Gifu Cultural Center

The Gifu Cultural Center would be opened up for better visual and physical connection to its surroundings and between the building’s different wings, allowing it to be more accessible to visitors, both from the outside and when moving inside. This is done via the replacement of some existing walls as glass walls, and creating new, more open spaces as such as terraces, a corridor that can serve as an ad-hoc gallery space, and an addition of a ground floor lobby space and viewing decks above it.

Program spaces like the multi-purpose hall, auditorium, and rooms for tea ceremonies are important to a cultural center, so it would be optimal to keep most of the current program spaces intact, albeit with some changes. The existing multi-purpose hall, the Cosmos Hall, would be reduced in size to allow for other programs like cafes, while existing mechanical rooms would be shifted around to create more rooms for new program spaces. One such space would be for Gifu traditional crafts, such as the paper lantern, paper fans, and paper umbrellas. The addition of new programs and events can help to reactivate the building, while revitalising the city’s culture and traditions as well.