21 21 DESIGN SIGHT, Design museum in Tokyo Midtown, Japan
21 21 DESIGN SIGHT is a design museum in Tokyo Midtown, Akasaka, designed by Tadao Ando. Its two low wings have dark grey steel roofs folded from a single 54-metre plate, sloping to the ground above continuous glazing. About 80% of the floor area is underground, including the galleries.
The museum opened on 30 March 2007 with Tokyo Midtown on the former Defense Agency site in Akasaka. Its origins trace to a 1988 meeting in New York between Tadao Ando, Issey Miyake and sculptor Isamu Noguchi, who died that December. Miyake's 2003 newspaper article calling for a design museum led Mitsui Fudosan to invite the project onto the site.
The museum examines how design shapes our relationship with everyday objects and the world around us. Visitors can see how contemporary creative thinking influences the way people interact with their surroundings.
Plan your visit around the current exhibitions by checking the schedule in advance to make the most of your time. The location is accessible and well-connected in central Tokyo, with galleries distributed across ground level and underground spaces that can be reached by stairs and elevators.
The name refers to 20/20 vision: 20/21 was considered first, but 21/21 was chosen to suggest looking one step further ahead. The logo by Taku Satoh is a 45 by 165 mm steel plate, cast at a small Tokyo workshop, with the gap between the two 21s set to the width of human eyes.
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