The Kunio Maekawa Building

Maekawa worked for Le Corbusier in Paris in the late 1920s and brought his ideas back to Japan, but by the 1970s he had developed his own manner, softer and more concerned with materials. Look at the brick tiles, which are a special dark glazed ceramic fired to resist Tokyo's weather, and at the way the concrete frame shows through at the corners. The windows are set back in deep reveals so that the walls read as solid masses. Inside, the ceilings are surprisingly high and the escalators and staircases carry you gently from the plaza down to the galleries.

The building opened in 1975 and was praised at once for the way it fitted the park, with its low profile and warm colour echoing the older Tokyo Bunka Kaikan concert hall that Maekawa had built nearby in 1961. Between 2010 and 2012 it was thoroughly renovated, with new services, an art lounge and restaurants, but the renovation kept the original character so faithfully that most visitors never notice. Together with the concert hall it forms one of the finest ensembles of postwar Japanese architecture that you can walk into for free.

Did You Know? Maekawa's other Ueno building, the Tokyo Bunka Kaikan concert hall of 1961, faces the National Museum of Western Art designed by his old master Le Corbusier.