From 11 December 2013 to 27 April 2014 arc en rêve centre d’architecture presents an exhibition devoted to Japanese architect Junya Ishigami, jointly produced with the deSingel International Arts Campus.

The best part of the exhibition is the catalog's re-edition "Junya Ishigami. How small? How vast? How architecture grows."

For Junya Ishigami, architecture is a world of infinite possibilities: both a repository of knowledge and a laboratory for prospective experimentation. His approach, which combines scientific and poetic elements, forms the basis for a dreamlike creative process that transforms dreams into reality. He mainly draws inspiration from nature, methodically conceptualising his projects and always seeking to push back their limits. Though apparently simple, his work is both rich and complex. It both contains and embraces the complexity of the worlds we live in, blurring the frontiers between design, architecture, urbanism, landscape and geography.

His tireless quest for transparency and lightness goes beyond the minimalist aesthetic. It is rooted in a determination to rid architecture of appearances and futility in order to achieve perfect harmony: architecture must step aside to create a total environment celebrating nature. The exhibition presents 56 projects via experimental models, some large, some small, made of white or coloured metal, wood or cardboard. Ishigami’s work explores issues such as density, transport, landscapes, structures, scale, and the urban/rural dichotomy.

These models make up a body of work that asks the underlying question: how can architecture re-enchant the world? Ishigami’s acute awareness of the way humans relate to their environment and the way he calls on us to design alternative ways of living are wonderfully reflected in this show. This “presence and absence” of architecture cultivates a form of ambiguity at the boundaries between occupied and empty space, architecture and nature, the artificial and the organic, resulting in extraordinary spaces. In just a few years Junya Ishigami has opened the way for an approach that is able to go beyond technical processes and build a poetic world and inhabitable forms– from the infinitely small to the infinitely large.

Coproduction "arc en rêve center d'architecture" + deSingel international arts campus, Anvers + Flemish Architecture Institute with the support of Shiseido.

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Junya Ishigami, born in Tokyo, Japan (1974). Education:
1994 - 1998 Musashi Institute of Technology. 
1998 - 2000 Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music.

Professional experience:
 2000 - 2004 Kazuyo Sejima + Associates. 
In 2004 he set up his own firm, "Junya Ishigami + Associates". Junya Ishigami questions common understanding of architecture. This allows him to create things beyond trends, established principles and definitions, develop new structures, new spaces and organize the environment differently. He hopes his projects will be able to change the lifestyle of modern architecture radically and fill it with new values.

Main projects:
 Table. Tokyo, Japan, 2005
T. project. (First prize in residential architecture project sponsored by the Tokyo Electric Power Company). Tokyo, Japan, 2005 
Balloon. Tokyo, Japan, 2007
Kanagawa Institute of Technology KAIT kobo. Kanagawa, Japan, 2008
Yohji Yamamoto New York Gansevoort street store, NY, USA, 2008.

Main awards:
 “low chair and round table” were acquired by the Pompidou Centre. Milan, Italy, 2004, 
SD Prize for “small garden of row house”. Japan, 2005, 
Kirin Prize for “Table” . Tokyo , Japan, 2005, 
First prize in residential architecture project for “t project”. Tokyo, Japan, 2005, 
“Table” shown at the Basel Art Fair by Gallery Koyanagi in 2006 and acquired by the Israel Museum. Basel , Swiss, 2006.

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Published on: February 14, 2014
Cite: "Junya Ishigami exhibition at Bordeaux" METALOCUS. Accessed
<https://www.metalocus.es/en/news/junya-ishigami-exhibition-bordeaux> ISSN 1139-6415
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