too, at the university
library, it is the plan that brings distinction, as Fujimoto combines conceptual clarity with functional rigour to generate a new form of library planning. Fujimoto won the project in 2007, beating a cohort of young architects consciously chosen by the client to design a building that would give the university a distinctive and marketable identity in order to attract students. Discussing the project with the AR at this year’s Venice Biennale, Fujimoto compares the purpose of his building with one by Toyo Ito, competed in 2007 for rival Tokyo institution Tama Art University (AR August 2007). As the number of students in
Japan continues to fall due to the demographics of an ageing nation and the high tuition fees that
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100