National Art Center, Tokyo Tokyo, Japan

More of an exhibition hall than a museum, the National Art Center, Tokyo devotes none of its 14,000 square meters to housing permanent collections. Instead, the Center specializes in an ever-changing array of temporary exhibitions that concentrates on the diversity of modern and classical art. Kashiwa SATÔ, designer of the Center's theme, says the facility's focus is to promote "new, more open relationships between people and art".