Anish Kapoor and Arata Isozaki’s Inflatable Concert Hall in Japan

Photography courtesy of the Lucerne Festival Ark Nova 2013.

On the Japanese seacoast ravaged by the 2011 earthquake and tsunami, music wafts out of a massive plum-colored bean or doughnut, actually the world’s first inflatable concert hall. The PVC form of

Ark Nova

rose in the span of just two hours in the middle of a park in Matsushima, thanks to the assistance of two cranes and a large pump—and the inspiration of sculptor

Anish Kapoor

and

Arata Isozaki & Associates

. Fully inflated, the temporary structure reaches 60 feet high by 120 feet long, big enough to seat 500 on four-person benches. Those benches, the flooring, and the acoustical panels are cedar from the ancient trees that had framed the entrance of a nearby Buddhist temple before they were felled by the high waters.

Kapoor and Arata Isozaki were commissioned by the Swiss nonprofit

Lucerne Festival

, which also organized such programming as a workshop by Los Angeles Philharmonic music director Gustavo Dudamel. Festival directors hope that Ark Nova, by moving to other hard-hit locales, will draw international attention to a region still suffering. Deflated, the membrane folds up into a 2-ton package measuring 7 by 10 by 33 feet, an easy traveling size for a modern-day Noah’s Ark.

Photography courtesy of the Lucerne Festival Ark Nova 2013.