WINDOW RESEARCH INSTITUTE

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Windows of Japanese Modernist Architecture

The Windows of Tomoya Masuda’s Naruto Cultural Center: A Faintly Bright Louvered Space

The Naruto Cultural Center is a posthumous work by architect Tomoya Masuda. It is one of several buildings that the former Kyoto University professor designed in Naruto, Tokushima. Takahiro Toji, author of Tomoya Masuda’s Architectural World (Eimei Information Design, 2023), provides his reading of the building’s foyer—a concrete space with a unique quality of light, produced by its distinctive vertical louvers—based on Masuda’s architectural philosophy.
Note: The building is closed as of 2024 due to seismic retrofitting work.

Text: Takahiro Taji
Photography: Yuki Moriya

17 Jun 2025

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Windows of Japanese Modernist Architecture

A Culmination of Sutemi Horiguchi’s Aperture Designs:
The Tokoname City Municipal Ceramics Research Institute (Tokoname Tounomori Research Institute)

The exhibition Explorations of Horiguchi Sutemi: Modernism, Rikyu, Garden, Waka opened in August 2024 at the National Archives of Modern Architecture of the Agency for Cultural Affairs. Katsuhiro Kobayashi, the archive’s Chief Senior Specialist for Architectural Documents, sheds light on the appeal of one of Sutemi Horiguchi’s representative works, the Tokoname City Municipal Ceramics Research Institute (now the Tokoname Tounomori Research Institute), which is replete with features reflecting the architect’s careful consideration of openings.