Garden of Fine Arts_Kyoto by Tadao Ando

A contemporary, concrete based, volumetric version of a stroll garden. The open-air Fine Arts Museum, designed in 1994 by Tadao Ando in Kyoto and perhaps inspired by Mies van der Rohe's Barcelona Pavillion, is situated below ground level to keep the view from the adjacent Botanical Gardens towards the Higashiyama mountains intact. The museum displays reproductions of famous masterpieces on ceramic plates with permanent, weatherproof properties. The scheme is open; large concrete beams on massive pillars, overlapping bridges and ramps, walls of cascading water and pools with paintings floating on the water surface. Circulation is not linear and the project induces the visitor to create his/her own path and behaviour. Reproduced in ceramic plates are iconical western works of art such as “Water Lilies – Morning” by Claude Monet; “La Grande Jatte” by Seurat; “On the Terrace” by Renoir; “Road with Cypresses and Star” by Van Gogh; “The Last Supper” by Leonardo da Vinci; “The Last Judgement” by Michelangelo Buonarroti; etc. | Photos by Martin Grossmann, September 2019 | URL: https://www.kyoto-museums.jp/en/museum/north/3935/