• 1. History of the Kansai-kan plan
• 2. Construction
• 3. Major facilities of the Kansai-kan
• 4. Kansai-kan and Kansai Science City
• 5. Conclusion

Planning for the Kansai-kan plan was under discussion from 1982. In December 1994, the plan came into being as a result of the recommendation of the National Diet Library Building Commission submitted to the Diet. 

In this recommendation, the objectives of the Kansai-kan are defined as: 

•  To resolve storage capacity limitations
•  To meet the needs of a highly sophisticated information society 

2. Construction

"The Kansai-kan of the National Diet Library (Provisional Name) Design Competition" was held from 1995 to 1996. The guidelines for applicants were distributed all over the world via embassies and consulates of Japan and were carried in major Western architecture magazines. This competition drew a large international response. A total of 493 entries were submitted including 219 from 42 overseas countries. The first prize was awarded to Mr. Fumio Toki, a Japanese architect, after five screenings. 

Comments on his work by the screening committee included: his sophisticated design present shows a refreshing creativity. For example, the approach through the skylight roof garden creates a ceremonial air; the roof with slits and the glass facade connected to it look clear and bright; greenery on the roof and in the courtyard are in harmony with the surrounding forests. This understated freshness set against strong and assertive designs from others attracted many votes from the judges. 

It is not easy to bring the architect's plan to reality, as he wants it: over half the building is underground and the exterior walls at street level are all glass.... We had to remove 300,000 cubic meters of surplus soil. The period of construction was quite limited because it was obvious that the storage capacity of the Tokyo Main Library, one of the main reasons for constructing the Kansai-kan, would reach its limit at the beginning of 2002. 

Groundbreaking ceremony (11/30/1998) 

Construction started at the end of October 1998. The surplus soil was successfully removed in cooperation with the Defense Agency. The joint venture (Takenaka Cooperation, Sumitomo Construction, and Penta-Ocean Construction), which was awarded the contract for the construction, adopted the "wake-up method" for the first time in Japan in order to ensure safety and shorten the periods. The "wake-up method" is originally used in hanging bridge beams. Takenaka Cooperation applied this method to the glass wall of the facade of the Kansai-kan: the steel frame of the wall was put together on the ground and winched up to the building frame. 

 On March 20, 2002, The National Diet Library received the Kansai-kan building from the Kinki Regional Development Bureau of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport, which was in charge of the construction. The building's beautiful, clear form can be seen, now. 

From entrance to the gate
The overwhelming green of the grass in the front yard facing Seika Boulevard and on the skylight roof welcomes visitors to the Kansai-kan. As if to water the grass, a waterfall flows down a 230m long wall of Chinese granite. In the middle of the waterfall is the entrance, which leads to the transparent entrance cube. There is a wooded area on both sides of the entrance cube. Down the stairs, the entrance gate appears. When you make a User Card at the User Card Issuing Machines and insert it, the gate opens and the General Library Section and the Asian Resources Room come in sight. "Approach through skylight roof garden creates a ceremonial air" is the aim achieved here. 

General Library Section and Asian Resources Room
Through the glass door, there is a spacious 5,000-square-meter grand reading room. There are 350 seats and almost all of them with computer terminals. Users can request materials in stacks via a terminal. High and low shelves are set between the seats that allow space for 150,000 books. 

The walls of the public zone are coated with plaster, Italian stucco. Mr. Fumio Toki adopted this traditional method with modern taste that gives this building a look of understated elegance. 

Both ends of the reading room are offices and service counters of the Public Services Division and the Asian Resources Division. 

Stacks and Conveyers
The total floor space of the Kansai-kan is about 60,000 square meters and half of it is stacks. The storage capacity is six million volumes. 

The stacks are located underground where temperature and humidity are more stable than above ground. The fixed shelving stacks are located in the second and third basements and compact shelving stacks are in the fourth basement. Materials of high-frequency use are placed on the fixed shelving stacks; bound materials and other items are placed in the compact shelving stacks. All entrances to the stack space are controlled by IC cards. 

The most significant facility of the Kansai-kan is its automatic stacks. Metal arms automatically pick up containers of the requested materials when they perceive the  orders. The containers are taken to the conveyance stations and then carried to the desired point by horizontal and vertical conveyers. There are conveyance stations not only at the service counters but also in all offices. 

In the Kansai-kan, requests are sent to the staff of the stack space via the computer terminals of the reading room and offices, though in the Tokyo Main Library, call slips are sent through pneumatic tubes. 

As a fire prevention measure in the stacks, a nitrogen gas fire extinguisher system is installed. The nitrogen gas has no ill effects on the human body and is safer than conventional CO2 gas and halon gas. 

Other facilities and Offices
Seminar rooms are located on the first floor; study rooms and an auditorium are in the first basement. The auditorium has movable seats that make it possible to use the space in many ways such as for lectures, exhibitions and conferences. 

The cafeteria is located in the fourth floor, and is open not only to library users but also to the general public. 

Offices are located in the first basement to provide user services, in the second basement next to the distribution center where materials are brought in, and in the second and third floors. The areas for users and staff are separated. The offices have minimal walls in order to be prepared for future re-arrangement of offices to allow for the expansion of the stack space. 
 

4. Kansai-kan and Kansai Science City

The Kansai Science City, whose construction began in 1987, aims at stimulation of economic activity in the Kansai area and balanced development of the nation's land. The City was planned to be a hub of private research institutions through cooperation among academic, business and governmental circles, though the Tsukuba Science City is the hub of national research institutions. 

The Kansai-kan is expected to function as a major information service facility in the Kansai Science City. Many high technological institutions, such as the International Institute for Advanced Studies, are located in the neighborhood, and many researchers from abroad are researching there. The Kansai-kan might be an academic forum of these researchers, just same as the ancient Library of Alexandria was. 
 

5. Conclusion

From its establishment the NDL has been facing the necessity of re-arranging stack space to meet the increasing library holdings every 20 years. The Kansai-kan makes it possible to secure stack space in the long term. But even though the infrastructure of the Kansai Science City is well built, it is not easy to develop library functions of the Kansai-kan that are integrated with the Tokyo Main Library, which is 500 km away from the Kansai-kan. 

But the times are changing and a highly sophisticated information society is becoming a reality. To ride on the strength of this current, the Kansai-kan of the National Diet Library will open on October 7.