Hayashibara Museum of Art Main Building

Maekawa Kunio's First Art Museum

The Hayashibara Museum of Art Main Building (林原美術館本館, Hayashibara Bijutsukan Honkan) is a reinforced concrete museum building completed in 1963 on the former second bailey of Okayama Castle in Marunouchi, Kita-ku, Okayama City, and was registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property of Japan in 2023. It was designed by the office of Maekawa Kunio and built by the contractor Araki-gumi. The building has two floors above ground and one below, a building area of 938 square meters, and an extension added in 1986.

Maekawa (1905 to 1986) went to Paris in 1928 to work under Le Corbusier and became one of the leading figures of postwar Japanese modernism. In Okayama he had already designed the prefectural government office (1957) and the Tenjinyama Cultural Plaza (1962). The Hayashibara Museum of Art Main Building was the first purpose-built art museum in Okayama City, and the first museum Maekawa ever designed.

The site once held the taimenjo, the formal reception hall of the Ikeda lords' second-bailey residence. Maekawa kept the building low so that it would sit comfortably above the old Ishigaki walls just west of the castle moat.

Why the Main Building Was Registered

Of the five registered buildings on the museum grounds, only the Hayashibara Museum of Art Main Building was listed under the criterion of serving as a model of design. The Agency for Cultural Affairs gives two reasons: the way the plan is organised, and the materials and methods used for the walls.

A plan drawn in one stroke

At the center is a small courtyard planted with bamboo. The galleries are built up from repeated unit spaces set in an L around it, so that visitors move through the whole sequence without doubling back and arrive back at the lobby. Maekawa described this kind of plan as drawn in a single stroke of the brush. The Agency's survey of modern buildings links it to the circulating plan of the National Museum of Western Art in Tokyo, designed by Le Corbusier.

The same survey traces the idea forward to Maekawa's Saitama Prefectural Museum (1971) and Kumamoto Prefectural Museum of Art (1977). His long line of museum buildings starts here.

Over-fired brick and precast panels

The outer walls are faced with over-fired brick, fired at high temperature until each piece comes out slightly different in shape and color. The small details are precast concrete made off site: the little canopies and louvers on the south side, the lobby counter, and the curved skirting at the base of the display cases.

In the years after 1960, Maekawa was moving away from raw poured concrete toward factory-made components that gave both speed and precision. Wrapping the building in brick was an early step toward the tile-faced concrete he used in later works, which is what the Agency means when it says the building points to Maekawa's later architecture.

What to Look For

On the way up the stone steps from the gate, look at the northeast corner of the Hayashibara Museum of Art Main Building. Three materials meet at one edge: the old stone wall at the bottom, a band of precast concrete, and the brick above. Up close the bricks range from reddish brown to almost black, and it is this unevenness that gives the wall its texture.

Inside the entrance, the bamboo courtyard is straight ahead behind glass. The galleries continue to its right in an L, and walking counterclockwise brings you back to the lobby without any need for signs.

The lounge off the lobby sits 750 millimeters below the gallery corridor, stepped down together with the offices so that it opens toward the south garden. The Agency's survey reads this drop as a shift from concentrated viewing to a quieter afterglow. The garden itself was designed by the sculptor Nagare Masayuki, and from the lounge you can see the fine rhythm of precast canopies and louvers along the south face.

Visiting the Main Building

The Hayashibara Museum of Art Main Building is still a working museum, and the galleries and lobby are open to anyone with an admission ticket on opening days. With no permanent display, the building is only open while an exhibition is running, so check the museum's exhibition calendar before you plan a visit around the architecture.

The museum's visitor guide does not mention photography, so ask at reception if you want to photograph the interior. Wheelchair users can call staff from the internal phone just inside the gate; a lift and ramp lead up to the entrance.