Edo-Tokyo Museum

This guide to the Edo-Tokyo Museum in Tokyo starts with its strange silhouette: architect Kiyonori Kikutake's decision, in the late 1980s, to lift the whole building onto four massive stilts above Ryogoku. It traces his borrowing from a traditional Edo-period rice storehouse and the earthquake engineering hidden inside the floors, more than a hundred steel springs cushioning the galleries below. Stand back from the plaza to take in the full shape before you go inside.