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Peter Walker and Partners have concieved the plaza fronting the Marugame station as a gateway to the city, and as connector to it's main cultural institution, the Inokuma Museum designed by Yoshio Taniguchi. A showcase of Marugame's identity, the plaza features a steel fountain whose four frames recall both a multiple tori-the gate of Shinto religion-and the shapes of cranes that comprise the harbor's high-tech shipping industry. This play between tradition and modernity recurs at several levels. The quiet veils of falling water that form the fountain evoke the translucent quality of traditional shoji screens, and provide cool relief during the hot summer months. The ground plane of the plaza sets off elegant paving stones-reminiscent of those used in Japanese gardens-against the common asphalt of taday's roadways. An arrangement of boulders could be interpreted as an immediate reference to the stones of the Japanese Zen garden or those dotting the paths of stroll gardens. The station plaza boulders, however, dreaw a sinuous and formalized line that eschews all similarities with the patterns of stones in traditional gardens. When seen from above, the spiral of boulders mirrors the circular basin of the fountain. At ground level, the pattern dissolves, and the boulders form a visual plinth to the museum across the street. At an urban scale, the connection between the plaza and the adjacent city blocks and roadways is both subtle and pervasive. Like an unrelenting wallpaper applied horizontally, the stripes traverse buildings, and jump across streets, thus making the railroad station and its surroundings one unified and unique environment, barely interrupted by the flow of traffic. Similarly, the frames of the fountain announce, and respond to, the grand arch of the Inokuma Museum.