Gunma Prefecture, Japan

The design for the Tomihiro Museum in Gunma Prefecture, Japan responds to both the narrative and physical contexts of its site. The museum replaces an existing building celebrating the artist Tomihiro Hosino, a physical education teacher who turned to art after he became paralyzed. As art helped Tomihiro heal himself, so the new museum would celebrate his work while healing the surrounding landscape of the damage done by an earlier museum, whose construction leveled the crest of the hillside.

The form of the new building was developed by using topographic models of the site to recreate the contours of the hillside, which are then expressed in the curves of the sod-covered roof. Natural light enters the building through slits, glazed in colored glass, cut into the concrete roof-deck. The result is a mix of light spectrums against the gallery walls, creating a poetic reflection of Tomihiro’s use of watercolors, with their varying levels of transparency and color. The intimately-scaled galleries form a clear progression, creating a physical path through the exhibit’s narrative of Tomihiro’s life. The gallery spaces also acknowledge the curves of the roof, so that visitors are continually linked back to the topography of the site.

The Tomihiro Museum demonstrates a broader, more narrative-based approach to the notion that a building should be sensitive to its context. Not only does it relate to its physical setting, but it responds to the widest range of factors affecting the project, including the history of the sie and the stories it contains.