An Alternative for the Nerima Art Museum and Library in Tokyo
Introduction: Entangled Orders
What is an Entangling Base? Imagine the clouds entangling in the Alps, creating a beautiful landscape. If there were no Alps, the clouds would not form in that place. The existence of the Alps as an Entangling Base for the clouds, providing space for them to entangle, is the key to the order in which they intertwine. Relationships like cloud/Alps (entangled things/Entangling Base) can be found throughout nature — especially in the biological world and the domain of science — and also in certain creative practices, such as music and the visual arts. This is evident, for instance, in the work of composer Iannis Xenakis and artists Ángel Duarte, Sarah Sze, and Anthony Gormley.
Other examples include sauce/pasta, bird’s nests/branches, books/bookshelves, and fish eggs/seaweed. Let’s consider the case of fish eggs. When fish eggs entangle with seaweed and the seaweed entangles with rocks on the seabed, the rocks become an Entangling Base for the seaweed, which in turn becomes an Entangling Base for the fish eggs. If we were to diagram this, it would look like this: { {fish eggs/seaweed} / rock}. In other words, we obtain a series of orders layered onto each other in a hierarchical way. Could we create architecture on the basis of these kinds of nested orders? This question represents the foundation for thinking about architecture as an Entangling Base.
In architectural terms, instead of { {fish eggs/seaweed} / rock}, we could think of a building as creating an entanglement between, say, { {plants/pleats} / boxes}. Yet, the thought process around an Entangling Base can expand beyond just the generation of architectural form. For instance, the process of generating an entangled order can be opened to dialogue with citizens through design workshops, which might be particularly appropriate for buildings where diverse groups of people are to coexist. In this case, architecture would become an Entangling Base for the reverberations woven by people’s voices.
These examples can be seen as procedures aiming to create higher-level entanglements. Here, “entanglement” is not mere fusion. Fusion involves different elements combined into one, while entanglement implies that each element retains its individuality while intertwining with every other, even though they may change and evolve as they entangle. This line of thought leads to the proposition that architecture can be conceived as an Entangling Base—i.e., a notion of architecture as a base where different entities can intertwine while preserving their distinctiveness.
An Alternative for the Nerima Art Museum and Library
Each with its own strong architectural identity, the art museum and the library are most often reexamined and reconceived as individual typologies. Our goal here will be to imagine what kinds of hybrid models of both can resonate with our time by designing alternatives to the current Nerima Art Museum and Library, which is a real venture currently ongoing in the municipality of Nerima in Tokyo. It will be a particularly suitable opportunity to design a project on the grounds of an Entangling Base orchestrating heterogeneity at various levels in a creative and imaginative fashion.
With a total surface area of around 85,000 sq. ft., the program will contain:
- Common areas including entrance hall, multipurpose room, conference room, and other spaces;
- A museum comprising mainly art storage, reference storage, loading, permanent exhibition spaces, temporary exhibition spaces, exhibit preparation room, lobby, and a citizen gallery;
- A library housing general, art, and kids books; quiet and audiovisual rooms; offices, amenities, and storage; and closed stacks.
A detail program brief will be provided at the beginning of the semester.
Site and Context
The site, whose surface area is 44,000 sq. ft., is located at 1-391-15,16 Nukui, Nerima Ward, Tokyo.
Two buildings exist currently on the site. Building A houses a museum and a library. The first floor holds the library and loading/unloading while the museum is located on the second and third floors, both functions rather independent from one another. Building B, named Sunlife Nerima, houses meeting and seminar rooms, a gym, and other community activities.
The municipality of Nerima has requested that a synergy between the programs housed in each of the two buildings, currently completely separate, be created. Nerima is known for its animation culture. The first major animation production company in Japan, Tezuka Osamu’s, was based in Nerima. Since animation is related to comic books, here is one point of entry into the possibility of engendering entanglements between books and art.
Another “entanglement” requested by the municipality of Nerima is to think about ways to productively interweave the flow of people coming from the local shopping street with that of the art museum and library. The project will be located right in front of the Nakamurabashi Station, a relatively small community station in Nerima. About 40 years ago, the factory that stood on the site shut down and the art museum and library were built instead. Since, however, the locals and the activities of the art museum have hardly intertwined at all in meaningful and consistent ways. In recent years, revitalizing the shopping street has become an urgent question. A strong desire exists for the new art museum and library to engage with the shopping street and the city.
Therefore, the fundamental challenge here is how to generate rich entanglements between the art museum and the library, and further, how to intertwine the art museum/library with the shopping street and the city. In other words, a vision for the surrounding blocks, including the shopping district, as well as consideration of the relationship between the old and the new will constitute important elements in the proposals.
Community Input
Students will be encouraged to develop new research while at the same time having access to relevant data, information, and input — most notably, to feedback from local residents obtained through a series of five design workshops carried out by Akihisa Hirata’s office. This feedback, which will also be provided at the beginning of the semester, contains invaluable insights into the community activities expected to take place in the building.
For example, while some residents supported the idea of demolishing the existing structures and building anew, others expressed the view that they could be reused in some fashion. These structures were built about 40 years ago and eventually, due to deterioration and failure to meet ADA standards, the local government decided to tear them down. Participants in this studio will be free to either demolish or work with the existing structures, whether by keeping them in their entirety or only partially.
To mention two other preferences worth noting, the local residents put forward the idea that the new building contain stages to be used for traditional dance on the occasion of festivals and that it may hold a big calligraphy exhibition involving citizens of all generations, including elementary school students. Incorporating community feedback and input from the very beginning of the design process might allow for the generation of entanglements than can be more fundamental than usual. It also raises questions about the way today’s public buildings are conceived and the role architects should play in that process, which we would like to seriously consider in this studio.
One way a fruitful dialogue around community activities can be brought on is by producing a dynamic spring-based network that visualizes the proximity and distance between such activities, even beyond those of just the library and museum programs. This enables an evolving design to accommodate any number of new activities as well as modifications in terms of the relative position of each on the basis of the conversations held with the locals. Students will be encouraged to come up with innovative and effective ways to generate these kinds of graphic tools.
Studio Trip
We will travel to Japan, where will be visit Tokyo, Kyoto, and Osaka.
Urban space in Japan and the people’s behavior within it differ significantly from those in the United States. As notable aspects in that regard, we could mention the chaotic density of Tokyo’s urbanism, the dynamic relationship between the architects’ works and the intertwining urban environment, and the many areas where people’s habits and preferences have no direct connection to the way buildings have been conceived. During the studio trip, students will experience these aspects firsthand and will establish a foundation for reflecting the entanglement of the city and architecture in their design. At the same time, by researching the site and surrounding shopping districts in Tokyo—as well as enjoying the local food— they will be able to better anticipate the kind of architecture needed in the context in which they will be working. On the final day of the trip, the students will have the opportunity to visit the 2025 World Expo site in Kansai, Osaka—on which, among other things, they will be able to explore the National Day Theater, designed by Akihisa Hirata Architecture Office. This visit will allow them to immerse themselves into the atmosphere of the site and the various pavilions and interventions of the World Expo a mere two weeks before the opening.