Kengo Kuma & Associates

This museum is dedicated to the works of the famous Ukiyo-e artist Hiroshige Ando. The design represents an attempt to materialize in architecture the unique spatial structure that Hiroshige created in his woodblock prints. In contrast with the perspective techniques used by many Western painters, he expressed three-dimensional space through the superposition of layers. Hiroshige’s work had a major impact on the Impressionists as well as on the architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright. Here, we used wooden louvers made of local cedar to materialize this superposition of layers. The cedar was treated with fireproofing and rot-proofing processes to allow us to use it on the roof as well.