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M EDIATHEQUE , S ENDAI , J APAN

Sendai is a provincial capital, about 300km north of Tokyo, which was
ARCHITECT
levelled in the Second World War and rebuilt on a spacious grid plan.
T OYO I TO
In 1995, a new mayor decided that this prosperous modern city needed
a more appropriate civic symbol than the ruins of its seventeenth-
century castle, and invited Arata Isozaki to chair an expert jury to
choose a dynamic design for a new arts centre.
Toyo Ito won that competition with a concept that was as audacious
as the Pompidou Centre, though smaller and less assertive. Where
Rogers and Piano flexed their muscles on the exterior, creating a
heroic monument to the Machine Age, Ito proposed a transparent
block whose supports would be wrapped in glass and dematerialized.
Seven steel floor decks were stacked on 13 hollow columns composed
of welded steel tubes. Schematically, it was an updated version of
traditional Japanese post and beam construction with movable divisions
and permeable boundaries.
Metaphors inspired the structure. Ito thought of the enclosed space
as liquid, likened the columns to strands of seaweed drifting through an
aquarium, and created sketches of ethereal delicacy. Like the temporary
structures that launched his practice, and his computer-synthesized
electrographic display in the 1991 Visions of Japan exhibition at the
Victoria and Albert Museum (AR November 1991), the Mediathèque
was intended to express the fluid dynamics of the modern city in which
light and movement are layered atop its physical structure and vibrate
around vortexes of energy. For Ito, this was to be a bridge between real
and conceptual, a physical embodiment of the electronic labyrinth which
1 many now inhabit – especially the young in Japan.
Two contradictions emerged at the outset. The programme
developed to fit into Ito’s container fell far short of his vision. Sendai is
a conservative city, and librarians anxious to accommodate a growing

LAYERED MEDIA
From modest origins as a cultural centre and library
in a provincial town, Toyo Ito’s Sendai Mediathèque
celebrates and displays its different activities and
inventive structure in a dramatic urban shop window.
book collection and local artists seeking display space for academic
paintings had no enthusiasm for open plans or virtual reality.
Disagreement began the day after the competition winner was
announced. The columns had to be beefed up to meet Japan’s tough
seismic code, and the challenge for structural engineer Mutsuro Sasaki
was to retain the poetry while satisfying practical necessities.
Against all odds, much of Ito’s concept has survived six years of
impassioned debate, and the need for a structure (partly fabricated and

1 3
At night, Sendai’s new Mediathèque West facade clad in a slatted screen
pulsates with light and colour like a of perforated steel floor decking.
giant, ethereal aquarium. 4
2 The glass skin disappears in a myriad
South facade is wrapped in a clear of reflections, revealing the layers of
glass skin. Literal transparency is activity within. Like great fronds of
one means of demystifying the seaweed, tubular column cages drift
46 | 10 building and encouraging use. languidly through the interior. 4 47 | 10
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M EDIATHEQUE ,
S ENDAI , J APAN
ARCHITECT
T OYO I TO

first floor (children’s library) third floor (library mezzanine) sixth floor (media library)

1 entrance
2 ramp to parking below
3 information desk
4 café
5 foyer
6 loading bay
7 store
8 children’s library
9 meeting spaces
10 main library
11 reading areas
12 staff room
13 mezzanine reading room
14 void
15 exhibition spaces
16 cinema
17 media library
18 video room

ground floor plan (scale approx 1:1000) fifth floor (exhibition space)

5
Entrance lobby on the ground
floor, its luminous volume
penetrated by the column cages
that run through the building.
5 site plan second floor (main library) fourth floor (exhibition space)

welded by shipbuilders) that is more like an ocean liner than an
aquarium. From the broad boulevard to the south, it appears as a
shimmering rectangle of glass, etched with dots and dashes that animate
the double-glazed skin and reduce glare, extending beyond the floor
planes. Inside, a forest of canted white tubes (recalling the branches of
the zelkova trees that run down the middle of the street), extends
through the roof to support a gridded canopy.
At night, the south facade disappears. Only the skeletal structure is
visible, animated by a blaze of ceiling lights and tiny accents of colour
from furnishings set close to the glass. Though little of the building’s
activity is apparent above the ground floor, varied ceiling heights and the
alternation of transparent, translucent and opaque surfaces on the
other three sides of the block hint at its diversity of content. The
Mediathèque combats the blandness and visual pollution of a Japanese
city (a pachinko parlour formerly occupied the site) by staying cool and
enigmatic. Even the graphics, stencilled onto the glass, are reticent.
The spacious foyer, shop, and café that wrap around an enclosed gallery
48 | 10 cross section cross section and service areas in the north-west quadrant reveal the essence of the
plan. Four symmetrically-placed corner columns of 240mm diameter
tubing carry much of the load and provide the necessary seismic bracing.
Nine columns of 160mm diameter tubes are scattered in between; five
are straight and contain lifts, the rest are crooked and carry ducts. The
hollow columns pull down light from above, and most are clad in glass,
adding a further layer of gauzy reflections to those in the polished
marble floor and dematerializing the exposed structure. A shiny red
plastic reception desk sinuously wraps around one column like a
seductive swirl of lipstick, and similar extruded forms in yellow and
white anchor the bar and bookshop.
To understand the building’s section, take a lift to the top floor. From
the glass cab you can see how floor planes have been sliced through,
revealing the structural sandwich of steel plates topped with concrete.
On a non-stop ascent, the ride gives a fleeting glimpse of each distinctive
floor succeeding the next, as though snorkelling up the side of a coral
reef. Here, Ito’s metaphor of the interior as a fluid medium comes
vividly to life. As in the ocean, the colours, the patterns of activity, and
intensity of light change with the level. 49 | 10
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Ito selected three designers to put their stamp on different floors.

Kazuyo Sejima’s first floor information department and children’s library
is a monochromatic composition of white lino tiles, suspended metal
channels and a silver-studded black side wall. Sejima, who formerly
worked for Ito, designed whimsical grey foam benches that resemble
clover leaves, and screened the children’s area and staff offices in
undulating gauze drapes. Circular reading tables and magazine racks flow
around these permeable enclosures. The lofty second-floor library by
K. T. Architecture has a more conventional layout: regimented rows of
bookstacks to the rear, linear tables in front, and study carrels in a
mezzanine gallery. Suspended uplights provide even, diffused illumination
off the suspended white ceiling.
Changing exhibitions are presented on the next two levels with their
wood-strip floors, demountable white screens, and sculptural seating in
6
vivid colours by Karim Rashid, who also designed the plastic seating in
the ground-floor café. It is here that you begin to sense the wasted
potential of space that would challenge a creative curator to exploit the
play of structure and void. Occasional exhibitions may introduce locals
to novel ideas, but, as a new arrival that is still gradually winning
acceptance, the Mediathèque has to move cautiously. It is too big, and
took too large a bite out of the municipal budget (around £75 million) to
ignore its major constituency.
The top floor offers the best marriage of container and content. Ross
Lovegrove has designed what he calls ‘a garden of knowledge’ to house
the media library. Biomorphic lime-green plastic chairs, tables and tape
racks are deployed like exotic plants on a lime carpet, and video
monitors are screened by tensile pods. These occupy the perimeter; at
the centre, an undulating glass wall encloses a small theatre, meeting
room and offices. Fluorescent tubes are set at angles on a white
suspended ceiling, and the sense of detachment from the workaday
world is enhanced by glimpses into neighbouring offices where salarymen
toil away late into the night, like a Japanese version of Alphaville, where
everyone seems to be sealed off in brightly lit capsules.
7
For Japan, the Mediathèque is extraordinarily informal, with young
friendly staff, and it has become a popular local resource; yet the
atmosphere is as decorous as a scholars’ library. Director Emieko
Okuyuma observes: ‘When we first announced this project, opponents
thought it would be a dangerous monster. In fact, people have responded
to the welcoming atmosphere and bright colours. Attendance is larger
and younger than we anticipated’. Given time, Ito’s original vision may
yet be fully realized. MICHAEL WEBB

Architect
Toyo Ito & Associates, Tokyo
Structural engineer
Sasaki Structural Consultants
Mechanical engineers
Sogo Consultants, ES Associates,
Ohtaki E & M Consulting Office
Lighting consultants
Lighting Planners Associates
8 Photographs
All photographs by Dennis Gilbert/VIEW
except no. 4 which is by Nacása & Partners

6
Main library on second floor.
7
Arboreal columns animate space.
M EDIATHEQUE , S ENDAI , J APAN Column cages house lifts and ducts
ARCHITECT and bring light into the interior.
8
T OYO I TO First floor children’s library,
designed by Kazuyo Sejima.
9
Top floor media library, designed
by Ross Lovegrove, one of the
more successful marriages of
50 | 10 content and container. 9 51 | 10