A museum by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Shigeru Ban is nearing completion in Ōita, Japan. Those familiar with his polarizing and widely discussed Aspen Art Museum might do a double take, and not because there are a bunch of iPad-equipped turtles running around. The woven facade of its upper half is very reminiscent of the molded-paper screen on his Aspen work.
Ban, whose pro-bono disaster relief works and preoccupation with cardboard and other low-cost materials are well known, also included another one of his stylistic preoccupations in this project: folding glass screens reminiscent of the kind covering his NYC condo building.
In a 2013 interview, the starchitect of the people called this "foyer-like" indoor-outdoor gallery space "enriching." Ban also highlighted the fact that the Ōita Prefectural Art Museum will be easy to see into from the outside, contrasting it with typical "black box" museums, which he claims drive away visitors averse to "paying money to go to something where you don't know what is going on."
The museum is slated to open to the public in April 2015. Here's a few renderings of what it should look like, courtesy of Design Boom:
· Shigeru Ban's Oita Prefectural Art Museum nearing completion in Japan [Design Boom]
· 12 Facts About Shigeru Ban From His New Yorker Profile [Curbed National]