Art Tower Mito (水戸芸術館)

The project grew out of the then mayor's ambition to make Mito Japan's foremost cultural city and to give it a building that would stand for that ambition. It rose on the site of a municipal primary school, moved elsewhere in 1985, and marks a hundred years since Mito became a city. The city chose the idea of an "arts centre": not a museum, a concert hall or a theatre on its own, but all three together. Its first director was Hidekazu Yoshida, long a leading critic of the arts in Japan, above all of music.

A committee to choose the architect sat from September to December 1986. On 8 December the city commissioned the basic design from Arata Isozaki's atelier, and on 31 July 1987 the detailed design. In February 1987 Isozaki presented the basic scheme to local residents in a lecture. Building work began on 2 March 1988 and ended in February 1990, and the centre opened on 22 March 1990. For the mayor behind the project, the tower, as at Siena, was to hold the townspeople's resolve to remake their city and to symbolise the changing look of its streets.

The Great East Japan Earthquake of March 2011 damaged part of the building and the organ. Repairs began in May 2011 and finished in March 2012, with the restoration of the organ. The Japan Institute of Architects (JIA) later gave the centre its 25-Year Award, at the award's fifteenth edition.

The centre gathers three independent venues, a concert hall, a theatre and a contemporary-art gallery, around an open lawned plaza that has a cascade and the landmark tower. The main body of the building is reinforced concrete, partly with a steel frame inside the concrete, with two storeys below ground and four above; the tower is steel.

The tower stands 100 m high and is made of regular tetrahedra stacked on top of one another, built on equilateral triangles with sides of 9.6 m. Its cladding is made of 57 titanium panels of this shape, 1.5 mm thick. Following its edges, the eye picks out a triple helix rising towards the sky, which stands for Mito's boundless growth. A round glass lift takes visitors to an observation room 86 m above the ground.

The concert hall is a hexagon likened to an open palm: the stage sits at the centre and the seating fans out in the direction of the fingers. Three marble columns are a distinctive mark of the hall. The theatre has twelve sides and surrounds a low stage, with no stage curtain, with three levels of balconies; the circular wall behind them is of bricks fired with cobalt, and the place was conceived as a wooden hut set inside a round building of blue brick. The conference hall has, on each side, a sculpted concrete wall that imitates draped curtains. The contemporary-art gallery has nine rooms that differ in size and in light, with decoration kept to a minimum; their floors and walls were designed to leave the artists' imagination free.

The three venues largely plan their own programmes, with a chamber orchestra and a theatre company attached to the house, the Mito Chamber Orchestra and Acting Company Mito. The shared entrance hall holds a pipe organ of 3,283 pipes and hosts free concerts. On the plaza there are brass-band concerts and flea markets, and the tower is lit at night in a way that changes with the seasons. A foundation runs the centre, and the city has decided to devote 1% of its budget each year to it.

The entrance hall can be entered freely, with no ticket. The tower and the contemporary-art gallery charge admission, and the other venues have prices and hours that vary with the programme. The centre is open from 9.30 am to 6 pm, later on some event days, and closed on Mondays (on Tuesday when the Monday is a public holiday) and at the turn of the year. The tower is open from 9.30 am to 6 pm on weekdays and until 7 pm on Saturdays, Sundays and public holidays, but may close in bad weather; the gallery is open from 10 am to 6 pm, with last entry at 5.30 pm. The nearest station is Mito, on the JR Joban Line, from where a bus takes visitors to the centre.