Musée National des Beaux-Arts de l’Occident, 1955

The National Museum of Fine Arts of the West is a museum facility built in the Ueno Onshi Koen Park and exclusively devoted to the Matsukata collection.

It is a  building with two main levels (ground floor + 1st floor with mezzanine) and a basement level. Its structure is in reinforced concrete and there is a roof terrace.

The 6 bays of posts outline a plan forming a square of 6 m x 6 m. The centre of the building is occupied by a skylighted court running the full height of the building: this forms the large 19th century exhibition gallery. Around this space can be found the entrance hall and the service areas on the ground floor and, on the 1st floor,  the exhibition rooms where the mezzanines form a “swastika” figure around the large central gallery. These mezzanines, whose upper parts lead to the roof terrace, receive the zenith light and thus play the role of skylights for the exhibition galleries on the 1st floor and the large central gallery.

We enter the museum on the ground floor, between the pilotis, and proceed to the large 19th century gallery flooded with natural light. The north ramp in the main hall leads to another exhibition gallery on the first floor. We continue the visit to the first floor, moving in clockwise direction from room to room, around the void of the large central gallery and guided by the light from the mezzanine-skylights. The tour ends with the ramp or exit which is located on the 1st floor and leads to a terrace and an outside staircase.

This building stands as a realisation of the concept of the museum of unlimited growth developed by Le Corbusier and characterised by the roof terrace, the square-spiral plan, able to be developed. Other features – pilotis, ramps, natural lighting – are also emblematic of Le Corbusier’s architecture.