Photos courtesy Krzysztof Ingarden
Architect: Arata Isozaki / Arata Isozaki & Associates
Collaboration : Krzysztof Ingarden / Jet Atelier
Location: Krakow
Client: Kyoto-Krakow Foundation
Andrzej Wajda and Krystyna Zachwatowicz
Date: 1994
Arata Isozaki is an architect from Ōita in Japan. He graduated from the University of Tokyo in 1954 and worked for Kenzo Tange before establishing his own firm in 1963. His early projects, such as Oita Medical Hall, 1959-1960, exhibited a style Reyner Banham called: “a mix of New Brutalism and Metabolist Architecture”. He then developed a more eclectic style with buildings such as: Fujimi Country Club (1973–74) and Kitakyushu Central Library (1973–74), which later became more modernist in feel with buildings such as the Art Tower of Mito (1986–90) and Domus-Casa del Hombre (1991-1995).
www.isozaki.co.jp
manggha.pl
Krakow’s Japanese Centre of Art and Technology, or “Manggha” for short, houses the collection of Felix Jasieński (pen name Manggha), a Polish art critic and collector who travelled extensively through Europe and the Far East in the nineteenth century. The Centre was initiated by another of Poland’s most famous citizens, the Oscar-winning film director Andrzej Wajda who, as a recipient of the Japanese Kyoto Prize was so keen to forge links to Japanese culture in his native country that he donated his prize money for this towards the Centre’s construction.
Fittingly therefore the building was designed by Japanese architect Arata Isozaki, who famously meshes eastern and western influences in his projects. The Manggha Centre remains the architect’s only building in Poland and its conception and completion in the early 1990s was a landmark, if initially controversial, project for the country. The building’s galleries blend the wood and brick, prominent in traditional Japanese interiors, with Polish sandstone, whilst the undulating roof is intended to echo the form of a wave, a reference to both a key subject in Japanese woodblock prints, as well as the site’s location perched directly on the Vistula river. I (fs)
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