Combining Nature and Culture: Kengo Kuma’s Architecture

The new building designed by the architect Kengo Kuma was inspired by Albert Kahn’s specific connection with Japan: the architectural project stages the relationship between the external and the internal, between the city, museum and garden. Kengo Kuma placed this link between culture and domesticated nature at the heart of his project meant to expand the museum and reorganize its four historical buildings, which cadence the visitor itinerary.

Outside, the façade facing the street is an enclosure wall that both protects and reveals the new museum. The outer envelope of metallic folds hides the interior vegetal setting from view; at night, it reveals the lights of the museum between the lacquered slats, like a lantern. Once past the sloping entrance, the architectural vocabulary changes, with an interplay of screens, pine slats, aluminum mesh and walkways that cadence the interior façade and connect it to the garden.

Inside, each opening is a composition. Visitors, looking through the tall glass walls, are immediately plunged into the meadow and English garden. Dynamic longitudinal lines respond in kind, from the floor slats to the bleachers, all the way up to the infinity-style wood slat ceiling, the whole underlined through mirror-like effects.