new spaces 10 EN

video installations. Instead, it showcases nature in its purest form — or rather, forms of nature, as selected and arranged by the Japanese artist Rei Naito. Cobweb-like threads hang suspended from the ceiling and seem to be in perfect communion with the autumn and the sea breeze outside. Hidden nozzles, 87 in number, spray occasional bursts of groundwater across the fl oor. Since the sloping fl oor is coated with a water repellent, the drops of water dance across the surface as if on a hot stove. Once they collide, they merge into larger drops, and soon they look like glass fi eldmice racing around with jerky movements until they come to rest in a large pool at the end of the museum. Amid the tranquillity and emptiness of the hall, which is about the size of four tennis courts, this chemical trick takes on an otherworldly, almost ghostly quality, reminiscent of the fi lm scene in “Terminator” where a pool of quicksilver morphs into an alien creature. Two oval openings in the museum’s ceiling off er dramatic views of the elements, ranging from blue skies to rain clouds or perhaps even typhoons. Last year Nishizawa and his partner Kazuyo Sejima were awarded the Pritzker prize, the “No- Museum Aan de Stroom, Antwerp With its boxy facade made out of glass and red natural stone, the 65-metre tower designed by the Rotterdam architects Neutelings Riedijk resembles a fortifi ed castle. Thinking the Future IV 47 bel Prize” of architecture. “Their use of space and nature is visionary,” the jury statement praised the architects. So could it be said that Teshima’s austere arch is indicative of a new worldwide trend in museum architecture? Perhaps it even heralds a return to Smithson’s romantic naturalism? “Not necessarily,” argues the architecture critic Sachiko Tamashige. “We’ll continue to see contemporary museums that attract attention to themselves and their surroundings — or that seek to distract the visitor from something else. Whether they engage with nature or not depends on the builder’s preference!” For decades, the inhabitants of Teshima struggled to fend off a noxious haze of politics, business and organised crime that had engulfed their island and saddled it with illegal toxic waste and polluted groundwater. Ten years ago, the polluters were fi nally sentenced to cleaning up the island and restoring the natural order of its environment. This is also the philosophical context of Nishizawa’s museum. Its investor, Soichiro Fukutake, is one of the ten wealthiest businessmen in Japan. He hopes that his art project will rejuvenate this deserted region, where the average age is 70. Another one of his projects, the Seto Naikai art festival, attracted 300,000 tourists last year. At the same time as in Teshima but on the other side of the globe — in Israel, just south of Tel Aviv — another building has been completed that calls itself a museum yet doesn’t house a permanent collection: the Design Museum Holon, built by PHOTOGRAPHY: IWAN BAAN (LEFT), SARAH BLEE (RIGHT)

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