The Sunken Plaza
Kunio Maekawa (1905 to 1986) · 1975
Walk past the sphere on the esplanade and the ground opens in front of you. A wide flight of steps and an escalator drop into a square courtyard a full storey below the park, ringed by glass walls behind which people move along corridors, drink coffee or queue for an exhibition. Trees planted in the plaza reach up to ground level, and sunlight pours down into what is, technically, a basement. This is the heart of Maekawa's plan: the museum is entered from below, and the courtyard is its front door, its lobby and its meeting place at once.
The idea solved a practical problem. Building regulations and the wish to protect the park limited how tall the museum could be, so the architect dug down and gave the underground galleries daylight and a sense of orientation through this void. Notice how the brick paving continues from the esplanade down the steps and across the plaza, so that the whole sequence feels like one outdoor room. The glazed corridors around the edge let you see where the different galleries are before you buy a ticket, and at night the lit interiors turn the courtyard into a lantern.
The plaza has become one of the most photographed spaces in Ueno, particularly when exhibition banners hang around it and in autumn when the trees turn. The renovation of 2012 opened the surrounding rooms up further, adding the art lounge and a cafe that look on to it. If you visit without a ticket for a show, this is still the place to sit for a while and watch the crowds arrive, a small piece of urban theatre that Maekawa designed with the same care he gave to the galleries themselves.
Did You Know? Because the museum was sunk into the ground, most of its exhibition space is below the level of the park you walk in from.
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