Minna no Mori Gifu Media Cosmos
Toyo Ito & Associates · Gifu, Japan · 2015
Toyo Ito creates a large public interior beneath a gently undulating timber roof supported by branching columns. Suspended translucent 'globes' define reading and activity zones without enclosing them, allowing the library and civic functions to remain visually continuous. The building is especially valuable as a later counterpart to Sendai Mediatheque: both pursue openness, but Gifu does so through warm materiality and soft spatial boundaries rather than glass and steel.