The magnificent main building of this concert hall was completed in 1961 and designed by the Japanese modernist architect Kunio Maekawa. Maekawa apprenticed with Le Corbusier in Paris from 1928-1930 before returning to Japan and starting his own practice, and his firm, Maekawa and Associates, was the first employer of the very prolific Kenzo Tange.

Le Corbusier's influence is clearly visible in the Bunka Kaikan, all the more so because it sits directly in front of Le Corbusier's only building in Japan, the National Museum of Western Art, which was completed two years earlier in 1959, and which Maekawa also worked on.