The Nineteenth Century Hall and the Ramp
Le Corbusier (1887 to 1965) · 1959
Pass through the low entrance hall and the building suddenly opens upward. You are standing in the Nineteenth Century Hall, the tall central room around which the whole museum turns. Light falls from a triangular skylight high above and washes down over concrete walls and a single massive column. A ramp rises along one side, gently enough that you barely notice the climb, and delivers you to the galleries on the upper floor. The name refers to the century of most of the Matsukata Collection, and for many years Rodin's smaller bronzes stood here as an introduction to what waited upstairs.
Le Corbusier wanted this space to be experienced with the body as much as the eyes. He believed in what he called the architectural promenade, a route that reveals a building in stages, and the sequence of compression at the entrance, release in the hall and slow ascent on the ramp is the classic version of it. Look up at the underside of the balcony that circles the room: it is the floor of the galleries above, and its edge is set to the proportions of the Modulor. The concrete keeps the marks of its wooden formwork, which was standard for Le Corbusier and unusual in Japan at the time.
The hall has changed roles over the decades. It has been used for sculpture, for temporary displays, and today it also houses the World Heritage corner, with models and a digital display that let you see the building in section. Take a moment on the ramp halfway up and look back down: from that height the room reads as a cube of light, exactly as it appears in the architect's sketches. Then continue up, because the galleries begin where the ramp ends.
Did You Know? The ramp was designed so that visitors would arrive at the paintings already slowed down, having climbed at walking pace rather than in a lift.
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