Skip to 0 minutes and 5 seconds We live surrounded not only by works of art, but also by monuments, architecture, and other cultural properties. These should have cultural and historical value, but, for various reasons, it’s not unusual for them to be destroyed. I’m Yohko Watanabe from Keio University Art Center (KUAC). In this course, we consider the preservation and inheritance of cultural properties by examining a concrete example. At the Art Center, we preserve and restore the cultural properties of Keio University. These activities are essential for the inheritance of cultural properties. In addition, there is also a need to promote and share values. We will be considering that, no matter how valuable a cultural property is, it is difficult for it to be preserved without these activities.
Skip to 0 minutes and 59 seconds We will use this space where I am standing, formerly called the “Noguchi Room” as an example, and Mr. Niikura and Ms. Kirishima from the Art Center, will introduce you to its history and such activities. The Noguchi Room was a common room in a professor’s office building on the Mita Campus. This room was a collaboration between the sculptor Isamu Noguchi and the architect Yoshiro Taniguchi. It was spatial art achieved through close interrelationships between architecture, sculpture, and a garden. However, this space with high artistic value was dismantled. The original concept was a beautiful unity, but we were reluctantly forced to dismantle and reconstruct the room in a different place.
Skip to 1 minute and 47 seconds The space formerly known as the Noguchi Room is no longer in its original condition, but items like furniture and interior decorations by Isamu Noguchi still exist in their original form, and their artistic value has not been lost. What about this current architectural space, now known as the “Ex-“Noguchi Room? How can we actively use it, and make the most of it in education? The example you will see in this course should be good intellectual stimulation for those considering how to increase the visibility of cultural properties in the context of a university, and preserve/use architectural cultural properties. While tracing the history of the Noguchi Room, we will consider together the topic of cultural property preservation and use.
