Sendai concert hall and central earthquake memorial

This thesis presents the design of the Sendai House of Music and Central Earthquake Memorial, a civic building that fuses culture and memory on the Aobayama plateau and positions itself within the city’s green and blue networks. The objective is to create an open landmark that serves everyday life while commemorating disaster, meeting the competition program that centers on a 2,000-seat concert hall and a dedicated memorial hub. The research follows a combined cultural and technical approach. Parallel investigations examine Japanese spatial concepts such as engawa, ma, oku and yūgen, alongside structural and seismic strategies rooted in local practice. Findings are synthesized through iterative BIM workflows and performance simulations in acoustics, daylight, energy and structure. The architectural resolution is a continuous yet articulated roofscape composed of connected irimoya volumes. A central moya encloses the main hall, the hisashi ring organizes circulation as an inhabited buffer, and framed apertures orient the ensemble toward Aoba Castle, downtown Sendai and the Tōhoku mountains. This terraced, porous configuration answers zoning, height and greening constraints while avoiding a closed-box typology. Structurally, a folded-plate timber roof works monolithically with stiff cores and edge diaphragms above a base-isolated foundation; global and element-level verifications in Midas and Dlubal confirm safety and serviceability. The environmental strategy is passive-first, using the bioclimatic section to couple stack ventilation with a solar-managing roof that hosts photovoltaics and vented façades for protected airflow. The thesis concludes that the proposal reconciles openness with acoustic isolation, unites hall and memorial without subordination, and offers a resilient civic landmark grounded in Sendai’s landscape and memory.

Questa tesi presenta il progetto della Casa della Musica e del Memoriale Centrale del Terremoto di Sendai, un edificio civico che fonde cultura e memoria sull'altopiano di Aobayama e si inserisce all'interno delle reti verdi e blu della città. L'obiettivo è creare un punto di riferimento aperto che serva alla vita quotidiana e commemori al contempo il disastro, rispettando il programma del concorso che prevede una sala concerti da 2.000 posti e un centro commemorativo dedicato.