Sendai Mediatheque, Toyo Ito

I being Korean, (as you know, many people of Korea hate japan because of the history, we were colony of japan in 2^nd world war) love Japanese style modern architecture, they are very simple, minimalist and focused on functional. About Korean modern architecture shortly, they are even developed enough, they are focused on just design, in the skin of the buildings, it means, Korean modern architecture don´t have philosophy in that, it´s very sorrowful and upset for me.  When I looked for first time Japanese modern architecture I just fall in love (?)  They had philosophy, emotional, story of neighbours of the place, etc..

In that blends, I´m going to talk about the Sendai Mediatheque of Toyo Ito. I knew it when i had a 8^th semester, in architecture design class. It´s a multimedia center in Sendai with the intentions of designing a transparent cultural media center that is supported by a unique system to allow complete visibility and transparency to the surrounding community, the building talk to us the visible communication.

It has nine transparent tubes organizing all building, it designed to support in case of earthquake and the unify he programs of each levels visually. The peoples of 3th level, can see that are they doing the peoples of 4^th and 2^nd levels peoples, the tubes permits visual communication. In 4 of them, has the vertical circulation with stairs and elevator, they allows to see activates of all users in every levels of the building.

1^st level is totally free form, the users can access in everywhere as they want,  obviously, the program of 1^st level are public program, like cafeteria, small stores, book store etc..

The local peoples think about it very friendly that building because it show to the people perfectly what function is it and how the people use to it. I think, being architect, the most important thing is this, the communication with the local peoples and the users which will use the buildings.

In the architecture design class, I marked 6.5 taking reference with this proyect. It was very successful.:)