A redevelopment area between Shizuoka city and Shimizu city, formerly owned by Japan Railway was the site for a public cultural complex planned to become the core facility there. The facility houses a convention hall (max cap. 4600 persons), a medium hall (800 persons for drama, 1200 persons for lecture & concert hall), an international conference hall for 500 persons and Shizuoka Art Theater with a capacity of 400 persons. From its mammoth and nautical appearance the building was named “Granship”.
The convention hall referred to as the “contemporary cathedral” is a colossal space seating 4600 persons, with its ceiling roughly 60m above the floor. Equipment such as elevating stages, mobile seats, adjustable reverberation panels and movable bridges allows various events to take place.
The high-rise part roughly in the center of the whole building and adjacent to the convention hall houses conference rooms of various sizes encircling an international conference hall and an elliptical assembly hall and exhibition halls that can be used in conjunction to the conference facilities.
The stages of the medium hall and the small hall (the Shizuoka Art Theater) share the same off stage facilities and are placed back to back enabling it to alter its depth. Although the hall is intended as a dramatic theater, seats on the elevating stage and reverberation panels on the ceiling and walls can adapt it to musical and conference uses.
The Shizuoka Art Theater is an oval dramatic theater for exclusive use by the Shizuoka Performing Arts Center led by Tadashi Suzuki. The format is the result of thorough visual and acoustical reconsiderations made on Shakespeare’s Globe Theater.
The dynamic curved roof is a combination of an elliptical plan and a parabola, clad with Spanish slate. The dynamic form is impressive even to eyes moving at high speeds on the bullet train passing near by.