Tsuyoshi Tane-Designed Hirosaki Museum Opens in Aomori
Housed in a series of brick warehouses renovated by architect Tsuyoshi Tane, Hirosaki’s new Museum of Contemporary Art sensitively pays tribute to its location and history as an apple cider factory
It’s not every day that a roof changes colour, subtly segueing from fresh green at sunrise to golden yellow in the afternoon and finishing with a deep orange at sunset. These shifting shades are inspired, perhaps surprisingly, by apple cider — one of the most famed exports of Hirosaki, a small city in Japan’s northern Aomori Prefecture.
The rooftops, created using tilted titanium panels, are among a string of highlights at the new Hirosaki Museum of Contemporary Art, which opened in July 2020. The museum is housed in a pair of redbrick warehouses built over 100 years ago, initially as a sake brewery before housing Japan’s first mass production apple cider factory in the 1950s.
The pioneering structures – something of an anomaly in Japan’s cityscapes – sat unused for decades (aside from three exhibitions by Hirosaki-born Yoshitomo Nara in the early 2000s) before Tsuyoshi Tane and his firm Atelier Tsuyoshi Tane Architects won a competition to transform them into a public museum.
According to Paris-based Tane, his design concept of ‘archaeology of the future’ aims to sustain the city’s progressive spirit. ‘It’s easy to renovate an old building and make it look new,’ the architect says. ‘There are many examples of old buildings converted into new cultural places — but they just become renovations and can date quickly. We wanted to create a continuation of these old buildings so their origins can move into the future.’
The museum, whose special advisory director is Fumio Nanjo (former longstanding director of Tokyo’s Mori Art Museum), showcases a symphony of red brickwork, both original and sensitively added. A deeply complex reinforcement technique was employed, involving inserting over 100 steel rods, with one-metre spaces between them, inside the bricks — ‘like yakitori,’ Tane adds. Concrete was then laid along the top of the walls in order to compress the bricks and ensure safety and stability with minimal structural impact. ‘Technically this was very delicate and required a lot of investigation,’ says Tane. ‘We had to make sure we didn’t damage the outside or inside of the brick, so it stayed the same. All the effort is invisible.’
More visible touches include an intricate curved entrance of red brickwork, which evokes an almost pixelated effect, created by specialist craftsmen at Takayama Brick Architects Design.
The biggest concession to modernity is the rooftops, their titanium panels evolving from shade to shade thanks to an electrochemical process called anodic oxidation.
‘The rooftops change very subtly, depending on the weather and light, from green, like a young apple, through to orange,’ says Tane. ‘We thought this would be a way to monumentalise the museum’s origins as an apple cider factory. Plus, titanium is very durable and light.’
The main L-shaped building has five gallery spaces spread over two levels, mostly with original black coal tar walls and industrial grey concrete floors. There are also three studios for events, performances and workshops, and, beneath a high-pitched wood ceiling, a library. Inside a second smaller red brick building, which city officials had initially planned to demolish, is a restaurant serving dishes masterminded by Masamichi Toyama of Japan’s Soup Stock Tokyo, and an on-site cider factory that produces the museum’s own brand of cider.
Aomori, famous for its apples, mountains and heavy snowfall, has emerged as a major arts hub in recent years. The museum joins a string of world-class projects, including SANAA-designed Towada Arts Center and Jun Aoki’s Aomori Museum of Art.
Text / Danielle Demetriou
Images / Daici Ano
