Nakanoshima Children's Book Forest (こども本の森 中之島)

The Nakanoshima Children's Book Forest (こども本の森 中之島) began as a proposal by Tadao Ando (安藤忠雄), an architect from Osaka. In September 2017 he offered to build, in Nakanoshima Park (中之島公園), a place where children develop their creativity through books and the arts, and then to give it to the City of Osaka, calling on supporters to fund its running costs through donations. Ando says the project began with the idea of "growth", and that he has always believed books are nutrition for the developing mind.

In December 2017 the city council accepted the gift on one condition: that the place open to give children the chance to encounter varied, high-quality arts and culture, literature first. Construction began in November 2018; a municipal ordinance for the facility was passed in December 2018, and the city received the building in December 2019. The opening, planned for March 2020, was pushed back to July 2020 by the pandemic.

Creative direction was entrusted to BACH (有限会社BACH), the company of 幅允孝, which arranged the books into twelve themes; the ground-floor video installation is credited to 佐藤文彦.

The building is a three-storey reinforced-concrete arc of about 800 m² of floor area, running along the Dōjima-gawa (堂島川) at the edge of the park. Ando says he imagined the form as the arch of a bow just before the arrow is released. Its eastern half is mostly solid, to protect the books from too much daylight; to the west, a large covered porch opens the place to the park and the river, which Ando conceives as a modern engawa (縁側), the veranda of Japanese houses.

You enter a three-storey void lined with linden-wood shelves from floor to ceiling, crossed by a central stair and bridges that criss-cross like a three-dimensional labyrinth. Thin vertical slots of clear glass alternate with sections of books: daylight comes down in streaks, as under the trees of a forest. Between the shelves, windows give glimpses of the river, and a projecting space that Ando compares to a diving board overlooks the void. Books on shelves too high to reach are fixed in place and face outward; copies of the same titles sit on the bottom shelf.

On the ground floor, two cylindrical volumes stand apart from the main body: a reading room wrapped in books, and a bare concrete cylinder about 12 m high, with no books, whose walls receive video projections. Ando meant it as an empty space that each visitor makes their own: "you can muse there or shout out loud". At the entrance, on the terrace, a large green apple (青りんご) designed by Ando draws on Samuel Ullman's poem, titled 青春 ("Youth") in Japanese: youth, its message says, is a state of mind, not a matter of age.

It is first of all a library for children, from toddlers to junior-high students (乳幼児から中学生), where reading happens right there: on the stairs, on a chair, on the terrace, or in Nakanoshima Park, where each person may take one book out at a time, except on rainy days. The books are arranged in twelve themes rather than by genre or age: "Play with nature" (自然とあそぼう), "Eat" (食べる), "Beautiful things" (きれいなもの), "Osaka → Japan → the world" (大阪→日本→世界), "Living / dying" (生きること／死ぬこと)… There are picture books, tales for the very young, children's literature, novels, encyclopedias, and books on natural science and art.

Phrases drawn from books, set in three-dimensional letters, float in the space: these are the "word sculptures" (言葉の彫刻), meant to slip a sentence into the view of children walking past the shelves. The furniture is chosen by age to help concentration: Artek N65 chairs and original stools. When it is crowded, reading seats go to children first.

Admission is free, from 9:30 to 17:00. The place is closed on Mondays (if the Monday is a public holiday it opens, and closes the following weekday), during collection inventory periods and at the year's end; it may also close temporarily in a natural disaster, so check its opening status before coming.

Visitors are admitted in 90-minute time slots with a complete changeover: 9:30 to 11:00, 11:30 to 13:00, 13:30 to 15:00 and 15:30 to 17:00. You either book online (up to 100 people per slot, at most 5 people per booking, children aged 2 and under not counted; booking opens 14 days ahead, at 10:00), or turn up without a booking, within 50 places per slot, except on event days.

Inside, there is no eating (a drink with a lid is allowed), and studying and computers or tablets are not accepted. Tripods and selfie sticks are forbidden, posed portraits and videos refused in principle, and photos may not be used commercially; for safety, no photographing from the walkways on levels 2 and 3.

Address: 1-1-28 Nakanoshima, Kita Ward, Osaka, in the park, east of the Museum of Oriental Ceramics, Osaka (東洋陶磁美術館). Exit 3 of Naniwabashi station (なにわ橋, Keihan Nakanoshima line) is at the door; from exit 1 of Yodoyabashi (淀屋橋) or exit 26 of Kitahama (北浜) it is about 400 m. There is no car park: come by public transport.