A sumptuous show by Sou Fujimoto inaugurates new cultural venue Japan House London

‘Sou Fujimoto: Futures of the Future’ is the inaugural exhibition at Japan House London, a new cultural venue occupying three floors of an Art Deco building on Kensington High Street, which contains an events space, library, retail, and a Japanese restaurant alongside a temporary exhibition gallery.

Serpentine Gallery Pavilion (ph: Iwan Baan) and Musashino Art University, Tokyo (ph: Daici Ano).

The Fujimoto exhibition, staged in collaboration with Tokyo’s Toto Gallery, presents both a selection of the 46-year-old architect’s built works – including the Musashino Art University Museum & Library and the 2013 Serpentine Gallery Pavilion – and exquisite models depicting many of those planned and under construction.

Models of building for Benetton and tower for Taiwan, and visualisation of a tree-inspired housing tower for Montpellier.

Fujimoto calls these proposals “seeds of the future”, and many of the models have a distinctly organic character. Trees are encapsulated in glass boxes in a model of a building for Benetton, poke through round holes in a circular House in Catalonia and protrude from the tops of architectural branches on a ‘Tree Building’.

Architecture Is Everywhere

A fascinating adjunct is found in The Shop, where another display by Fujimoto, entitled ‘Architecture is Everywhere’ comprises around around 50 small models, constructed from found objects and minute figures of people. “Architecture, I think, is something that is first found and then made”, says Fujimoto. “Just as our ancestors find their habitat in caves and woods, in modern times we discover ours among the many things we encounter in this immense built jungle. And it is a discovery like this that leads us to conceiving new architecture… Here at this exhibition I’m presenting this concept of what I call ‘Found Architecture’. By placing scale human figures next to the ordinary objects found in everyday life or in contexts that might first seem coincidental, if not fortuitous, we would soon start to read these objects as architectural spaces. The discrepancy in scale in these pairings is serendipitous, and what lies beyond them is a prelude of new architecture.”

‘Sou Fujimoto: Futures of the Future’
Japan House London, London W8
22 June–5 August 2018
Details: Japan House London