Realms of the living and dead: a stepped building joins parkland to create a museum devoted to ancient Japanese tombs

The Osaka Prefectural Chikatsu Asuka Museum in Japan, is a 64,000 sq-ft museum-cum-theater surrounded by a park full of some 200 ancient Japanese graves. Designed by Tadao Ando, the museum is embedded in the earth, with its exhibition space below and its main passage walled in.