Tama Art University LibraryLocation: Hachioji City, Tokyo, JapanArchitects: Toyo Ito & Associates, ArchitectsClient: Tama Art UniversityProgram: Library

This is a library for an art university located in the suburbs of Tokyo. Passing through the main entrance gate, the site lies behind a front garden with small and large trees, and stretches up a gentle slope.

The new library is a place where everyone can dis-cover their style of “interacting” with books and film media as if they were walking through a forest or in a cave; a new place of arcade-like spaces where soft mutual relations form by simply passing through; a focal centre where a new sense of creativity begins to spread throughout the art university’s campus.

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The characteristic arches are made out of steel plates covered with concrete. In plan these arches are ar-ranged along curved lines which cross at several points. With these intersections, the library were able to keep the arches extremely slender at the bottom and still support the heavy live loads of the floor above. The spans of the arches vary from 1.8 to 16 metres, but the width is kept uniformly at 200mm.

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