Anish Kapoor's blow-up concert hall bringing music to tsunami-hit Japan The audience gathers outside the Ark. And the best way to lift spirits and restore hope for the future? By revitalising the community through world-class music, art and culture. As a result, Ark Nova's purple form - which was created free of charge by Kapoor and Isozaki (famed for such structures as Kyoto Concert Hall and Barcelona's Olympic Stadium) - will be an increasingly common sight in the Tohoku region. The distinctive structure will be home to an annual music festival held across the region, with performers ranging from traditional folk dancers and children from local schools to Lucerne Festival musicians and Japan­ese artists. The venue for Ark Nova's debut last autumn was Matsushima, a small coastal town famed for its beautiful bay scattered with pine tree islands. It was overlooking the bay that 10 workers unpacked the Ark from a 12 x 12ft crate, and inflated it within an hour. It stuck out like a sore thumb against its pastoral background, stretching 118 x 95ft on the ground and 59ft high. Smooth and round, the shell is made from a single membrane of PVC-coated polyester less than a quarter of an inch thick, and loosely resembles an oversized doughnut, an aubergine or an azuki bean (depending on whom you ask). Performers at the inaugural two-week festival included the Venezuelan conductor Gustavo Dudamel and the prodigious father and son Wolfram and Raphael Christ playing viola and violin in a Lucerne Festival sextet. The main stars, however, were those perhaps hit hardest: the local children. The festival founders created the Tohoku Youth Orchestra, comprising more than 280 children from seven schools across the region selected by their teachers to take part in workshops conducted by professional musicians on Ark Nova's stage. Sipping coffee beside a Nescafé truck parked incongruously in front of Ark Nova, Michael Haefliger inhaled with relief as he surveyed the realisation of his dream. 'It's great to see it. It has been a long two years - it feels more like 10," he said. This is basically a social art project. It brings high art to an area that has suffered. We want the art to interact with the region, so there are workshops as well as performances. Yoshihide Otomo leads a workshop for children. It was on March 12 2011 - one day after the tsunami - that Haefliger rang his musical collaborator and friend Kajimoto in Japan to talk about how they could help. At first people were sceptical," he told me. What is this crazy idea, they said, an inflatable for disasters? There were moments I wondered whether we would pull it off. But people here are looking for something to pull themselves out of the negative loop. Something to help them develop new hopes. Kajimoto agreed. Some people said why not send pianos instead? But this is more precious. Musicians coming to play music is something that money cannot buy. It's a fantastic gift and will help people realise they are not alone. Officially owned by the Lucerne Festival, Ark Nova is also supported by several high-profile sponsors, including the Swiss companies UBS and Nestlé as well as Japan's Takeda Pharma­ceuticals and the advertisers Dentsu. The sculpture is unmistakably Kapoor, and is reminiscent of his Leviathan, an inflatable made of the same purple material which was exhibited in Paris's Grand Palais shortly after the tsunami. Kapoor, who became involved in the project at the request of Isozaki, described via email from London how they managed to bring Ark Nova to life. 'I worked in close collaboration with Arata Isozaki's studio in Tokyo, and with Aerotrope, a Brighton-based engineering firm with which I have worked closely on many projects," he explained. 'Aerotrope led the design from the structural perspective, and Mr Isozaki's team made and delivered Ark Nova. Aside from meeting safety requirements, one of the main challenges was controlling the acoustics inside the bubble. Initially, music would reverberate for a church-like eight seconds - this was eventually cut to three by a white helium-filled balloon above the stage and angular sound boards behind the musicians. The finished structure is 'perfect," according to Isozaki, who swapped countless sketches over Skype with Kapoor as the project took form. 'I've always enjoyed working on cultural projects," he said. It was interesting to watch it being inflated. I was surprised it inflated so quickly. A helium-filled balloon above the stage helps control the acoustics. On the final windswept weekend, visitors of all ages travelled across the Tohoku region to catch a glimpse of the oversized purple structure and attend one of the concerts. With the goal of making Ark Nova as accessible as possible to local residents, the tickets range in price from ¥2,000 to ¥5,000 (£12.50-31.50), while a number of performances, including children's workshops, are free of charge. Among the visitors was Hisami Watanabe, 50, who works for a media company and had travelled for an hour from her home in Sendai - a Tohoku city hit hard by the disaster - with two friends. We enjoy classical music and were very excited to see it," she said. 'I can't imagine what the music will sound like. Inside, daylight bathed the membrane in a glowing red, and the scent of cedar filled the air, from the neat rows of benches accommodating the 500-strong audience - hand-crafted relics of tsunami-damaged trees retrieved from Matsu­shima's famous temple Zuigan-ji. When the performance started, the sound was warm and soft-edged, not as sharp as within a conventional concert hall, and perfectly complementing the artwork's organic curves - with the elements providing unexpected accompaniments (the membrane quivering in sudden winds perfectly matched the climactic second movement of Brahms No 1 in B-flat major). The audience is seated on cedar benches. A highlight was Ryuichi Sakamoto, who conducted a stage full of enthusiastic schoolchildren from the Tohoku Youth Orchestra as they performed some of his best-known works, including the theme tune of the Japanese television series Yae no Sakura and the soundtrack of the 1983 film Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence. He later took part in an improvisation workshop with other children from the orchestra, conducted by the Japanese musician Yoshihide Otomo, before closing the festival on Sunday evening with a solo piano performance. Speaking between performances Sakamoto told me, 'Some parts of Tohoku are pretty much recovered, but in other parts, almost nothing is done. This project will be a big help for these children. Many of them are holding on to something very heavy inside them, something not yet healed. Music really helps them to open up their feelings. It was the schoolchildren who emerged as the event's biggest stars. Among them was Rena Tamate, a bubbly 14-year-old percussionist who attends a local school 30 minutes away by bus from Ark Nova. 'We heard about this through our teacher and it's been really fun," she said. 'We received the music two months ago and we've been practising ever since. The conversation switched to March 11, and the children compared how close the tsunami came to each of their homes. After the earthquake we were scared," Tamate said. 'I couldn't be alone. I cried a lot. Last year I joined an orchestra, and playing music together really helped. It made me feel more energetic, connected, stronger. The sextet in performance during Lucerne Festival. Takashi Hagiwara, a music teacher at Soma Higashi High School - 30 miles from Fukushima - added, 'Everyone was affected in some way. Five pupils died and many lost parents or siblings. But children are strong. They like things to carry on and have a sense of normality. So this event has been really good for them. The event is a moment of pride for the 16,000-strong population of Matsushima, the town that was chosen as the inaugural setting not only because it is one of Japan's best-loved beauty spots but also because it escaped relatively lightly in the disaster. The pine islands scattered across the bay broke the tsunami so that it hit only the first floors of the buildings (the death toll was 16), unlike neighbouring areas such as Rikuzentakata, where nearly 2,000 died and swaths of the city have yet to be rebuilt. The mayor, Takeo Ohashi, said, 'Matsushima is a very small town. Most people have not had the chance to see this kind of world-standard art, culture and design. Between performances on Sunday, tourists piled along the main street in autumn sunshine, past Zuigan-ji temple and kiosks selling giant grilled oysters, a local speciality. Nearby Naojiro Motomura, an 86-year-old craftsman, paused from making a wooden doll and looked blank when Ark Nova was mentioned - before emitting a long 'aaah" when told it was the purple thing on the hill. I wondered what that was," he said. He has painstakingly rebuilt his workshop and home after losing everything in the tsunami. But he perhaps best summed up the sentiment of the region when he added, 'Whatever it is, if it brings in more people, then it's very welcome to stay. ark-nova.ch