Site Area: 9990m2
Building Area: 34.98m2
Total Floor Area: 2573.48m2
Scale of Building: Three underground levels
Structure: Reinforced concrete
Above is the approach to Chichu Art Museum designed by ANDO. It was built and opened in 2004 on the south side of Naoshima island in the Seto Inland Sea where 3500 people live. It’s closer to Okayama Prefecture, 20 minutes by boat from Uno Port, than Kagawa Prefecture that the island belongs to. Kagawa is one of the four Shikoku prefectures.
Since the museum is on the south side of the island, Takamatsu City, Kagawa, is visible from Chichu Café at the museum. In fact, without going to the café, you never see the Inland Sea while you are on the premises of the museum. And of course, that must be part of ANDO’s scheme. The furniture used in the café is a collaborative work of ANDO and Cassina, an established Italian furniture manufacturer.
Here’s what ANDO had to say about the museum:
In 2004, Chichu Art Museum was completed. The premises are on the south hillside and used to be a salt field. I intended to create architecture immersed in the environment, where landscape should be kept intact. I pursued this intention further and the result was the museum buried in the earth. In the darkness of underground, light would embody space. With the existence of light, you come face to face with the artworks of Claude Monet, Walter De Maria, and James Turrell. I wanted to create that sort of extraordinary space.
I felt wrapped by light. I faced the artworks but at the same time communicated with light in the cosmos ANDO created and ANDO’s concrete mass was ever so beautiful.
Now back to the real world. First, you purchase a ticket and some instructions will be given by a staffer clad in white. In the waiting room, you’ll see some tables and chairs. Try sitting the chairs. They’re the products of Vitra, highly-acclaimed for their sophisticated furniture made possible by the collaborative work of the company and world-famous designers and architects.
You proceed and walk on a gentle slope. On the left is Chichu Garden, where you see plants, flowers, and trees, and a pond, recreating the atmosphere of Monet’s Giverny Gardens.
In a few minutes, you are at the gate of ANDO’s cosmos, where artworks, Mother Nature and architecture coexist in a harmonious yet uncompromising relationship.
You see a portion of Chichu Art Museum in this picture, taken at the Benesse House, a contemporary museum and accommodations (also designed by Ando). Around the middle of the hill, you see Ando's concrete.
In 1995, Ando was awarded the Pritzker Prize, architecture’s equivalent of the Nobel. According to the Japan Times article featuring his interview, the then jury said Ando uses concrete as though it was “the tectonic demiurge of our time.”
Concrete as building material is Ando’s attribute. You might think concrete is only mundane as a building material but Ando’s concrete does not come cheap and easy. His concrete mass is so expressive that it manifests geometrical beauty.
His Row House in Sumiyoshi, Osaka, from 1976, is now legendary. It’s an operating private residence where the owners live, which proves that his extraordinary design of this reinforced concrete building has functioned as was intended. Late MURANO Togo, one of the greatest architects in modern Japan, once commented on this house after he toured it, saying: Well done. But the residents should be awarded some kind of prize above all. Listening to MURANO’s comment right there on the spot, Ando admitted that the owners’ understanding, cooperation, and patience made this house alive.
The land is very much limited; it’s small and rectangular (the house is 3.5m wide, 14m long, and 14m tall). It has an open central atrium, like a square courtyard, in the middle of the house; you have your own piece of sky up there and the light falling through is all yours, though on rainy days or windy nights you need extra determination to go to the bathroom from your living room, for you have to be out in the courtyard to reach your facilities.
Now back to the Chichu Art Museum. You should be willing to be in a sphere detached from your daily routines. Step into a carefully designed space; breathe a different kind of air; feel free and take time. The architecture is basically subterranean, yet nature is exquisitely invited into the environment by a square and triangular courtyards. And of course, the inland sea seen from Chichu Café is impressive. Two of the images persistently in my mind are the open corridor with slanting side walls and the covered sloping hallway with a long transverse slit in one side of the walls.
Three artists have their presence at the museum: Claude Monet, James Turrell, and Walter De Maria.
Claude Monet:
You are asked to change your shoes to soft indoor slippers at the shoe boxes. You walk into a vacant room which seems to have been built in order to provide space necessary to approach the display room of Monet’s water lilies. It’s still dim there but through the rectangular open entrance, you feel silky light trickling in. Once you enter the Monet’s room, the transparent veil of light surrounds you. And it’s white: white frames, white walls, white ceiling, and white floors.
The floors of the display room and the approach room are made of white marble, Bianco Carrara, coming from the same quarry Michelangelo valued. About 700 thousand two-centimeter cubes made of marble, cover the floor. The floors feel soft and gentle, though made of stone. The frames are also made of snow white marble, Thassos White; The walls are plastered in the same style as the outer walls of Takamatsu Castle once magnificently stood with its castle tower of twenty some meters. The ceiling of the display room has round corners, which do not disturb the consistency of your vision. There’s only natural light, indirectly coming in from between the covert skylight and the large white panel below it. You’d never be tired of seeing the pictures; every time you see, you will have different images under varied light.
Musée de l'Orangerie will come to your mind when you think of Monet’s water lily pond. The water lilies at Chichu Art Museum were painted in Monet’s later years when his eyesight failed significantly due to cataract, and the motifs came closest to abstract.
James Turrel:
Born in the US in 1943, he is the artist of light and space. His three artworks displayed here will give you a chance to experience his art chronologically. One of the artworks, Open Field, makes light tangible; you feel like you’re enveloped by light. His life work is the project concerning an extinct volcano, Roden Crater. The project has been in progress for the last 30 years. He’s transforming the crater to a massive naked-eye observatory by making subterranean rooms and tunnels down there. Light will shed into the tunnels in many different ways depending on the location of the sun and the moon. He aims to create the space that light can be recognized in many different forms.
Walter De Maria:
He has his way of demonstrating light for you in the artwork, Time/Timeless/No Time. The large 2.2m granite sphere placed in the center of the room seems to have captured light inside. The light gently falling from the skylight is a gift to you. His best-known artwork must be The Lightning Field. It consists of 400 stainless steel posts arranged in a calculated grid over an area of 1 mile × 1 km. The time of day and weather change the optical effects. It lights up during thunder storms.
The three artists and Ando the fourth give you a flight from your ordinary life. It’s a collaborative work of these four and the island of Naoshima.
Now back to the Chichu Art Museum. You should be willing to be in a sphere detached from your daily routines. Step into a carefully designed space; breathe a different kind of air; feel free and take time. The architecture is basically subterranean, yet nature is exquisitely invited into the environment by a square and triangular courtyards. And of course, the inland sea seen from Chichu Café is impressive. Two of the images persistently in my mind are the open corridor with slanting side walls and the covered sloping hallway with a long transverse slit in one side of the walls.
Three artists have their presence at the museum: Claude Monet, James Turrell, and Walter De Maria.
Claude Monet:
You are asked to change your shoes to soft indoor slippers at the shoe boxes. You walk into a vacant room which seems to have been built in order to provide space necessary to approach the display room of Monet’s water lilies. It’s still dim there but through the rectangular open entrance, you feel silky light trickling in. Once you enter the Monet’s room, the transparent veil of light surrounds you. And it’s white: white frames, white walls, white ceiling, and white floors.
The floors of the display room and the approach room are made of white marble, Bianco Carrara, coming from the same quarry Michelangelo valued. About 700 thousand two-centimeter cubes made of marble, cover the floor. The floors feel soft and gentle, though made of stone. The frames are also made of snow white marble, Thassos White; The walls are plastered in the same style as the outer walls of Takamatsu Castle once magnificently stood with its castle tower of twenty some meters. The ceiling of the display room has round corners, which do not disturb the consistency of your vision. There’s only natural light, indirectly coming in from between the covert skylight and the large white panel below it. You’d never be tired of seeing the pictures; every time you see, you will have different images under varied light.
Musée de l'Orangerie will come to your mind when you think of Monet’s water lily pond. The water lilies at Chichu Art Museum were painted in Monet’s later years when his eyesight failed significantly due to cataract, and the motifs came closest to abstract.
James Turrel:
Born in the US in 1943, he is the artist of light and space. His three artworks displayed here will give you a chance to experience his art chronologically. One of the artworks, Open Field, makes light tangible; you feel like you’re enveloped by light. His life work is the project concerning an extinct volcano, Roden Crater. The project has been in progress for the last 30 years. He’s transforming the crater to a massive naked-eye observatory by making subterranean rooms and tunnels down there. Light will shed into the tunnels in many different ways depending on the location of the sun and the moon. He aims to create the space that light can be recognized in many different forms.
Walter De Maria:
He has his way of demonstrating light for you in the artwork, Time/Timeless/No Time. The large 2.2m granite sphere placed in the center of the room seems to have captured light inside. The light gently falling from the skylight is a gift to you. His best-known artwork must be The Lightning Field. It consists of 400 stainless steel posts arranged in a calculated grid over an area of 1 mile × 1 km. The time of day and weather change the optical effects. It lights up during thunder storms.
The three artists and Ando the fourth give you a flight from your ordinary life. It’s a collaborative work of these four and the island of Naoshima.
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