Theatre Design & Technology - Spring 2019 - 47

Completed in 2004, the MPAC's
highly usable, attractive building offers beautiful public
spaces on a constrained site
BY SHOZO MOTOSUGI

Matsumoto Performing
Arts Centre (MPAC)
exterior. Photo ©
Matsumoto Performing
Arts Centre.

TD&T discusses the Matsumoto Performing Arts Centre in Matsumoto, Japan, in this issue as part of its multi-year research collaboration with Bühnentechnische Rundschau, the journal of the Deutsche Theatertechnische
Gesellschaft (Germany's Theatre Technical Society) and Sightline, the journal
of the Association of British Theatre technicians. Under the auspices of this
project, noted specialists in theatrical architecture are producing an ongoing
series of articles celebrating and re-examining some of the most significant
theatres that opened between 1950 and 2010. The project is led by David Staples, theatre consultant. The research informed the International Theatre Engineering and Architecture Conference (ITEAC) held in London in 2018. The
articles will be published in a book entitled Modern Theatres 1950 to 2020.

atsumoto is a mid-sized
Japanese city of around
240,000 people located in
Nagano Prefecture about
220 kilometers east of
Tokyo. It is perhaps best
known for the extraordinary Matsumoto Castle, one of five castles designated as National
Treasures of Japan and with the oldest remaining castle tower (called a donjon). Construction
commenced in 1592 and the city developed
around it as a "Castle Town." Matsumoto has a
rich cultural and music heritage that was poorly served by the inadequate civic auditorium,
and a competition was launched to provide a
venue worthy of the city's history. Ten practices
entered the architectural competition. Toyo Ito
won with a bold plan that reconciled both the
brief and the site by adopting a highly creative
approach.
With many famous summer resorts and
hot springs nearby, the town has always been
proud of its rich culture. One of the first community schools developed in the region was
the Kyu-Kaichi gakko, established in 1876 with
contributions from the local people. Matsumoto is also the birthplace for the Suzuki Method
of music education. Invented by Shinichi Suzuki, the method encourages music education
from the earliest age and has taught millions
to play musical instruments. The Saito Kinen
Festival Masumoto was started in 1992 by renowned conductor Seiji Ozawa as a tribute to
the magnificent musician and educator Hideo
Saito. Saito had been a close friend of Shinichi
Suzuki since their school days in Germany and
was the teacher of Seiji Ozawa. Operas and
various concerts are performed at facilities
throughout the city during this festival, which
lasts about one month each summer. In 2015,
the festival was renamed the Seiji Ozawa Matsumoto Festival (OMF), to mark a new stage in
its evolution.
The civic auditorium, which had opened
in 1985 with a concert hall seating 693 with
pipe organ and various teaching rooms, was
no longer meeting the needs of the community,
nor did it honor the musical heritage. The hall
had poor facilities, a small stage, unsatisfactory
acoustics, and poor dressing and rehearsal
rooms. The inadequacies of the hall and the
needs of the festival increased pressure for a
new hall.
The Prefecture decided to construct a new
building and an architectural competition was
planned. The brief was for a flexible theatre
SPRING 2019

THEATRE DESIGN & TECHNOLOGY

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Theatre Design & Technology - Spring 2019

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