The glass wave facade

Stand at the corner near the main gate and look along the facade to see the curve at its best. Kurokawa was one of the founders of the Metabolist movement in 1960, a group of young Japanese architects who imagined cities that could grow and change like living organisms, and by the time he designed this building in his late sixties he had softened that idea into a philosophy he called symbiosis, in which architecture, nature and people share a space rather than compete for it. The wave is the forest edge translated into glass. The louvres are practical too, since they cut the heat of the Tokyo summer sun before it reaches the interior.

The site was formerly a campus of the University of Tokyo and, before that, an army barracks. Kurokawa won the design competition in 2000, the building opened in January 2007, and he died in October of the same year, so this is his final completed work in the city where he spent his career. He also designed the exhibition wing of the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, and if you have been there you will recognise the same love of curved walls and daylight. The facade is at its most beautiful on an overcast afternoon, when the glass turns the colour of sea water.

Did You Know? The wave of the facade was drawn so that no two of its curves are identical, which is why the building looks different from every point along the street.