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    Case study · Nagaizumi, Shizuoka (Japan)

    A sculpture garden made to be touched
    —and walked on your own.

    The Vangi Sculpture Garden Museum, inside the Clematis no Oka complex, deploys NaviLens alongside the 歩導くん guide mat so any person with a visual impairment can hear each artwork, find every fork in the garden and reach the tactile stone-sculpture room on their own.

    Entrance of the Vangi Sculpture Garden Museum (Clematis no Oka, Shizuoka) with a cyan, magenta and yellow NaviLens code stuck on a metal post next to the venue's information panel

    Dec 2020

    Start of the NaviLens pilot at the museum

    50+ works

    Giuliano Vangi sculptures (indoors + outdoors)

    Garden + room

    Codes on floor, walls, lift and exit

    33+ languages

    Information available via the NaviLens app

    Client

    Vangi Sculpture Garden Museum · Clematis no Oka

    Clematis no Oka (クレマチスの丘) is a cultural complex at the foot of Mount Aitaka, in Nagaizumi (Shizuoka Prefecture): three museums, a literary museum, a restaurant, a shop and a garden with about 2,000 clematis plants of around 200 varieties.

    Inside the grounds, the Vangi Sculpture Garden Museum (ヴァンジ彫刻庭園美術館) is the only solo museum of Italian sculptor Giuliano Vangi, with more than 50 works —indoors and in the garden— centred on the human being. The team leading accessibility: Okano Taeko (head of NaviLens), Watarigawa Tomoko and Murauchi Mirei (curators), supported by NPO Eye Collaboration Kobe.

    § The challenge

    Letting a sculpture garden be walked without needing to see.

    1. 01

      A sculpture museum conceived through the eyes

      The Vangi Sculpture Garden Museum is the world's only solo museum of Italian sculptor Giuliano Vangi: more than 50 works inside and outside the building, all centred on «the human being». Opening that narrative to people with visual impairment meant adding an accessible information layer to the route.

    2. 02

      A huge garden with no tactile paving

      Clematis no Oka is a cultural complex in Nagaizumi (Shizuoka), with gardens of 2,000 clematis plants, a restaurant and three museums. Classic tactile paving was not viable: exhibitions change, the colour palette is part of the project and the space could not be rebuilt every time.

    3. 03

      A tactile exhibition that accelerated everything

      For the autumn 2022 group show —designed to let visitors touch the stone sculptures— Okano Taeko (head of NaviLens at the museum) decided that visually impaired visitors should reach the room on their own. She looked for a solution and landed on NaviLens through NPO Eye Collaboration Kobe.

    Woman with a white cane and dark sunglasses checks her iPhone in the garden of the Vangi Sculpture Garden Museum, in front of a white Vangi sculpture and a light-grey granite floor

    § Solution

    NaviLens + guide mat,
    an accessible layer with no building works.

    NaviLens codes on the garden paving, next to the tactile sculptures, on the hand-gel dispenser, on the accessible-lift call button and on the exit totem. The free app detects them from several metres away, at an angle and on the move, and reads aloud in Japanese —or in any of the 30+ available languages— what artwork is in front of you and where to go next.

    For the wider stretches of the garden, the museum combines NaviLens with the 歩導くん ガイドウェイ guide mat: cane-detectable, removable, repositionable and in a colour chosen so as not to break the visual language of the site.

    § Timeline

    From a 2020 experiment to a universal museum.

    1. Dec 2020

      Pilot kick-off with NPO Eye Collaboration Kobe

      The museum starts the NaviLens experiment guided by NPO Eye Collaboration Kobe, the leading body for NaviLens adoption in Japan. The same organisation connects the team with the complementary 歩導くん ガイドウェイ solution.

    2. 2021–2022

      Rollout across garden, room and services

      NaviLens codes on the granite paving of the outdoor garden (next to the tactile sculptures), on the entrance panel, next to the hand-gel dispenser, on the accessible-lift button and on the exit totem. Combined with the 歩導くん guide mat, chosen for being removable, repositionable and with a selectable colour.

    3. Autumn 2022

      Tactile stone-sculpture exhibition

      The group show that sparked the project arrives: an experience centred on «触察» (tactile observation) over stone works. Visually impaired visitors walk the museum independently with cane and phone, hearing each artwork and each fork of the route in their language.

    4. 2023

      Official report by Shizuoka Prefecture

      The «UD特派員» (Universal Design correspondents) series of Shizuoka Prefecture publishes UD reports #7 and #8 on the case, documenting the truly universal museum model of the Vangi Sculpture Garden Museum within Clematis no Oka.

    § What they said

    What the museum team and the prefecture said.

    • “目指すのはユニバーサルミュージアム。障害者の方ってひとりでは来館されないでしょう？と言われることがある。そうだとしても、園内ではご自分のペースでひとりで自由に回れたらきっと嬉しいと思うし私も嬉しい。”
    • “美術館は生きる上で不要という意見や教育現場で美術の時間が減っている現実はあるが、作品や食やお花と出会って、心が揺れ動いたり、世界が広がって、自分自身が変化して豊かになれる。だから生きる上で大事なものと思っている。”
    • “ヴァンジ彫刻庭園美術館では外に様々な彫刻作品が展示されており、そのほとんどが来館者の手で直接触れることができます。これは「触察」というもので、視覚障害のある方々にも作品を楽しんでいただくための取り組みです。”

      Prefectura de Shizuoka · UD特派員 (8º periodo)

      Official report on the museum's accessibility (UD #7 and #8)

      Press: pref.shizuoka.jp

    § Where the system sits

    Garden paving, lift, exit and amenities.

    Hand holding an iPhone showing Japanese text while pointing at a cyan and magenta NaviLens code stuck on the museum's cobbled paving
    Top-down view of a NaviLens code stuck at the boundary between a granite slab and the lawn and gravel area of the sculpture garden
    Person with a white cane walking towards a NaviLens code stuck on the grey granite paving outside the museum
    Person in a wheelchair entering the Vangi Museum's accessible lift, with a NaviLens code on the concrete wall next to the call button
    Black exit totem (出口) at the museum's gate with a NaviLens code on its screen, two visitors checking it from outside
    Hand-gel dispenser at the museum entrance with a NaviLens code stuck on its base, two visitors pointing with their phones
    Group of three visitors —one man and two young people— in front of a concrete wall with a NaviLens code, one of them pointing at the code
    Two museum visitors —a young curator and an older woman with cane and orange sunglasses— hold Vangi Museum leaflets in the outdoor garden at dusk
    Detail of the NaviLens code on an access post, next to the panel with posters of the Vangi Museum, IZU PHOTO Museum and Bernard Buffet Museum exhibitions

    § Results

    A museum you enter, touch and leave on your own.

    Independent route

    Blind people move on their own through garden and room

    No civil works

    Stuck codes — no rebuilding of paving or signage

    Multilingual

    Same route for international visitors

    § And your destination?

    Your destination can also guide in 42 languages.

    Tell us about your routes, offices, monuments or galleries. We’ll show you how NaviLens would make your offer accessible —with comparable cases.

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