Revisionist History

For most of 1985-1995 I was not in love with architecture. That love had been mostly cerebral and unrequited anyway, so it was more of a switching-off than any one, singular event. Invariably though, when one tries to switch off, news from the other side begins to creep back in. Sometime – I don’t remember when – I saw a photo of the annex built next to Kazuo Shinohara’s 1982 Japan Ukiyo-e Museum. I remember understanding it as Shinohara taking yet one more uncharacteristic turn as he approached the end of his career and didn’t give it any more thought. The annex was completed in 1995, two years before Shinohara was to wind down his atelier in 1997. Even when I finally saw the design Shinohara was originally commissioned to produce (below), I simply thought it had been too architecturally ambitious than client finances could bear, and that the annex eventually built was Shinohara’s revised design. I may have been right on the first count and thought I was wrong on the second. Now I’m not so sure.

Shinohara designed four annexes if we include House in Yokohama but only three if you count only those to houses he’d designed himself and, of those, only one was built. Shinohara never simply extended an existing building. He designed structurally and conceptually independent structures with minimal compositional connection and, even then, his approach was to juxtapose two buildings rather than conflate them into a single aesthetic whole. Ducks. It’s always possible the owners of Repeating Crevice and Uncompleted House didn’t like Shinohara’s proposals but, having initiated the process, their only way out would have been to plead financial difficulties. Given that Shinohara hadn’t had a completed project since 1990, it would have been prudent in 1992 for him to not over-egg his design for the museum annex, but who was to know that 1993 would be the beginning of Japan’s “lost decade”? It’s entirely likely the museum couldn’t raise the funds to build Shinohara’s design.

The design and construction periods indicated below are approximations but still show the general shape of Shinohara’s post-university career. Dark grey is built and light grey is either unbuilt or competition work. After 1990, nothing was realized.

Japan’s suddenly changed economic outlook probably explains why Shinohara’s original proposal for Japan Ukiyo-e Museum Annex never went ahead but it also explains why the revised program is so downscaled in ambition, footprint, and budget. It would’ve been impolite for the clients to ask Shinohara to possibly re-think his design it, but it would also have been impolite for them not to. We don’t know how that conversation went.

The built annex to Japan Ukiyo-e Museum isn’t attributed to Kazuo Shinohara. In fact, it’s not attributed to anyone except on the English-language Wikipedia entry edited by someone in Sweden who says it was designed by someone called Kuniharu Haba. We don’t really know who’s responsible for this annex which was a significant addition to Kazuo Shinohara’s first non-residential commission. The www as we know it didn’t exist in 1995 but, even so, Shinohara’s 1982 main building still appears in the October 1982 issue in the current archive of 新建築 (Shinkenchiku, of which Japan Architect magazine was the English edition). It seems like Japan Ukiyo-e Museum Annex has never been published or reviewed. I can think of three scenarios.

The first is that Shinohara declined the client’s suggestion so they found an architect who would become be the first person and, so far, the only person who was not Kazuo Shinohara, to design an annex to a building designed by Kazuo Shinohara. But what architect would accept such a criticism-magnet of a commission? Whoever it was would have had to ask Shinohara for advice for it would have been impolite not to. They also may have had no choice but to go it alone. Searches in Japanese for Kuniharu Haba return nothing – not one mention or image of any building. This commission was no career builder. Yet, whoever designed this annex can’t have been a complete novice because the decision to have only a covered pathway linking the main building and its annex is a safe route aesthetically but also reduces construction cost and duration. Placing the annex at an angle to the main building is another good decision that agreeably relates to the main building, as are the choices of materials and construction.

Scenario two is that Kuniharu Haba is a pseudonym for some known architect who didn’t want to be named. It’s easy to imagine why when every decision would be harshly judged for either paying too much respect or not enough. The annex has a side entrance that seems like (and probably is) a staff entrance to an administration building and not the additional exhibition space Shinohara had proposed. An upper floor, curtains, and office furniture are visible through the glass. On the annex’s end elevation, the pattern set up by the spacing of the inverted triangle windows is broken by the second floor ones. I can’t think why. The windows at the rear end of the annex are as random as the formwork dimensions permit. Is there any art in their placement? Perhaps. I don’t know.

I was prepared to dislike the near corner (in the left image, above) where the front glass facade meets the side concrete wall but Shinohara had used a similar detail, with more justification, where the curtain wall meets the entrance opening of the main building. (below) But there are also some decisions that don’t seem to have been made by an experienced architect not wanting to be seen as having screwed up. The gap between the two buildings diminishes in both dimension and importance with depth and giving it fewer features, a regular roof and ordinary windows all reinforce its unimportance. Moreover, with a reduced budget, the main building’s parapet detail with the roof behind the glazed facade was always going to be used as sparingly as possible, and it has been. However, however unimportant this gap, was it really necessary for us to see the change in roof structure, gutters, drainpipes and the roof-mounted A/C units? There are parts we’re expected to see and other parts we’re expected to not see. There’s nothing difficult about this whole.

Total aesthetic deference to an existing building is often as unattractive as totally ignoring it. This annex also shows some interesting decisions that didn’t need to be made but were. Its architect could have used the same 8 x 8 metre square module eight windows units wide and four high but chose not to. The annex has ten units horizontally and four vertically but the middle two are shorter. This is to reduce the height of the building, possibly for reasons of budget, but it also makes the angle of the diagonal on the front facade noticeably less than the 45° of the one the other side of the gap. It calls attention to itself and is in no way deferential. This annex is definitely making a statement. But what?

The elephant outside the room is that front facade. When I first saw it, I simply thought it was Shinohara being newly different, and didn’t think any more about it. Now, when I am thinking more about it, it’s not the kind of move an experienced but unknown architect would make. Love it or hate it, it’s an extremely confident and audacious facade. The two colors of glass introduce a new element and making them into a non-geometric pattern introduces one more very huge and attention-grabbing one. The glazed intrusion into the concrete is powerful and irrational and impossible to ignore. [Faceslap!!] It’s an abstraction of Japan’s most famous ukiyo-e print, Hokusai’s The Great Wave (or 神奈川沖浪裏, Under the Great Wave at Kanagawa). I feel a bit stupid that it took me two decades to see this. Looking at the positions of those two boats in the Hokusai print, the positions of those two openable windows with respect to the curve of the abstracted wave don’t seem so mysterious now. I’d always found the part where the glass intrudes into the concrete intensely disturbing but of course it’s where the great wave is breaking. I now and belatedly think it’s brilliant.

I think the proportions of this annex elevation were contrived to approximate those of Hokusai’s famous print and, if we include the staff door portion of the elevation they do (see above) and, moreover, this is why the parapet somewhat clumsily turns to include it (see below). That entrance volume makes for an unhappy corner but Hokusai’s composition permits no opening. The diagonal on the side of the entrance makes a kind of porch and makes the staff entrance the least important part of the composition of the elevation.

Even those curious inverted triangle windows now make sense as the wave forming – the wave’s rear view, as it were. The inverted triangle window closest to the wave neatly follows the shape of the lower wave and the window above it is being “pulled” to the edge. (middle, below) It’s still a very orderly elevation, but its power is breaking up with height. The rightmost image below shows both “elevations” of the wave. Heights are the same, as you’d expect.

People visit this museum in anticipation of viewing ukiyo-e but, before they do, they’re faced with two diagonal lines, two curved lines and two windows abstracting Japan’s most famous woodblock print. If a client with a passion for ukiyo-e thought this annex an appropriate sign for their museum then that’s good enough for me. It’s not what we think would suit a Shinohara building but it’s surprising in a familiar way and this is why I’m having these doubts about its provenance.

My third scenario is that Kazuo Shinohara designed this annex. Japan Ukiyo-e Museum was Shinohara’s first public building and I can’t imagine him not wanting to design its new annex, however diminished. Shinohara was one of those architects who had to architect until they died. This annex would then be Shinohara’s last built project even though it’s not acknowledged as such. It’s a shame.

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Postscript #1

I have a strange recollection that, in Shinohara’s atelier circa. 1982, Argentinian PhD candidate Jorge Ferraras and I might have copy-edited Shinohara’s text that appeared in the February, 1983 issue of Japan Architect.

Regardless of what Shinohara said about the design of Japan Ukiyo-e Museum, I’d always admired how he made something as massive and heavy as concrete look as weightless and two dimensional as glass. The annex facade takes this further by aspiring to be something that’s already two dimensional. Nothing else matters – even the annex it hangs off. This facade is one very classy billboard and nothing to be ashamed of despite, ten years later, contradicting the opening sentence of the above quote.

Postscript #2

In 2016, Yona Schuh wrote in her blog about her visit to Japan Ukiyo-e Museum that “the building was designed by Kazuo Shinohara and made to resemble The Great Wave by Hokusai.” Thank you Yona for saying the obvious. The silence surrounding the authorship of this extension serves no purpose anymore. I don’t care if my speculations are wrong. Or even if they’re right. I just want there to be some air and sunlight.

Postscript #3

There may be more than two ways of writing the given name Kunihara and more than twelve of writing the family name Haba but even this gives the 24 combinations of 坡場国治, 羽場国治, 幅国治, 馬場国治, 羽馬国治, 巾国治, 端場国治, 波場国治, 八幡国治, 八葉国治, 羽波国治, 羽波国治, 坡場邦治, 羽場邦治, 幅邦治, 馬場邦治, 羽馬邦治, 巾邦治, 端場邦治, 波場邦治, 八幡邦治, 八葉邦治, 羽波邦治 and 羽波邦治. The one in red is of interest. Haba 羽波 can mean “something in a wave-like shape”, and Kuniharu 国治 is a name handed down across generations of master swordsmiths, eventually becoming part of the sword’s name it is engraved with.

Shinohara produced his entry for Yokohama Port Ferry Terminal competition while Japan Ukiyo-e Museum Annex was being constructed.

Postscript #4

It would be simple enough to find out whose fingerprints are all over this annex by checking the glazing details where the concrete meets the frames, especially at that bravura point where they meet at the top of the parapet and in front of the edge of the roof. This is no standard detail. For now, I’ve added “citation needed” to the name Kuniharu Haba in the Wikipedia entry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan_Ukiyo-e_Museum. A notification will have been sent to the author.

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The Uncompleted
The Aftermath
Misfits “English for Architects” Awards