TRAVER’S DIARY:Junya Ishigami at Fondation Cartier Paris
From the photographic material, I had imagined Junya Ishigami’s solo exhibition “In Freeing Architecture” at Fondation Cartier in Paris, more different, with various videos and installations, so when I started from the first level of Fondation Cartier, I was surprised by the architectural models and plans to occupy the whole space, I started upside down! I was surprised by the architectural models and plans to occupy the whole space.
By Efi Michalarou
Photo Fondation Cartier Archive
At first I struggled to follow the exhibition because the visitors were many and specialized (architecture teachers, students and architects). I had two choices either to leave or to stay and tour without any effort to understand anything, just to let myself free (this is the magic button in this exhibition), because Junya Ishigami functions in a different way from what we have learned, his deep relationship with nature and man is mirrored not only in his buildings but also in the exhibition itself. In the exhibition “Freeing Architecture” Ishigami elaborates upon his latest research into function, form, scale and the environment in architecture, thus revealing his vision of the future of the field. Junya Ishigami belongs to the younger generation of Japanese architects, who emerged in the 2000s in the wake of Toyo Ito and Kazuyo Sejima. Trained at Tokyo University of the Arts, he gained experience as an architect at SANAA before founding junya.ishigami+associates in 2004. Seemingly free of the rules and constraints of architecture, his work was quickly recognized for its singularity and honored with numerous awards. While in the basement I was thinking that this exhibition is only for experts or architecture lovers like me, when I went in the ground floor, I realized that both through the installations and the videos that are dedicated to specific projects, the visitor can find his place in the exhibition and the space. Because an important element of the exhibition are not only the works but also their combination with the glass walls of the building and the Garden around it!!! The gigantic model of Chapel of Valley in Rizhao, China, characterized by its elegant curves and on a scale of 1/10, is seen alongside the structure of a garden house landscaped with real plants. Junya Ishigami treats architecture as ‘’Architecture as a natural phenomenon’’. A true ode to freedom, the exhibition Freeing Architecturedemonstrates Ishigami’s astonishing capacity to think of his practice outside the limits of know-how and architectural thought. It takes the public on a journey into the artist’s imagination, revealing a multitude of poetic, sensitive worlds. A line drawn in the sky sketches a monument (Sydney Cloud Arch, Sydney, Australia); a collage of illustrations and animations for children serves as the pattern for the roof of a kindergarten (Forest Kindergarten, Shandong, China). According to Ishigami, architecture can be formed naturally, like a stone built over time, through sedimentation and erosion. A project for a chef’s restaurant and residence in the south of Japan is designed “as a rock” (House and Restaurant, Yamaguchi, Japan). Between earth and sky, a semi-open space for university students evokes a changing sky, framed by an imaginary horizon (University Multipurpose Hall, Kanagawa, Japan). Ishigami considers the surrounding environment as an integral part of each and every architectural project. He incorporates the landscape in his work, always magnifying it, even transforming it, as with a newly constructed lake in Rizhao, China, designed as the site for a one-kilometer long promenade building in Rizhao, China, and a forest project in Tochigi, Japan, with more than three hundred trees moved from their existing site and replanted on a neighboring plot of land.
Info: Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, 261 Boulevard Raspail, Paris, Duration: 30/3-9/9/18, Days & Hours: Tue-Wed & Fri-sun 11:00-20:00, Thu 11:00-22:00, www.fondationcartier.com
