Interview with HIROSHI YONEYA + KEN KIMIZUKA / TONERICO: INC. —part 1
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We wanted to express “NATURE’S RANDOMNESS”
— Hiroshi Yoneya + Ken Kimizuka / TONERICO: INC.
photography : Satoshi Asakawa
words : Reiji Yamakura/IDREIT
The Bridgestone Museum in Kyobashi was reborn in January 2020 as the Artizon Museum with the concept of “experiencing creativity.” Newly build Museum Tower Kyobashi, which houses the Artizon Museum, was designed by Nikken Sekkei and constructed by Toda Corporation. The Artizon Museum located at the first six floors of the building was designed by TONERICO: INC.
We asked Hiroshi Yoneya and Ken Kimizuka from TONERICO: INC., about the concept of the museum and the thinking behind such an original design.
ARTIZON MUSEUM locates first six floor of Museum Tower Kyobashi building. TONERICO: INC. designed the whole museum space including exterior design.
The project which TONERICO: INC. has dedicated seven years to, began when they won the design tender in 2013. Yoneya and Kimizuka talked about the initial idea of the museum being welcoming to all and how the museum should be, with the hope that art can be easily understood by all people, of all generations; and at the same time, they were trying to get inspiration from the history of the Bridgestone Museum and the location of Kyobashi.
The old museum had a series of small rooms which gave the impression of “consecutive space structure”. Furthermore, they were conscious of connecting the local town with the museum in a welcoming way.
The idea for their design, which they kept in their mind, was based on two methods, ‘partition’ and ‘enclose’.
Main entrance have atrium space with several large walls which controls the flow of people.
The interior wall was installed with 250mm square stones. Some cut edge of the stone shows vertical stripe pattern randomly.
The similar pattern was used in the exterior pillars with black granite.
They created zoning in the shared spaces of the first to third floors which includes cafés and shops, and the fourth to sixth floors which are exhibition areas; and keeping consecutiveness in mind, the building features atriums, as well as having mezzanine-like-spaces between each floor. Moreover, at least some part of the floor and wall is visible from another level.
The first floor has a large atrium with a ceiling height of eight meters, and a big wall which controls the flow of people. Furthermore, the window-side cafe is wide, and the second floor has a giftshop in order to be more appealing.
The entrance was designed to draw one’s eye to a big stone feature wall in the large atrium that has a unique pattern. The wall is made from granite and sandstone, cut into 250 mm squares. Some parts are cut at an angle from the stone, so the resulting pattern is random for each one.
Yoneya said, “We wanted to express ‘nature’s randomness’ by blending heuristic existence into an orderly algorithm”. ‘Randomness’ in this instance refers to the individual shape and balance of each stone.
On the 1st floor, the designer set up the cafe on the right by the large window. On the 2nd floor, they created a museum shop.
Cafe was designed with pale grey colour. Each floor was allocated with different grey tone. The 1st floor has the brightest, the 6th floor has the darkest.
On the entrance terrazzo-made floor, white line was designed as the homage of Shiro Kuramata who designed the former entrance robby of Bridgestone building.
Furthermore, there is an homage Shiro Kuramata, who designed the former headquarters of the Bridgestone corporation, in the flooring of the first-floor entrance. Yoneya told us “The director of the museum, Hiroshi Ishibashi, asked if they could take inspiration from the design of the former headquarters, and the zigzag pattern of the Bridgestone tire was at the forefront of his mind. He randomly embedded straight white lines to give the homage to Kuramata.”
Sculptural object ‘FOAM’ was placed at foyer space on the 3rd floor to add a sense of humanity in the museum.
In the foyer on the third floor, the gigantic sculpture FOAM, which was assembled with white steel rods, and is positioned next to the elevator that leads to the fourth floor. This sculpture expresses ‘nature’s randomness’ along with the pattern of the stone tiling. Moreover, this sculpture was developed in large scale from his design series of “FOAM” which was released in 2013 and 2015.
Yoneya said, “the aim of the sculpture is to set up a symbol which stimulates visitors’ inspiration and feels familiar to their sense of humanity just before they come into the exhibition rooms which is different from the methodical approach that previously constructed museums had. This is a work that leaves its interpretation up to the imagination of the visitors, with artistic aspects of abstract expression and is like the existence of a wall.
>>> continue to part 2
“Interview with HIROSHI YONEYA + KEN KIMIZUKA / TONERICO: INC. —part 2”
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