Kanazawa Municipal Tamagawa Library, Municipal library in Kanazawa, Japan.
The Kanazawa Municipal Tamagawa Library is a public library in Tamagawa-machi, Kanazawa, completed in 1978. The design was supervised by Yoshirō Taniguchi and executed by his son Yoshio Taniguchi, combining the former Monopoly Bureau Kanazawa factory building with modern architecture. The attached Kinsei Shiryōkan, a registered Tangible Cultural Property, is attributed to Kenkichi Yabashi.
The main building was completed in 1978, designed by the Taniguchi-Goi design consortium under the overall supervision of Yoshirō Taniguchi, with his son Yoshio handling the design; it was the first and last joint work by the father and son. The annex, the former C-1 factory of the Monopoly Bureau, is attributed to Kenkichi Yabashi and was registered as a Tangible Cultural Property in 1996, then reopened as the Early Modern Historical Materials Museum in 1999. The library moved to this Tamagawa-machi site in 1979 and took its present name in 1995; in 2019 the complex was selected for DOCOMOMO Japan's list of modern movement buildings.
The annex, now the Early Modern Historical Archives, holds roughly 100,000 documents donated by the Maeda family and the Maeda Ikutokukai, including the Kaetsunō Bunko collection. Visitors can consult originals or microfilm copies. The library's name comes from Tamagawa-machi, the neighbourhood where it moved in 1979.
The library is in the Tamagawa-machi area, within reach of central Kanazawa, and the neighborhood is easy to navigate on foot. Since it operates as a working library, it is worth checking current opening hours before you go, as they may differ from standard tourist site hours.
This building is one of the very few projects where a father and son worked together as architects on the same design, which makes it stand out in the history of Japanese architecture. Yoshio Taniguchi, the son, later became internationally known for redesigning the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
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