"Violent shaking but no real destruction at Toyo Ito's Mediatheque in Sendai. Earthquake-wracked Sendai is home to Toyo Ito's 2001 Mediatheque building, a multipurpose cultural center and one of Japan's -- and the world's -- most significant pieces of contemporary architecture. This video appears to have been shot by someone taking shelter from the quake under a desk inside the building."
"Violent shaking but no real destruction at Toyo Ito's Mediatheque in Sendai. Earthquake-wracked Sendai is home to Toyo Ito's 2001 Mediatheque building, a multipurpose cultural center and one of Japan's -- and the world's -- most significant pieces of contemporary architecture. This video appears to have been shot by someone taking shelter from the quake under a desk inside the building." - via LA Times' Christopher Hawthorne
10 Comments
this is what i wondered. impressive.
while japan is still in the throes of a tragedy, you can next focus on whether ando's concrete is still as smooth as ever.
does anyone have a detail for that ceiling system?
wow!
the ceiling seems to be a typically suspended gyp-board ceiling. no magic to the details...
I kept waiting for the tempered glass doors to explode as they swung to and fro...
raymonde, shit you're right i had completely forgotten about ando's concrete, how callous of me.
i hope none of it is cracked!!!!
Wow. As jump said, the shaking just goes on and on and on and on and on.
I'm so impressed with the people who filmed these videos, who had the state of mind to be able to document something like this so others can see and learn from it. To be in that terrifying a situation but still want to record - I find that impressive, because I don't feel like I can understand it - I think I'd just be crumbling to hysterical pieces myself.
The way that ceiling swings back and forth is sublime, in the true meaning of that word, terrible and beautiful and overwhelming.
Wow.
If you click on the link (which I didn't first time around) you can see the interior of the library space - holy crap.
seriously, raymonde, are you trying to make a career out of criticizing architects for wondering how buildings with experimental structural systems fare in one of the worlds most devastating natural disasters? Find another note to play.
And yes, I do wonder if Ando's concrete failed and what that can tell us about how the structural systems distributed the seismic loads.
"If you click on the link (which I didn't first time around) you can see the interior of the library space - holy crap."
Holy crap indeed. Realizing that this is probably the least of the concerns right now, but having to reshelve all of those books...yikes!
I'm pretty impressed that with all that shaking, the suspended ceiling system A: didn't fail, and B: didn't slam into the walls or columns. Somewhere, someone should be satisfied with a job well done.
wow indeed... those first seconds...
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