Junya Ishigami Libri

Lightness, transparency, simplicity, and communion with nature are Japanese architect Junya Ishigami’s watchwords. In his architectural masterworks, which he compares to landscapes, he eliminates the boundaries between exterior and interior space. For the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, Junya Ishigami designed an exhibition that reveals, on an unprecedented scale, his latest research into freedom, fluidity, and the future of architecture. On the occasion of this exhibition, presented from March 30 to September 9, 2018, the Fondation Cartier will publish a book retracing the genesis of the project, including mixed photographs, drawings, models, and all the poetry inherent to Ishigami’s work.

The first time Junya Ishigami made himself known in Europe, with his proposal for the Japan Pavilion for the Venice Architecture Biennale 2008, he was a young an almost unknown architect who had worked for several years with Kazuo Sejima and had not long with his studio junya. ishigami+associates, founded in 2004. In the Venice pavilion, Ishigami filled all the interior walls of the pavilion with delicate a somehow naïf drawings of gardens and decided to build several greenhouses with real gardens in the outdoor gardens of the building. The following year, he finished the Kanagawa Institute of Technology Workshop, and with only two works he was acclaimed as one of the most innovative proposals of the recent Japanese architecture. Forcing the limits of transparency and lightness in the beginning, his latest works explore in a conceptual way the relationships between the built matter and the nature, in works such as the Botanical Farm Garden in Tochigi, a multi confessional chapel in China or the house and restaurant for a chef in Japan, where the exploration of the tectonic merges with the telluric and the nature.

The first project to receive the OBEL AWARD -- a new international architecture award -- is the Art Biotop Water Garden by Junya Ishigami & Associates. Situated at the foot of the Nasu mountain range in Tochigi, Japan, the carefully crafted, man-made landscape appears as a dreamlike flooded forest. According to the jury, Ishigami's extraordinary garden design resets the boundaries between architecture, landscape architecture, art and environment and demonstrates how to interact with nature in a respectful way. Exhibition: Aedes Architecture Forum, Berlin, Germany (13.05.-25.06.2020)

In 2009, Junya Ishigamis workshop design for the Kanagawa Institute of Technology won Japans top architecture the Architectural Institute of Japan Prize. This book offers more proof of Ishigamis precocious talent. Plans, designs, photographs, models and writings from various projects illustrate Ishigamis stated aim to embody in architecture that which has never been embodied before. An essay by historian Taro Igarashi assesses Ishigamis importance and success, including his Golden Lion award at the 12th International Architecture Biennale.