Sanjo City Library Complex “Machiyama”
In Sanjō City, Niigata Prefecture—renowned for its metalworking craftsmanship—a multi-purpose complex was designed that brings together a library, a blacksmithing museum, and a science education center as a place where knowledge and craft intersect.
To revive the vibrancy and energy of the street as it once existed, when small factories and temples lined the area, an opening known as a “tōri-doma” was carved into the center of the building. This void is linked to the existing street, forming a continuous spatial composition. The street rises in a spiral from the blacksmithing museum on the ground floor to the library above, allowing the heat and dynamism of the street to extend three-dimensionally into the library itself.
In terms of materials, extensive use was made of products and scrap from metalworking factories, extending the immediacy and energy inherent in the kōba (workshop) into the library as a center of knowledge.
