Yahata Library

It was only December last year when I first learned about Tōgō Murano’s Yahata Library (1955-2014) in Kitakyushu, Japan. Tōgō Murano is mostly unknown outside of Japan but he had some useful ideas about how buildings should be so I expect that’s why. [c.f. Architecture Misfit #21: Togo Murano (村野藤吾)]

In the post The Floating World, I said that, aesthetically, this building does an extraordinary amount using very little. This is something Murano does – not always but frequently and, in mid-1950’s Japan, it was definitely a good thing to do for a small municipal library. In the sixty-eight years since, it was probably always a good thing to do except we didn’t for various reasons but it’s maybe something we should be giving some more thought. Years ago, I wrote about something I called The Misfits’ Challenge, the post Absence of Criminal Intent being I think the most recent but Architectural Dogma the first in 2011. Post #33/844. It went like this.

Of course I’m about to say that Murano’s Yahata Library rises to this challenge. Look at it. It’s a simple concrete frame structure with cantilevered ends balancing the structure each end and eliminating the need for an extra row of columns. The frame has masonry infill with brick cladding, but just look at that cladding! The circular shape looks like it might be applied render but every other shape is made of two colors of brick. The symmetrical patterns on the cantilevered ends may give the appearance of logic but that same treatment is reversed on the other side of the building. There’s about five types of very ordinary windows and the shapes relating to them seem to follow a similar logic – until they don’t. Every rule has its exceptions. It’s impossible to understand the logic but why should there even be one for us to understand? We’re left concluding that “it’s just design” but what a design and what a thought!

It’s very unlikely the constructionally integrated ornamental design of Yahata Library compromised the technical or environmental performance of the building. The white brick may have been more expensive but it may have had a superior thermal or other performance. I’m sure nobody cared if it didn’t, or even if it did. Apart from the circular shapes, no additional resources were used. It may be aesthetically efficient but is it beautiful? For me it is. Murano makes everything, even beauty, seem so simple. I don’t think this is an accident. He had a special way of looking at things. I’ll revisit some of his projects and set out my case.

World Peace Memorial Temple, Hiroshima, 1946

Hiroshima. 1946. In 2016 I wrote that the structure of this building is expressed yet unexpressive, and its materials have an immaterial materiality. This sounds pretentious now and probably did then, but see how the pattern of those protruding bricks continues across the structure, as if floating over? That’s one. And look at the brick pointing, or is it the absence of pointing? This isn’t sloppy construction. It’s as if the building is grieving. It’s almost unbearably symbolic.

Senri Newtown Civic Center Building, Osaka 1964-2013

Here are repetitions of perhaps four different types of window unit but they’re not simple repetitions as patterns are being set up only to be countered. Perhaps it’s the quietness I like. And wish there was more of.

Yokohama City Hall, Yokohama 1959–2021 (?)

Here’s another very quiet Murano facade using 1) plain brick, 2) simple window and 3) recessed window with brick railing as the three types of infill. Counterintuitively, the corners are strengthened by the shadows in the balconies, while the three types of infill float across the facade in-between. Again, patterns are being set up only to be countered. The 1990s saw the shuffly windows trope used as an indicator of design intent that needed no explanation until of course, it came to be understood as a lazy indicator of design intent rather than actual design. In these examples, what Murano is doing is the design. It’s not some representation of design effort, or even intent. It’s neither pretentiously austere nor ostentatiously complicated. He’s saying this is all the design there needs to be.

I’ll probably think of more examples the instant this post is posted, but another example of variations happening within structural bays is Kazuhiko Namba’s 1975 project House with 54 Windows but, with that building, it’s all about the windows. [c.f. Architecture Misfit #32: Kazuhiko Namba] We now have two different ways of saying anything can happen within the spaces of a grid. Murano never forgets or lets us forget that his grid is a structural grid but, if we see it at all, Namba makes us see his grid as something that only exists to allow the 54 windows statement. Between these two buildings in time was Metabolism. Murano is pre-metabolism and so his infill variations are baked onto the surface like the decorative glaze on a bowl and we appreciate it for that. Namba is the other side of Metabolism and his infill represents the potential for endless variation and now, if we think about it, no more or less successfully than Metabolism ever did. In both instances, the variations make the facade into a single aesthetic unit but Murano’s is complete and invites restful contemplation while Namba’s is a snapshot of something restlessly changing.

Kazuo Shinohara’s 1982 Ukiyo-e Museum is more distant from Metabolism than Namba’s 54 Windows. We see a design module but sense no structure even though we’re made to think anything can happen within that conceptual organization we know as a square. It’s still a single aesthetic unit, whether you regard or disregard Haba Kuniharu’s 1995 extension (to the left in the image at right, below). The quietness of the Shinohara facade however, is the result of aggressive design requiring much structural and constructional contrivance to negate the appearance of thickness of the walls and roof.

Namba and Shinohara both went for square bays but Murano doesn’t disguise the fact his aren’t square. In the first two full bays from the left, on the north elevation, he even draws our attention to their non-squareness. Murano and Yahata Library are from simpler times when design could be a line or a pattern and appreciated as such without needing to implicate structure or program to validate it. So is its design just graphics then? World Peace Memorial Temple tells us that surface design can still evoke meanings beyond program and structure just as effectively, quietly, and without gauche contrivance. I’m in awe of Murano’s design confidence. He’s up there with Gio Ponti.

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If you search for Yahata Library you’ll almost certainly reach the site of Studio Sakyo and see these photographs of a wonderful 1:100 paper model made by K. Sakyo, a student of the Department of Architecture in the Faculty of Design at the Nishinippon Institute of Technology. Thank you very much for doing this K. It looks like a labour of love. And thank you also for posting about it and encouraging people to share. I am.

2017-06-30: Designing paper craft, former Yahata City Library (1)
2017-07-11: Designing paper craft, former Yahata City Library (2)
2021-09-17: Designing paper craft, former Yahata City Library (3)

The Tōgō Murano Architectural Models book of models constructed by students at Kyoto University has two pages on Yahata Library but, to me, the model doesn’t do the building justice. The Tōgō Murano Architecture Guidebook gives it one page where, I learn for the first time, that the facade decoration was built later when funds became available. Tōgō Murano’s Yahata Library was demolished in 2014 to make way for the newer and larger Yawata Library. I’m not ready to regard a building’s life cycle in terms of Buddhist notions of the transitory nature of life but when worthy buildings eventually go the way of all things I’m not as upset as I used to be. For now, we have those two book mentions, perhaps a dozen or so internet photographs, K. Sakyo’s model and blog posts, and now this one of mine, and that’s all there is keeping the memory and lessons of Yahata Library alive.

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The Mystery of Beauty
TEN