The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) will open “A Japanese Constellation: Toyo Ito, SANAA, and Beyond,” an exhibition featuring contemporary Japanese architecture since 2000, on March 13. Pritzker Prize-winning architects Toyo Ito, Hon. FAIA, and SANAA (Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa) have provided inspiration for subsequent generations of Japanese architects and designers including Sou Fujimoto, Akihisa Hirata, and Junya Ishigami. A selection of 40 projects from these six architects, shown in models, drawings, and images, will highlight Japanese architectural innovation over the last decade and a half.
© Kazuyo Sejima & Associates/Courtesy MoMA
Nishinoyama House, by Kazuyo Sejima
Curated by Pedro Gadanho, director of the Museum of Art, Architecture, and Technology in Lisbon, and Phoebe Springstubb, an assistant in the department of architecture and design for MoMA, the exhibition will include multimedia presentations projected onto translucent curtains that will divide spaces.
© Naoya Hatakeyama/Courtesy MoMA
Sendai Mediatheque, by Toyo Ito & Associates
Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation (GSAPP) held a panel discussion in advance of the exhibition opening, with the exhibitors speaking about their work in conversation with Jeffrey Inaba and Kenneth Frampton. Several of the architects involved in the discussion cited Toyo Ito’s Sendai Mediatheque—whose competition winning design included open floorplates supported by 13 irregularly shaped tube columns to withstand a 400-year earthquake, and which successfully resisted the Sendai earthquake on March 11, 2011—as inspiration for their subsequent works.
Courtesy Columbia GSAPP
Panel discussion with Toyo Ito, Kazuyo Sejima, Sou Fujimoto, Akihisa Hirata, and Junya Ishigami, moderated by Jeffrey Inaba and Kenneth Frampton, held at Columbia University's GSAPP on March 8, 2016.
© Akihisa Hirata Architecture Office and Kuramochi + Oguma/Courtesy MoMA
Foam Form, by Akihisa Hirata Architecture Office and Kuramochi + Oguma
© Office of Ryue Nishizawa/Courtesy MoMA
Teshima Art Museum, by Ryue Nishizawa
© Junya Ishigami + Associates/Courtesy MoMA
Kanagawa Institute of Technology Workshop, by Junya Ishigami + Associates
“A Japanese Constellation: Toyo Ito, SANAA, and Beyond” runs from March 13, 2016 to July 4, 2016.
Watch press remarks on the exhibition in the video below:
