Dedicated to the goddess Amaterasu, Japan's highest Shinto deity, the country's two most sacred sites are the Naiku and the Geku sanctuaries within the Grand Shrine complex at Ise, in the Mie prefecture. Every 20 years, the simple wooden structures supported by wood columns and topped by thatched roofs, undergo a ritual reconstruction. Each of the two buildings is dismantled and erected anew on an adjacent site by highly specialized carpenters. Though this cycle has been going on for centuries, the individual shrines are so revered that they are kept under wraps, leaving most people unaware about what actually takes place. To shed light on the secretive ceremony, known as Sengu, shrine officials commissioned the Tokyo architect Akira Kuryu to design an Ise Shrine Sengu museum where, for the first time, visitors are able to view large-scale models of and artifacts salvaged from the buildings. Because he needed good lighting to accentuate the displays, Kuryu turned to the Tokyo-based Lighting Planners Associates (LPA).
Kuryu's L-shaped building is located near the entrance to the Geku (or outer) precinct and hugs an iris-studded pond. One leg contains a glazed rest pavilion, the other the museum, a single-story sequence of symmetrically organized spaces crowned by a massive pitched roof made of cast iron.
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