Sagae City Hall

Kurokawa Kisho's Early Masterpiece

Sagae City Hall (寒河江市役所庁舎) is a reinforced-concrete city hall designed by the architect Kurokawa Kisho and opened in 1967 at Chuo 1-chome, Sagae City, Yamagata Prefecture, and was registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property (structure) on October 27, 2017. It is still in use as the city hall (Agency for Cultural Affairs, Sagae City).

The Agency for Cultural Affairs records it as four storeys of reinforced concrete with a building area of 1,638 square metres, extended in 1974, 1975 and 1988 and renovated in 2014; registration number 06-185, owned by Sagae City.

An Early Work by Kurokawa

According to Sagae City, the building was designed by Kurokawa Kisho, a leading figure in modern architecture, and opened in 1967 as the new city hall. It was registered fifty years after its completion.

Visitors climb a ramp to the service counters on the second floor, with the council chamber below and offices on the third and fourth floors, an arrangement said to carry a message from Kurokawa (Sagae City).

Why It Was Registered

Sagae City Hall was registered as a building that has become a model of design. The Agency for Cultural Affairs calls it an early masterpiece of Kurokawa Kisho and a postwar modernist city hall clearly influenced by Metabolism.

What to Look For

The third and fourth floors of Sagae City Hall project boldly, hung by high-tensile steel from four cores. A full-height citizens' hall on the second floor faces a raised deck reached by ramps, and the council chamber is on the ground floor (Agency for Cultural Affairs).

Part of the second-floor hall floor is glass block, letting light down through the void to the chamber. In the void hangs Okamoto Taro's Shining Sculpture: Birth, and the door handles on the first and second floors are also his design (Sagae City).

Visiting

According to Sagae City, individual visitors on working days should keep out of offices, meeting rooms and the council chamber. On closed days only the second-floor hall may be visited, from 8:30 to 17:15; groups should contact the General Affairs Section.

The address is 9-45 Chuo 1-chome, Sagae City (Sagae City).