Two Centimeters of Tolerance

 George Bedell

 After six years of meticulous planning and innumerable revisions, after four years of construction that employed thousands and as many years of wrangling with officials to meet the exacting regulations that govern building in a nature preserve, after moving a mountain in over 100,000 truck-loads of earth, then moving it back again, the building is finished.

              The museum complex encompasses over 185,000 square feet and is built into an abrupt precipice on 247 acres of the Shigaraki Mountains of Japan. It is the work of I.M. Pei, whose oeuvre includes some of the most celebrated structures of modern times, among them Phase I and II of the Louvre in Paris, the East Building of the National Gallery in Washington, DC, the Basil & Elise Goulandris Museum of Modern Art in Athens, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, and the Musee d'Art in Luxembourg--these are just the museums. He is perhaps the most famous living architect. The Miho Museum is the work of a mature master, who at the age of eighty seems to still be approaching the zenith of his considerable powers. But then architecture is an old man's sport.

              No photograph, no matter how excellent or how close to being a work of art in itself, can do justice to the experience of visiting this site. Photography cannot convey the dynamics of this building any more than the words written on this paper can. It is incapable of capturing its drama. For besides its purely visual and structural aspects, this museum is foremost a work of theater. Looking at still images of it is like looking at glossy eight-by-tens of a performance of "The Seagull" and trying to savor the power of Chekhov. In some instances photography can be devastating to the suspension of disbelief that is necessary to good drama, as are most air views of the museum. Aero-photography might capture the layout of this building but in doing so diminishes the drama by giving away the plot.

              As in theater, this building uses space and movement to propel a narrative. We will hear over and over again I.M. Pei's concept of the museum being presented as the old Chinese tale "Peach Blossom Spring", by Tao Yuan Ming, in which a fisherman accidentally happens across a fissure in a mountainside and discovers a hidden paradise lost in time. It is also compared to "Shangri-La". As much of a cliche, as down-right corny as this reference may be, I have to admit that likening a visit to the museum with the early incidents in the 1930s novel and the great, old Hollywood movie are not out of line. The Chinese tale, the James Hilton novel, and the movie all aptly convey the experience of approaching the museum. The journey begins at the reception pavilion, a fan-shaped structure (not shown) that one suspects would open vaguely in the direction of the unseen museum but does not. From the pavilion, either on foot or by electric car, the visitor begins the journey on a bending road that glides off unexpectedly to the right. The road weaves gently like a river that leads the visitor through an opening in a mountain slope. The walls of the tunnel are insulated so that the traveler never hears the sea-shell noise or the reverberations that are peculiar to underground passages. This audio clue is the first inclination that the visitor may have that something extraordinary is happening. Upon coming into daylight the visitor finds him or herself on a half-suspension bridge, its metallic tendons stretching out, enmeshing the mountain vista in a web for a time. Past the cables the visitor still does not have a full view of the destination. The bridge does not lead straight to the museum entrance but angles toward it. Somewhat like the approach to a Japanese temple, the way to the building is indirect. This could have been the stuff of a theme-park ride were it not for its subtlety. Over 80% of the museum is below ground and as one draws closer the building is never fully seen. The viewer only gets tantalizing glimpses of its soft pastel Magny Dore limestone facades and pyramidal skylights shimmering like cut crystal against the mountain's soft pines.

              And then, at last, the visitor comes face-to-face with the main entrance. Rising up on terraces, the facade is a bold reference to a traditional Japanese mountain shrine. It is quite a surprise. One experiences being confronted with something exotic, astonishing, yet not entirely unfamiliar or out of place. The entrance's frank allusion to traditional architecture is startling. In the hands of a lesser talent than Pei this facade could have been such a dreadful bit of kitsch that a Disney designer would have given the idea pause before putting crayon to paper. But here it works magnificently. It echoes shrine architecture and gives the style its full due and reverence, yet it is an uncompromising work of contemporary design. It is a magnificent balancing act.

              When I first crossed the bridge it was not yet complete. None of the cables had been strung, the slabs of pavement were just being put down, and at least a third of the crossing had to be made by way of a temporary bridge. Wearing orange hard-hats, members of the curatorial staff and I kept a steady footing on wooden planks as an engineer explained the bridge's construction. It was on this first crossing that one of those marvelously insightful and completely unintentional phrases that occur when one language is being quickly translated into another was uttered. The engineer was telling us that he had also worked on Meishusama Hall in Misono twenty years before. Both Yamasaki's building and Pei's bell tower can be seen from the museum. He told us that it gave him deep satisfaction to work on Shinji Shumeikai's buildings as they always tended to set engineering benchmarks. As Ann Chikira, curator of Buddhist Art at the Miho, was translating what the engineer was saying she broke into a wide smile. "He says," she told me, "that this bridge has only two centimeter tolerance. Only two centimeters of tolerance between beauty and--danger."

              Those two centimeters of tolerance that keep magnificence at bay from catastrophe came to mind when I first saw the main entrance and the words would pop into my head like a leitmotif throughout that first afternoon that I explored the museum.

              Much has been made of the museum complex's balance with nature. It would have been enough simply to bury the entire building to have it blend in with its natural surroundings but this building does more than blend with nature--a feat any army camouflage artist can accomplish. This building not only merges with the landscape, it plays with it, and holds it in an equilibrium with itself.

              The metal and glass structures that are above ground are based on geometric progressions of the tetrahedron, a shape that when used as a building module can produce peaks and valleys that echo those of the mountains. The tetrahedron is the simplest and most stable of all solid geometrical forms. Visually, like all pyramidal shapes, it is also one of the heaviest. Although not tetrahedrons, one thinks of the heaviest structures built by man, the great pyramids of Giza. Yet in the context of the skylights of Miho Museum, where this pyramidal shape is constructed of metal tubular framing and glass, the shape seems weightless and delicate. One is reminded that some modern scholars compare the Old Kingdom structures' shapes to those of sun rays and stars. Although echoing the contours of the mountains that surround them the glass roofs of the Miho Museum are very unlike them. They are a product of willful human consciousness. Geometry, like all abstraction, is purely human. There are very few straight lines in nature. Yet when these sharp and glistening man-made shapes are placed against the soft pines and jagged ridges of the Shigaraki Mountains they create a contrast and tension that is complementary to them. They are in counterpoint to their natural setting. Like all good drama, the Miho Museum is a razor's edge balance of tensions and fine ironies.

              After nearly running out of superlatives to describe my first impressions of the building, a curator asked me blankly what I did not like about the building. It was a good question. There had to be something that I disliked. The doorknobs, perhaps? The question obliged me to dislike something. To like everything shows a serious lack of discernment. After thinking hard and fast, I said that the placement of the galleries was confusing. These rooms do not flow smoothly into each other. The fact that some of the museum's underground areas had to be redesigned even after the site had been excavated to meet the needs of displaying new acquisitions, helped my case. Yet, reconsidering, the layout of the galleries perfectly matches the theme of the museum's exterior and is entirely suited to the Shumei Family's collection. The journey continues inside the museum. One never knows what new fascination will be found around the next corner. It could be the majestic yet comforting Gandhara Buddha or the fierce falcon-headed Egyptian Horus. As in the best theater, this museum is always unpredictable. The layout of the galleries also mirror nature in that these rooms seem to grow out of each other like the chambers of a nodules shell.

              After being shown photographs of the interior with its glass walls, people have told me that it reminds them of a Gothic cathedral. Apparently, Japanese mountain shrines are not the only sacred architecture that this building alludes to. Although the Miho Museum does not loom over its surroundings as Gothic churches do, there are similarities. The translucent walls and roofs of this building brings to mind those intricately geometric spires of late Gothic buildings, which seem to dissolve into thin air as if they were metamorphosing into the realm of the spirit. And like Gothic architecture this museum is a celebration of pure structure, an extravagant feast of geometric form that surpasses the merely functional. Much of the vaulting and buttressing of late medieval churches were not necessary for support but were erected simply to give visual pleasure. While the Miho Museum may seem sparser, leaner, and more liberated of ornamentation, its structure is just as delightful, visionary and extravagant.

              Another aspect of the building's interplay with natural elements that I doubt will be given wide coverage is its sonic presence. The drama has musical accompaniment. When I first entered the building, I thought that I heard the soft resonance of ambient music and assumed that the audio system was being tested. It sounded like the sonorous opening of Gorecki's Third Symphony. The next day, I heard music again, this time a chorus of furies, Dubussy's Sir?enes. Only later did it occur to me that it was the wind blowing through the mountains against the building's space-frames. The Miho Museum is an enormous wind-chime and its music is beautiful. Here, well-proportioned physical structures create well-proportioned chords of sound, somewhat as do the varying lengths of harp strings. A musicologist later told me that many Byzantine churches do the same. "And, of course," he added, "Gothic structures, with their choirs and organs are nothing more than gigantic musical instruments."

              Listening to the wind playing on the building's surfaces and watching the shifting, brindled patterns that the clouds made on the honey-colored Magny Dore walls as they passed over the skylights, I realized that there is an astonishing harmony here, one that balances on a very thin margin of tolerance. And I was left to wonder what new harmony and drama will come with the movement of visitors through this magnificent structure.

              This is a beautiful building.

Edited for Shumei website.

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