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Kuma certainly seems less interested in what some might consider showboating design, but he admits the need for an important public building like a museum to have an iconic appearance.

"My approach is that the museum's facade should have some iconic quality, but not iconic shape," he says. "I believe they should have iconic textures and that is not only for the Suntory. Most of my projects have iconic textures."

"The reason of choosing that approach is that sometimes an iconic silhouette or shape can destroy the atmosphere of the place," continues Kuma. "The Bilbao Guggenheim is a very iconic shape, but probably it is OK to have that kind of iconic symbol there because the museum sits just outside of the town."

"But in the case of Suntory," he says, "it is the center of the town. In that kind of urban context, I like to have a quiet silhouette, but still some kind of icon is necessary. People would like to bring a memory from the museum. An iconic texture can give visitors a special memory."

Responsive Materials

The essence of this is in the tactile and sensitive materials used. "I like to use softer materials that can interact more with their surroundings and have a dialogue with people," says Kuma.

"I think this is influenced by my childhood," he explains. "I was brought up in an old-fashioned Japanese house, with tatami mats, rice paper, sliding doors, et cetera."

"With those traditional Japanese materials, there is a dialogue," continues Kuma. "If you touch them, they change. Tatami mats change shape if you stand on them. Rice paper is very delicate. This is different from modern materials like vinyl."

The delicacy of the materials imperceptibly heightens our awareness and makes the built environment more real. Because we feel that we might change or even damage things merely by touching them, it heightens our sense of them and creates a dialogue between visitor and environment. In a sense, because we can break it, we buy it.

"To use such materials with the Suntory Museum was not so easy because the museum has 700,000 to 800,000 visitors a year," says Kuma, recalling initial concern from a curator about the fragility of rice paper.

The museum's low-key silhouette and soft, warm materials bring to life Kuma's notion of the museum as an extension of the home collection.

"I think the prototype of the museum is the home," he explains. "In Japan and also in Europe, people liked to show their art in their own homes, in a daily warm atmosphere with very close friends. But recently the museum becomes like the factory, a big simple box with many people walking around."

Perhaps the softest and most responsive element of the museum is the space itself, a continuing focus of Kuma's work.

"The uniqueness and importance of space is very clear from traditional Japanese temples," Kuma says. "From the outside they are not so different. Structurally the main feature is this very large roof. It's only when you go inside and experience the space that you can tell the differences between temples. They have very different spatial qualities, such as the gradation from light to dark, how the space flows, and what it connects to."

Suntory is joined seamlessly to the Tokyo Midtown shopping complex. Visitors from that side approach the museum as they might approach a boutique or a restaurant. How did Kuma deal with the awkward problem of a sedate but busy cultural venue cheek-by-jowl with an intensely commercial environment?

"We proposed screens between the commercial environment and the Suntory Museum itself," he explains. "A solid wall was not fitting for that kind of relationship because it implies a conflict. Also 100-percent transparency was not fitting. We wanted 50-percent or 60-percent transparency to control the visuality, and create the right distance between two different things. So people can either be interested in the museum or feel some openness to the city, as they choose."

The method by which he achieved this was a glass front, in which the vertical louvers of the external facade were echoed by wooden slats. The use of vertical louvers, slats, and lattices, throughout the design also emphasizes the detailed attention Kuma pays to light. One of the roles of the softer materials he uses is to help diffuse and modulate a warm light, whether natural or artificial.

The unselfconscious way in which Kuma's architecture draws practicality, simple elegance, and subtle charm from Japanese culture has not only created a beautiful and comfortable museum. It also offers grace to the city's discordant skyline.

C.B. Liddell is a Tokyo-based writer who writes for Japan Times, International Herald Tribune, Asahi Shimbun, and the South China Morning Post, and is editor of the Tokyo Journal.

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SUBSCRIPTION SAMPLE Along the short side walls of the Suntory, the exterior shading louvers are oriented parallel to the glazing. Photo: Courtesy Kengo Kuma & Associates Extra Large Image At night, electric lighting replaces daylight in illuminating the interior wooden screen in the third-floor gallery. Photo: Aurelio Asiain Extra Large Image SUBSCRIPTION SAMPLE North-south section looking east. Image: Kengo Kuma & Associates Extra Large Image First-floor plan drawing. Image: Kengo Kuma & Associates Extra Large Image Fourth-floor plan drawing. Image: Kengo Kuma & Associates Extra Large Image Sixth-floor plan drawing. Image: Kengo Kuma & Associates Extra Large Image Vertical ceramic louvers shade the glazed portions of the Suntory Museum's exterior. Photo: Courtesy Kengo Kuma & Associates Extra Large Image The curved taiko bridge to the Suntory includes shallow stairs. Photo: C. B. Liddell Extra Large Image   Click on thumbnail images to view full-size pictures.