In this era of big, splashy architectural projects, I.M. Pei contrarily tucked his first Japanese museum into a mountain slope in a nature preserve.
Is there another museum in the world with a roof like the one on I.M. Pei's new Miho Museum, on a mountain ridge in a nature preserve in Shiga Prefecture, Japan, an hour's drive from Kyoto? As I walked on that roof, climbing a dirt path bolstered with cut tree limbs that turned the slope into rustic steps, a breeze investigated the ...