Nagasaki Prefectural Museum of Art

 

The Nagasaki Prefectural Museum of Art opened in 2005 on the waterfront of Nagasaki City.

It is located astride a channel whose walkways are public thourouhfares. The roof gardens are also public spaces.

It was designed by the renowned Japanese architect Kuma Kengo.

The permanent collection concentrates on art, in a wide variety of media, connected to Nagasaki since the Meiji Period.

The museum is also home to the Suma collection of hisorical and modern Spanish world collected by the former Envoy to Spain during WWII, Suma Yakichiro.

I did not go inside so I have no report on the art or the interior architecture.

Earlier on my walk around Kyushu I visited another Kuma Kengo building, the Kyushu Geibunkan.

The previous post in this series exploring Nagasaki was the nearby Nagasakiminato Ferry Terminal.

Geibunkan Annex 2 by Kengo Kuma

 

At the Kyushu Geibunkan in the Chikugo area the second annex was also designed by Kengo Kuma.

It gets much more attention than the first annex, but I prefer the first. The second annex is a small pavilion with a large arbor.

Much is made of its modular nature, with all the parts of the arbor roof structure being the same .

I akso include a couple of more shots of the main building, just because I like the irregularity of it.

Finally here is a shot of the Chikugo Funagoya Shinkansen Station which is right next to the Geibunkan, both of which pretty much stand alone amoing the rice paddies.

Kyushu Geibunkan Annex one

 

The Kyushu Geibunkan  in southern Fukuoka is a large, modern, ""Culture Hall" designed by Kengo Kuma. Nearby in the park space surrounding the main building are two annexes, also designed by him.

Annex i is a long, narrow building of small studios, all of which seem to have exterior walls of glass. The building has a flat, overhanging roof.

The roofs shape is indented with sweeping curves that touch each other at a sharp point.

The best way to describe it for me is to imagine an elongated, exaggerated holly leaf.

I am quite fond of curves in architectural space, especially for the kind of photo compositions I lean toward.

Kyushu Geibunkan by Kengo Kuma

 

I had passed by this building several times on the train and was determined to visit it to explore when my walk took me through this section of the country.

Called the Kyushu Geibunkan, it is a kind of "culture center" and it is located slap bang in the middle of a rural area with only small towns and villages in the area . It is also located adjacent to a Shinkansen station that also seems anomalous,  and just a few hundred meters from Komyoji Temple that I had just visited as part of the Kyushu Pilgrimage.

In some climates, Japan in particular, the main focus of buildings is the roof. So it is here at the Geibunkan, though it actually has dozens of roofs, and not a single one is rectangular. Lots of triangles and trapezoids all joined together higgeldy-piggeldy, with some of the roofs almost touching the ground.

Though the front of the building seems somewhat simple and monolithic, the exterior is far more fragmented and disjoined which I suspect makes for some interesting interior spaces. I must admit I regret not having gone inside or explored the rear more.

As well as the wide range of intersecting and connecting shapes the building also uses a variety of different materials and textures which adds to the interest.

The building was designed by Kengo Kuma and opened in 2013. I have visited several of his buildings before but I believe this is the first time I have posted on this blog. My opinion of him worsened after his campaign against the winning design for the Olympic Stadium, which I liked, and having it replaced with his own design.

In the park around the building are a couple of annexes, asodesigned by Kengo Kuma which will get their own posts soon....