Meteoric rise

Architectural Review, The, May, 1997 by Phoebe Chow

The origins of this second project by Shin Takamatsu can be traced back to 1992, when a small meteorite weighing around 8 kg plummeted onto a house by the sea in the town of Mihonoseki. Located in the western Japanese prefecture of Shimane, Mihonoseki was, at that time, a small fishing village with a dwindling population. However since the arrival of the meteor, it has experienced what perhaps can only be described as a cosmic reversal of fortune. The town has been besieged by visitors and, as a result, a thriving tourist industry has been established. People come to see the meteor and also to take boat trips around the inshore islands.

Existing facilities could not cope with the influx, so Shin Takamatsu was commissioned to design a building that combines a museum to house the meteor with a ferry terminal for island boat trips. In addition, there is a civic meeting hall with a capacity of 500 and a salt-water swimming pool that promotes the therapeutic and health properties associated with sea water (thalassotherapy).

This unusual combination of transport, health, museological and civic functions occupies a prominent waterfront site, surrounded by hills. As at Nagasaki (p40), one of Takamatsu's key concerns was to make the building legible from a distance, and as at Nagasaki, this is achieved through dissecting its component functions into a series of gestural, geometric volumes and re-amalgamating them in a kind of giant sculpture. The various elements, some perfectly Euclidean, some not, are yoked together by an undulating roof, which is in turn surmounted by the curiously overscaled volume of the meteor museum. The squashed ovoid form is derived from the actual shape of the meteor, and its symbolic location on the theatrically buckling roof is a reminder of the circumstances surrounding its extraordinary arrival in Mihonoseki.

The two main volumes of the ferry terminal and civic hall are treated as discrete entities, separated by a small central courtyard enclosed by the great oversailing sweep of the roof. An elevated bridge links the two parts at first floor level. On the west side of the courtyard, the ferry terminal is organised around a generous, double-height waiting area facing out across the bay.

Subsidiary facilities, such as restaurant and office are treated as geometric intrusions into the main volume. On the east side of the courtyard, a double-height entrance foyer leads into the new civic hall. The oval-shaped space can accommodate various kinds of events, from lectures and meetings to theatre performances; its curving volume is another gentle allusion to the organic form of the meteor. A reception room for private events augments the complex, its circular plan dramatically extruded into a huge cone that penetrates the curved roof plane to nestle alongside the meteor museum.

Stacked above the ferry terminal are the thalassotherapy facilities and salt-water swimming pool, edged with a terrace overlooking the bay. Like a penthouse, the glazed volume of the pool is raised above the level of the main roof, layering and fracturing the horizontal plane. Inside, a magical play of light and water mingles with the landscape and bay beyond. Topping the entire confection is the sleek ovoid - part shrine, part museum - that contains the meteor. The cosmic relic is reverentially housed in an inner sanctum attached to a small library.

Although prone to extreme wilfulness, Takamatsu's architecture of incident and gesture endows each component of the building with a distinct identity. Contrasts of form and texture (fairfaced concrete and anodised aluminium) are savoured with an uncomplicated relish and brio that would appear to reflect Mihonoseki's renewed civic optimism. The rare and random event that changed the town's fortunes and the lives of its citizens is crystallised and celebrated in an appropriately surreal building. P. C.