The National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto

This guide to The National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto follows architect Fumihiko Maki in nineteen eighty six, standing beside the crimson torii gate of Heian Shrine and facing a preservation law that forbids any nearby building from rising above it. He answered with a shrunken second floor, a skylit staircase, and glass-wrapped corners at each corner of the building. The museum itself began humbler still, as a borrowed annex inside a leftover industrial exhibition hall back in nineteen sixty three.