Ito also refers to Mies' Barcelona Pavilion and Le Corbusier’s Dom-ino house as precedents for his work, and indeed, the Mediatheque appears to mix concepts from the two projects, combining le Corbusier’s play with slab and column structure, with Mies “fluid” spatial effects achieved through combined transparency and reflectivity of materials.

[4] The Mediatheque's seven levels of facilities offer a range of services including a conventional book-lending library, an extensive collection of film and audio recordings with stations for both viewing and editing, a theater, to a cafe and bookstore, all housed in a nearly cubic glass enclosure.

[4] The seven platforms are supported by what Ito calls "characterizing" architectural elements:[4] a forest of 13 non-uniform tubes which appear to rise fluidly through the building.

During the open competition and subsequent phase of basic designing, our primary effort was on demolishing the archetypal ideas of an art museum or library to reconstruct a new idea of architecture called "mediatheque" utilizing the state-of-the-art media.Ito, in creating the Sendai Mediatheque, acknowledged that it would be an institution devoted to accommodating changing technologies.

For example, the spaces to the South and to the North are quite distinct because of the quality of light and wall surfaces, so their uses are determined by the given spatial conditions to some degree - although quite loosely, of course.

The plates (floor slabs) are composed of a honeycomb-like network of steel sections infilled with lightweight concrete.

The steel honeycomb structure allows the plate to span between irregularly spaced vertical supports without beams, and with minimal thickness of the slab itself.

The skin, or facade treatment differs on all five exposed sides of the building, modulating light and views, creating a uniformity across each face of the cube during the day.

The most striking structural elements are the tubes, composed of thick-walled steel pipes; they range in size from 7 to 30 inches In diameter.

The constant motion of people through the stairs and elevators, as well as the glow of light passing through these tubes creates a perceptual link between the floors, and the functions they house, which might otherwise have felt isolated from one another.