Kazuyo Sejima Designs Hokusai Museum in Tokyo's Sumida District

Pritzker Prize-winning architect Kazuyo Sejima of SANAA has designed a new museum dedicated to ukiyo-e master Katsushika Hokusai in Tokyo's Sumida district, the artist's birthplace. The five-story concrete monolith (3,279 square meters total) is clad in a subtly reflective metal skin, with precise cuts that channel light into the interior. The building features no curves but rather angular geometric forms, with triangular walkways and openings. It will house Hokusai's permanent collection, temporary exhibition galleries, a specialized library, a conference hall for seminars and workshops, a shop, and ancillary services. The museum is located near the Edo-Tokyo Museum designed by metabolist architect Kiyonori Kikutake in the 1990s, on the former site of a Daimyo residence that once commissioned works from Hokusai. The collection includes small ukiyo-e woodblock prints from the Edo period, 'The Great Wave off Kanagawa,' and the series 'Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji.'