Simose Art Museum | Shigeru Ban Architects

Back in 2002, for Expo.02 in Murten, Switzer- land, the architect Jean Nouvel, 2008 winner of the Pritzker Architecture Prize, first imagined a temporary monolith weighing nearly 4,000 tonnes yet appearing to buoyantly float on the surface of the lake. A space odyssey! What was dreamt up by the one was later magnified by another, Shigeru Ban, 2014 Pritzker Prize win- ner, at the Simose Art Museum, in the form of eight mobile galleries with walls made of coloured glass that light up at night over the water of a reflecting pool. This symbolic sce- nery amplifies the physical scenery of the Seto Inland Sea with a nod to the beauty of the Se- touchi Islands.

The structure blends with the garden of seaso- nal plants and flowers which served as motifs for the French artist and designer Emile Gallé (1846-1904), whose work makes up a signifi- cant portion of the museum’s collections.

Despite the concept’s hefty ambitions, visitors are greeted by a canopy on a welcoming scale.