Nebuta House Warasse
Akira Katayanagi
I’d like to tell you about Nebuta House Warasse for which P.T. Morimura did the building services design. This facility opened in January 2011, and I was pleased to go back to the site for the first annual inspection. I was reminded again what an excellent place it is and was inspired to write about it for ‘Engineer’s Voice’.
Nebuta House Warasse is an exhibition hall situated towards the coast from Aomori station. The Architectural design was carried out by Molo Design with d/dt Arch, Frank la Riviere Architects. Molo Design is a design studio based in Vancouver, Canada and their projects include the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, which achieved worldwide acclaim.
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The exterior screen of Nebuta Hall, formed from highly corrosion-resistant steel ribbons. Photograph: Shigeo Ogawa |
The annual Nebuta Festival is a major event on the cultural calendar, at which huge paper lanterns or floats called nebuta, are built by members of the local community and pulled through the streets to the sound of traditional flutes and drums. There is a competition for the best floats and the winning top five are displayed for the following year in the exhibition space at the centre of the Nebuta Hall. Traditional music fills the hall giving visitors a taste of the atmosphere of the actual festival.
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Nebuta on display in Nebuta Hall Photography: Shigeo Ogawa |
Next I'll tell you a little about the power supplies used in Nebuta Hall.
As you can see in the photograph the nebuta lanterns are brightly illuminated. During the actual festival they are equipped with their own power source for lighting in the form of a diesel generator. However, this is not the case with the ones on display which are illuminated by a power supply which we developed. With five lanterns on display in one place, the main concern during design and construction was how to avoid over illumination of the space. To this end we measured the brightness of the lanterns during the actual festival,. Although they appear very bright, the actual luminance is only about 100lx which is not particularly strong.
However, in view of energy saving, we installed large dimmers to adjust the brightness of the lanterns. That way the hall is not overlit, adding to the impact of the exhibition. The white box you can see in the photograph below is a large dimmer unit enabling control the power supply voltage to reduce the power used by the lantern.
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Large dimmer unit for controlling voltage of the lantern power supply. |
Nebuta House Warasse has been open one year and looks like it is attracting an endless stream of visitors. If you are visiting the area I highly recommend you drop by to see it.
The nebuta lanterns are the pride and joy of Aomori
Akira Katayanagi
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