MoMA's 'A Japanese Constellation' profiles Japan's most recognised architects

For its latest architecture exhibition, the Museum of Modern Art in New York has set its focus on a group of contemporary Japanese architects. The museum’s first-ever presentation dedicated entirely to practitioners from the country, the show – ‘A Japanese Constellation’, which opens this weekend – includes work from Toyo Ito, Kazuyo Sejima, SANAA, Ryue Nishizawa, Sou Fujimoto, Akihisa Hirata and Junya Ishigami.
The ‘constellation’ in the title is not there by any accident. For a profession that has become so preoccupied with ‘starchitects’, the exhibition aims to undo that narrow focus on individual genius. Instead, it casts a group of contemporaries not just as luminaries unto themselves, but also as peers who share in the same gravitational pull. So even though they all head offices that bear their names, they also engage in a unique way of co-operating. Take SANAA, for example. The show includes independent work from its two principals – Sejima and Nishizawa – but also those projects on which they worked as a partnership.
The exhibition begins with an unfolding of Ito’s work, and as the show demonstrates, all of the included architects have shared in his orbit. ‘When we started to conceptualise the show several years ago, we thought it would be a monographic show about Toyo Ito,’ explains MoMA director Glenn D Lowry. ‘But, as it turned out, Ito was more interested in this network of relationships he had with other architects.’ So, as Lowry put it during a walk-through, ‘the exhibition endeavors to trace this network’.
The show’s curator, Pedro Gadanho (now the director of Lisbon’s Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology), finds in the work another through-line in addition to the collegiality catalysed by Ito. ‘All of them are pursuing an artistic endeavor,’ he explains. Even as he points out the complex engineering that each of the projects demanded, he reads the final outcome as something other than utilitarian buildings. ‘These architects work beyond the functionalist dogma that characterizes modernist architecture.’
‘A Japanese Constellation’ includes 44 projects, represented through models, photographs and drawings. An accompanying catalogue provides a robust treatment of those projects along with a series of essays.
The exhibition includes work from Toyo Ito, Kazuyo Sejima, SANAA, Ryue Nishizawa, Sou Fujimoto, Akihisa Hirata, and Junya Ishigami. Pictured: a detail of Toyo Ito's Sendai Mediatheque, Miyagi, Japan, 1995–2001.
‘When we started to conceptualise the show several years ago, we thought it would be a monographic show about Toyo Ito,’ explained MoMA director Glenn D Lowry. ‘But, as it turned out, Ito was more interested in this network of relationships he had with other architects.’ Pictured: Toyo Ito's Meiso no Mori Municipal Funeral Hall, Gifu, Japan, 2004–06
The exhibition aims to undo that narrow focus on individual genius and casts a group of contemporaries not just as luminaries unto themselves, but also as peers who share in the same gravitational pull. Pictured: Nishinoyama House, Kyoto, Japan, by Kazuyo Sejima, 2010–14
The exhibition begins with an unfolding of Ito’s work, and as the show demonstrates, all of the included architects have shared in his orbit. Pictured: Teshima Art Museum, Kagawa, Japan, by Ryue Nishizawa, 2004–10
The show’s curator, Pedro Gadanho says, ‘These architects work beyond the functionalist dogma that characterises modernist architecture.’ Pictured: Junya Ishigami's House with Plants, Japan, 2009–12
Even though the architects all head offices that bear their names, they also engage in a unique way of co-operating, which becomes apparent during the course of the exhibition. Pictured: Sou Fujimoto's House N in Oita, Japan, 2006–08
The exhibition includes 44 projects, represented through models, photographs and drawings. Pictured: Showroom H Masuya in Niigata, Japan, by Akihisa Hirata, 2006–07
An interior view of Akihisa Hirata's Showroom H Masuya in Niigata, Japan, 2006–07
INFORMATION
’A Japanese Constellation: Toyo Ito, SANAA and Beyond’ opens on 13 March and is on view until 4 July. For more details, please visit MoMA’s website
All images courtesy of the architects and MoMA
ADDRESS
MoMA
11 W 53rd Street
New York, NY 10019
Receive our daily digest of inspiration, escapism and design stories from around the world direct to your inbox.
-
Four under-the-radar travel destinations to book in 2026 – before everyone else does
You'd be forgiven if none of these locations are on your travel bingo card – yet
-
Estudio Ome on how the goal of its landscapes ‘is to provoke, even through a subtle detail, an experience’
The Mexico City-based practice explores landscape architecture in Mexico, France and beyond, seeking to unite ‘art and ecology’
-
Charlotte Chesnais brings her distinctive sensuality to sculptural new jewellery
Defined by curving shapes and luscious pearls, the jewellery designer's new collection, 'Joaillerie', has sculptural allure
-
Campaigners propose reuse to save Kenzo Tange’s modernist ‘Ship Gymnasium’ in Japan
The Pritzker Prize-winning architect’s former Kagawa Prefectural Gymnasium is at risk of demolition; we caught up with the campaigners who hope to save it
-
A new photo book explores the symbolic beauty of the Japanese garden
‘Modern Japanese Gardens’ from Thames & Hudson traces the 20th-century evolution of these serene spaces, where every element has a purpose
-
The Monthly Architecture Edit: Wallpaper’s favourite July houses
From geometric Japanese cottages to restored modernist masterpieces, these are the best residential projects to have crossed the architecture desk this month
-
How an icon of Japanese Metabolist architecture took on a life of its own – even after its destruction
When Kishō Kurokawa designed the modular Nakagin Capsule Tower more than 50 years ago, he imagined it boarding ships and travelling the world. Now it has, thanks to a new show at MoMA
-
Mayumi Miyawaki’s Fukumura Cottage puts this lesser-known Japanese modernist in the spotlight
Discover the little-known modernist architect through this private home in Japan’s Tochigi prefecture countryside
-
A Karuizawa house is a soothing, work-from-home retreat in Japan
Takeshi Hirobe Architects play with scale and space, creating a tranquil residence in which to live and work
-
Naoshima New Museum of Art is a home for Asian art, and a lasting legacy, in Seto Inland Sea
The Naoshima New Museum of Art opens, marking a seminal addition to the Japanese island's renowned Benesse Art Site Naoshima; we explore Tadao Ando's design
-
Behind a contemporary veil, this Kyoto house has tradition at its core
Designed by Apollo Architects & Associates, a Kyoto house in Uji City is split into a series of courtyards, adding a sense of wellbeing to its residential environment