Mori Arts Center
Tokyo, Japan
Gluckman Mayner Architects

Gluckman Mayner connects high culture with commercial development at the new Mori Art Center in Tokyo

© Hiroshi Ueda

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By Clifford A. Pearson

How do you create a distinct identity for a museum tucked inside a 54-story office tower? How do you even call attention to such a cultural facility when it is but one small piece of a $2.5 billion development that includes 220 shops, 840 units of housing, a nine-screen multiplex cinema, a 380-room luxury hotel, a Japanese garden, and an 800,000-square-foot broadcasting center, in addition to the 4-million-square-foot office tower in which it resides? Those were two of the challenges facing Richard Gluckman, FAIA, as he designed the 100,000-square-foot Mori Art Center at Roppongi Hills in Tokyo.

Like a diminutive cherry sitting atop a high-calorie architectural sundae, the museum occupies the 52nd and 53rd floors of Roppongi Hills' bulging office tower, the centerpiece of a 28-acre development whipped up by an eclectic band of design chefs—Kohn Pedersen Fox (KPF) (master plan and office tower), Jon Jerde (retail complex), Terence Conran (apartment towers), and Fumihiko Maki (broadcast center). Some observers have criticized Roppongi Hills for being too big—even for Tokyo's dense and chaotic urban fabric—but it has been a smashing success with the public. According to the Mori Building Company, the project's developer, 26 million people visited the mixed-use complex in the six-month period after it opened last May. In comparison, Tokyo Disneyland will attract about 25 million for the entire year.

Gluckman Mayner Architects worked with structural engineers Yoshinori Nito + Dewhurst Macfarlane and Partners to design a 100-foot-high entry pavilion at the base of the office tower that grabs attention with a 60-foot-tall, shingled-glass cone. The pavilion takes visitors from the vehicular drop-off and shopping-plaza levels at the base of the complex, up three-to-five floors to a 70-foot-long bridge that leads into the Mori office tower. Once inside the office building, visitors can get information about the museum, then catch express elevators to the 52nd floor, where the museum proper begins. Dedicated to Modern art starting from the mid-20th century, the museum has an international focus and a special emphasis on the work of Asian artists.

Gluckman's glass cone asserts its own style: crisply tailored Modernism with touches of technological daring. During the day, it offers views of the 17th-century-style Japanese garden just to the east, and at night it glows like a lantern. In its center, a concrete-clad funnel structure contains elevators and provides the building's main vertical support. Canted glass rectangles swirling around the core, however, deliver the necessary razzle-dazzle. Like a giant hoopskirt, the lightweight glass-and-steel facade is held in place by a diagonal net of three-quarter-inch cables that suspend and stabilize nine-tenth-inch horizontal steel rings. Glass shingles printed with a translucent ceramic frit rest on the elliptical conical structure, overlapping each other and providing an enclosed but not completely sealed environment. A continuous spiral stair animates the space between the core and the facade.

Orchestrating the procession of spaces—from entry pavilion through two floors of galleries—was critical to the success of the museum, says Gluckman. After arriving on the 52nd floor, visitors can go to the three side-lit galleries on this level or move up the escalator in the central atrium to the top-lit main galleries on the 53rd floor. While he designed the L-shaped main galleries as quiet spaces with maple floors, Gluckman also created a pair of translucent glass boxes at opposite corners of the floor—twin spaces for the display of new-media art. These "art and technology galleries" penetrate the two-story-high space of the observation deck, stretching the visual reach of the museum to the surrounding city and providing the opportunity for curators to find innovative ways of projecting new media on the building's curtain wall.

See the January 2004 issue of Architectural Record for full article.

Location:
Tokyo, Japan

Gross square footage:
100,000 sq.ft.

Owner:
Mori Building Company

Architect:
Gluckman Mayner Architects
250 Hudson Street
New York, NY 10013
Tel: 212.929.0100
Fax: 212.929.0833
www.gluckmanmayner.com