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Sazanami Halle
Design: August 1990 - February 1991
Construction: April 1991 - July 1992
Site area: 22,174 sqm
Building area: 3,175 sqm
Total floor area: 3,447 sqm
Structure: Reinforced concrete and Steel structure
2 stories
Design Concept
The site is located in central Japan, approximately four kilometers from the southern shore of Lake Biwa in Shiga Prefecture. It is surrounded by a broad expanse of fertile rice paddies.
The Hall is a multi-purpose facility that includes an auditorium seating five hundred, mainly designed for musical performances and a community center. It functions as a cultural center for Chuzu-cho and its vicinity, with a population of approximately ten thousand. The spacious 2.2 ha site has a parking lot on the eastside, and the buildings grouped on the west. The entire site has been heavily planted, creating a luxuriant forest. The trees were transplanted from the riverbed of the old Noshu River. Once the dry riverbed grew thick with trees, but most of them have been logged and now it is mostly farmland. Moving the remains of the forest to the site was a means of preserving it as well as the use to surround shrines in the countryside in old Japan.
The layout of the building connotates the traditional Japanese architecture Nagayamon, and the Garan temple style. In the front is a long hallway section, the main gate. Behind that is the Main Hall, the Music Auditorium, and the Community Center and Health Center are located on both sides, to the left and right.
The area that corresponds to the inner garden in the temple style is a brook about fifty meters wide flowing from the front hallway section to the hall. The brook suggests the old Noshu River as well as the rippling waters of Lake Biwa. This is the origin as well as the name of Ripple Hall (Sazanami Hall), attached to the auditorium. When the sound-reflecting boards at the back of the auditorium stage are raised, a transparent glass screen is revealed and a lovely pyramid-shaped hill that is well-known in the area is visible in the distance, set in the very center at the back of an expense of rice fields. This design was devised to lend the impression of an outdoor concert.
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