Comprising 16 freestanding pavilions, set in a loose and apparently haphazard arrangement, Towada Art Centre brings a new micro-urbanism to this small Japanese town in the north of Honshū island. Situated on a crossroads of the town’s central avenue, the centre forms part of Arts Towada Project, a programme of events and installations aimed at regenerating a neglected part of town.
The project also extends Ryue Nishizawa’s ambitions to pursue an architecture that considers visual layering and physical permeability, and as such echoes a number of his other works like Moriyama House (AR August 2007) and projects completed under the studio guise of SANAA (of which he is a partner with Kazuyo Sejima) such as the galleries at Kanazawa in Japan and Almere in the Netherlands (AR October 2007).