Akita Municipal Junior College of Arts and Crafts University Extension Center Craft Experience Building

Akita Municipal Junior College of Arts and Crafts University Extension Center Craft Experience Building: Fourth Warehouse and the Railway Canopy

The Akita Municipal Junior College of Arts and Crafts University Extension Center Craft Experience Building (秋田公立美術工芸短期大学大学開放センター工芸体験棟) is a single-storey timber warehouse built in 1934 in Araya Okawacho, Akita City, Akita Prefecture, and entered on the national register as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property in 2000.

It is the fourth from the north of the eight buildings of the Former Araya National Warehouses: timber, single storey, with a sheet-metal roof and a building area of 660 square metres. The name is the one it bore when registered; at the time of registration it was open to the public as the craft workshop of the college's extension centre. Today the seven northern buildings are used as Atelier Momosada by Akita University of Art and Design, which opened in 2013.

Why It Was Registered

The Akita Municipal Junior College of Arts and Crafts University Extension Center Craft Experience Building is registration number 05-0060, listed under the criterion of contributing to the historic landscape of the country, and was registered with the other seven buildings on 26 September 2000.

The Agency's record for this building sets out the type shared by all eight: 45 metres long and 15 metres wide, single-storey timber, mortar-rendered, gabled with entrances in the gable ends, and a raised ventilation roof on the ridge. The west side has entrance canopies and the east side a continuous canopy that formed the platform of a railway siding.

What to Look For at the Akita Municipal Junior College of Arts and Crafts University Extension Center Craft Experience Building

Round on the east side, the continuous canopy runs past all eight buildings. This was the platform where rice was loaded to and from railway wagons; Akita City says the siding came from Araya Station. The west side, by contrast, has a canopy over each entrance.

Visiting

The Akita Municipal Junior College of Arts and Crafts University Extension Center Craft Experience Building is a university building, and no official information on visiting the interior was found. Check with Akita University of Art and Design before going.

Directions, and details of the Araya Library at the southern end, which is open to the public, are on the Former Araya National Warehouses page.