Customer Reviews

Yoshio Taniguchi: Nine Museums

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If one is trying to understand contemporary Japanese architectural trends,
or the heavy theoretical background of Taniguchi's
architecture, then this might not be the best book. Yet, if one is
seeking an architectural book that speaks of architecture as a spatial
art and a coercive modulator with water
garden, then here is a book that provides great pleasure.

This book communicates more with drawings and supplementary images than
words. When I first saw this book at the bookstore, I was a bit hesitant
to buy it. The price and the text in the book simply did not match.
Expository writing for each project is extremely short. Yet they are
condensed enough to deliver quintessential themes of the project.

The common denominator, besides being museums, which binds the
projects, is water body (garden). His museums have one leg in the water
and the other leg on the earth. His water bodies (typically, artificial)
have different faces; sometimes, static, promoting Ryoanji-like
meditation; othertimes, dynamic, promoting Katsura-like shakkei (editing
middle ground to borrow background landscape).

His museums weave in and out of the water to illuminate and intensify
the experience. The strokes of water garden in his museums, without
doubt, will wet the dry museum fatigue. In addition, because Taniguchi
reveals sometimes part and sometimes all of a water body, his spaces
breathe.

One criticism I have is that the fourth project, Marugame
Genichiro-Inokuma Museum of Contemporary Art, somehow does not belong
with other projects. It's a fine piece of building, but unlike
other museums, it's very self-contained. The other eight museums actively
engage with the exterior water body. Only the fourth museum defeats the
purpose of inter-penetration of Taniguchi's architecture; that is,
inter-penetration of Japanese garden and modernist's space.