Monday, 21 July 2008 |
Norihiko Dan — born in 1956 in the Kanagawa Prefecture in Japan — is the designer of the beautiful Munetsugu Hall,
completed in 2007 in Naka Ward, Nagoya, Japan. It is a privately-funded
concert hall that continues the age-old but almost-dead tradition of
wealthy arts patrons initiating and financing the creation of art
spaces. Fluid, white wall shapes are the distinctive feature of
Munetsugu Hall’s main performance space. The walls bring to mind
artistic sweep marks left by a gigantic builder who in his boredom
doodled in his mortar tray with a massive trowel and then let the
shapes solidify.
Norihiko Dan has won several architecture
awards in Japan and Taiwan including the Distinguished Architect Award
of the Japanese Institute of Architecture and the ARCADIA Award Gold
Medal in 2007. His work has been part of exhibitions in
Japan, Taiwan, USA, Canada, Germany, Austria, Italy and the UK. In
addition to being a respected architect and educator, Norihiko Dan is
also an architecture historian and writes novels and screenplays.
Munetsugu
Hall’s generous benefactor is Tokuji Munetsugu who with his wife Naomi
made a fortune in the restaurants business. Their company Ichibanya Co.
Ltd. (based in Aichi, Japan) operates more than 1,000 curry and pasta
restaurants under the names Curry House CoCo Ichibanya and Pasta de
Coco. Munetsugu spent two billion yen to build the 310-seat concert
hall. He has also set up a nonprofit organization to support welfare,
sports and arts activities. - Tuija Seipell
|
architecture 
Munetsugu Hall 
Delicious
Technorati
Digg
Stumble